Page 112 - Communist Chinas Policy of Oppression in East Turkestan
P. 112
108
Russia
Kazakhstan
Mongolia
Kyrgyzstan
East Turkestan
Tajikistan
China
Kashmir
Pakistan
India Nepal
Bhutan
Bangladesh
the region was to eliminate Islam entirely. Throughout this period, a
number of sanctions were employed in an attempt to destroy the Turks'
national cultures; mosques and places offering religious instruction
were closed down and religion was entirely divorced from social life.
Crimean Turks were rounded up and exiled to Siberia in the course of a
single night, and Russians were brought in to occupy their homes and
lands. Furthermore, artificial ethnic conflicts were incited between the
nations of Central Asia. Another of the Soviet regime's measures aimed
at assimilating the Turks was to develop a second language alongside
the mother tongues of the Muslims of the Caucasus and Central Asia. It
is for this reason that Russian is now preferred to Turkish as a means of
communication between the communities in question.
East Turkestan suffered similar oppression to that experienced in
West Turkestan, but in an even more violent form. In the middle of the
1700s, East Turkestan was invaded by the Chinese. The political
Communist China’s Policy
of Oppression in East Turkestan