How China's ideologues glorify the Uyghur genocide

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3 days ago

The mass killings, cultural erasure, and brutal tactics of the 1950s are being celebrated as a model for how to govern East Turkistan today. This is not merely a message for domestic audiences, it is a signal to the world and a warning to those who remain silent read more
China's ideological institutions are praising genocide as a tool of statecraft.
On February 4, 2025, the Chinese Red Culture Research Association (CRCRA), a national ideological organisation supervised by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) and overseen by China's Ministry of Civil Affairs, published an article openly glorifying the mass murder of Uyghurs by General Wang Zhen, a key figure in the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) violent conquest of East Turkistan in 1949. This article did not frame these atrocities as a regrettable chapter of the past. It held them up as a governing model for the present.
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The article, titled 'Wang Zhen Governs Xinjiang: What 'East Turkistan' or 'West Turkistan'? Just 'Tutu' Them All!', refers to the slang term '突突' (tūtũ), meaning 'machine-gun them'. It uses the phrase '全部突突掉!' meaning 'just shoot them all!' not rhetorically but as direct policy advice. The piece presents the mass killings, religious subjugation, and total suppression of the Uyghurs not as regrettable, but as effective and necessary.
Wang Zhen, remembered as Wang Huzi ('Bandit Wang'), ordered entire villages destroyed with artillery and implemented a brutal policy of collective punishment, executing five to ten Uyghurs in retaliation for every Chinese soldier lost. He enforced practices of spiritual desecration by forcing devout Uyghurs to raise pigs, slaughter them, and consume the meat; these were deliberate acts of cultural and religious humiliation. When villagers protested the killing of an elderly man, Wang deployed thousands of paramilitary units from the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC) to violently suppress the demonstration. The article boasts, 'Blood flowed like a river.'
It further praises Wang for deceiving a delegation of Uyghur leaders who sought to petition Beijing to honour its nationality policies. Promising to take them to the capital, Wang instead ordered their transport to a remote location, where they were summarily executed. 'Tutu'ed,' the article notes, with chilling finality. It proudly recounts that any assembly of three or more adult Uyghur men was treated as a cause for immediate execution.
It goes further, praising Wang's brutality as not excessive but exemplary. Why should we not be iron-blooded?' It asks, framing genocide as a patriotic necessity. It concludes by asserting that such measures succeeded in pacifying East Turkistan for decades, explicitly endorsing the repetition of those same genocidal tactics today. The article proclaims, 'Without thunderbolts, there can be no compassion,' and declares, 'Only by terrorising the troublemakers can we eliminate terror.' It ends with a chilling ideological assertion: 'In matters of national interest, force is truth.'
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These are not metaphors. They are ideological endorsements of policies already being carried out: enslavement through forced labour, mass internment, organ harvesting, and the systematic erasure of an entire people.
This is not the rant of an internet provocateur or the revisionism of a random Chinese blogger. These words come from an official ideological institution whose mission, according to its own charter, is to 'serve the overall work of the Party and the State,' 'study and promote red culture,' and 'strengthen the ruling status of the Communist Party'. It is overseen by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the CCP's top ideological think tank, and operates under the full authority of the Party.
CRCRA is not obscure. Its events are attended and endorsed by China's top ideological elites. At its 2023 national conference, speakers included Teng Wensheng, former Director of the CCP Central Policy Research Office, and Li Dianren, former Deputy Political Commissar of the National Defence University, who also spoke at the organisation's 2024 national conference. The former praised the organisation's materials as 'politically sharp'. The latter called it a 'fighting force' for Xi Jinping's ideological leadership.
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Former Central Propaganda Department head Wang Renzhi and former Director of the Literature Research Office of the CCP Central Committee (renamed the Central Institute of Party History and Literature after 2018), Pang Xianzhi, have publicly praised the CRCRA for its unwavering commitment to advancing Party ideology.
Their support is not incidental. It is confirmation of alignment with the CCP's core ideological goals. This is not a historical reflection. It is contemporary incitement. These narratives are being institutionalised, not by fringe bloggers or elements, but by organs of the Chinese state.
China officially refers to its 1949 invasion of East Turkistan as the 'Peaceful Liberation of Xinjiang'. But the CRCRA's own article contradicts this claim. It recounts, in vivid detail and with ideological pride, the shelling of villages, mass executions, forced desecration of religious identity, and suppression through terror. China's own ideological institutions have now confirmed what Uyghurs have said for decades: that this was not liberation. It is a brutal military occupation.
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Since 2014, China has been engaged in a coordinated campaign of genocide and crimes against humanity in East Turkistan. Millions of Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and other Turkic peoples have been imprisoned in concentration camps, subjected to forced labour, coerced into sterilisation, and separated from their children. Thousands of cultural and religious sites have been destroyed. The Uyghur language has been suppressed. The Chinese government calls this 'poverty alleviation,' 'counterterrorism,' and 'vocational training'. But leaked official documents and the publicly available CRCRA article show the true motive: subjugation through extermination, justified in ideological terms.
In 2020, the East Turkistan Government in Exile, the East Turkistan National Movement, and survivors of the camps filed a formal complaint with the International Criminal Court (ICC). The United States and over a dozen parliaments have recognised China's actions as genocide. In 2022, the UN Human Rights Office confirmed these crimes may constitute crimes against humanity. Yet no meaningful legal or political consequences have followed.
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The CRCRA article marks a dangerous new threshold. China's genocide against the Uyghurs is not only ongoing; it is now being openly glorified. The mass killings, cultural erasure, and brutal tactics of the 1950s are being celebrated as a model for how to govern East Turkistan today. This is not merely a message for domestic audiences. It is a signal to the world and a warning to those who remain silent.
The world can no longer claim ignorance. In June 2025, the genocide of Uyghurs continues, no longer hidden but openly justified through state ideology. China's state-supervised institutions now openly praise the mass killings, forced assimilation, and religious destruction that defined the conquest of East Turkistan. These are not historical reflections; they are blueprints for how the Chinese party-state seeks to rule today. It continues to deny these crimes even as it glorifies the very ideology that justifies them.
This is not merely impunity. It is escalation.
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The United Nations, democratic governments, and leading human rights organisations must demand that the International Criminal Court open a formal investigation without further delay. If the Court fails to act, the responsibility falls to democratic states to establish a special international tribunal to prosecute China's ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity in East Turkistan.
Recognition of genocide and crimes against humanity, without concrete action to stop them and hold the perpetrators accountable, is not justice. It is complicity.
Genocide does not begin with bullets. It begins with ideological incitement. In 2025, China is publishing that ideology proudly. The world must decide whether to confront the machinery of state-led extermination or enable it through silence.
Mamtimin Ala is the president of the East Turkistan Government in Exile, and Salih Hudayar is leader of the East Turkistan National Movement. The views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost's views.
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