Thewesternbalkans
From October 24 to 27, the eighth General Assembly of the World Uyghur Congress (WUC) took place in the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Sarajevo. More than 150 delegates from over 20 countries participated in the event to elect a new leadership of the organization and define a new strategy.
The World Uyghur Congress is an organization of Chinese Uyghur separatists in exile that advocates for the rights of ethnic minorities in China. It is based in Munich and holds conferences every three years. Beijing shows extreme sensitivity to all overseas manifestations of Uyghur emigrants, considering them as hostile activities directed against China’s sovereignty – the main red line of Chinese foreign policy. Chinese embassies abroad are tasked with monitoring and controlling the activities and movements of Uyghurs, trying to convince their host countries that they are terrorists. China has declared WUC a terrorist organization that conspires with separatists and religious extremists to organize terrorist attacks.
Apart from Germany, annual meetings of the WUC, which is funded by the USA (National Endowment for Democracy – NED), have been held in France, Switzerland, Japan and the USA. These assemblies serve as a platform to discuss Uyghur rights and global efforts to draw attention to the situation in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.
Each country’s attitude toward the Uyghurs, like its attitude toward Taiwan, is a major criterion for Beijing’s relations with that country.
The previous General Assembly of WUC took place in 2021 in Prague, but the Marriott Hotel in the Czech capital refused to host the Uighur event, citing political neutrality.
In August the President of the WUC, Dolkun Isa announced his decision to step down temporarily, “until a fully independent, unbiased investigation is completed”. He has been accused by several women of sexual assault. The World Uyghur Congress elected German national Turghunjan Alawudun as its new president on Saturday during the General Assembly in Sarajevo.
An interesting question is why the government of Bosnia and Herzegovina decided to incur the wrath of Beijing and give a platform to the Uyghurs, who from the center of Sarajevo accuse China of violating human rights.
The main explanation is Muslim solidarity. The Uyghurs are Turkic Muslims, and one of their main complaints against the authorities in China is that their religious rights are being trampled upon. Some human rights groups and parliaments in Western countries accuse Beijing of genocide against the indigenous population of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, called East Turkestan by the Uyghurs. The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said a 2022 investigation found evidence of “serious human rights violations” in Xinjiang. Paradoxically, however, WUC is mainly supported by the US and its close allies, but not by the Islamic states.
In any case, the choice of the Bosnian capital for the hosting of the Uyghur delegates is not accidental. In 2021, representatives of Bosnia and Herzegovina signed a UN resolution on the violation of Uyghur rights. Since this was done without the consent of the representatives of the three nations, Milorad Dodik of Republika Srpska demanded that the country’s signature be withdrawn.
Secondly, the activists of the World Uyghur Congress themselves give their own explanation for the choice of the venue of the congress: this time the organization chose the Bosnian capital to refer to the country’s experience with human rights violations and genocide experienced during the war in the 1990s after the breakup of Yugoslavia. “Bosnia witnessed a genocide,” Zumretay Arkin, Director of Global Advocacy at the World Uyghur Congress, told RFE/RL’s Balkan edition. “I’m not saying the stories are similar, but there are parallels in the history of atrocities, crimes, efforts to document, international justice and accountability measures. We can use this as a model for understanding the genocide against the Uyghurs.” In July this year a WUC delegation visited Srebrenica to pay tribute to the victims of the July 1995 genocide.
Türkiye is also likely to have a role in organizing the Uyghur forum, although Ankara has recently been reducing support for the Uyghurs due to strained relations with China. On the eve of the General Assembly, WUC received support from Türkiye, at the level of members of parliament. This year, artists from the Academic Uyghur Theater participated in an event of the International Organization of Turkic Culture in Ankara, whose general secretary pointed out that East Turkestan is one of the main symbols of Turkic civilization. In recent years, Erdogan has been actively recalling the common traditions and customs of all “fraternal nations” within the ideology of pan-Turkism. Back in the 1990s, Türkiye, home to a 300,000-strong Uyghur diaspora, was among the countries where the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) was formed, claiming responsibility for more than 200 terrorist attacks in China by 2017.
The role of the US in the organization of the Uyghur forum is most obvious. Sarajevo is positioning itself as a springboard in the US information war against China to reaffirm its alliance and possibly in the hope of receiving long-awaited US investment in its underfunded military industry. By emphasizing its Muslim image, Sarajevo benefits US geopolitical interests. NED President Damon Wilson visited Sarajevo at the end of May and beginning of June this year, and later the head of the CIA Williams Burns was also in the BiH capital. It is hard to believe that these two visits are not related to the holding of the GA of WUC.
As expected, strong pressure was exerted on WUC by the Chinese embassy in Sarajevo, with the aim of thwarting the event. After June of this year, when the organization announced its intention for the annual meeting in Sarajevo, hacker attacks and threats against WUC representatives followed. On Facebook, WUC announced that the Chinese embassy had made threats to cancel the event, to arrest former president Dolkun Isa and even to cause a car accident. Bosnia and Herzegovina has an extradition treaty with China that is commonly used by Chinese authorities, but so far Uyghur activists have not been pressured by local authorities after arriving in Sarajevo.
The opinion of the Chinese embassy in Sarajevo is that WUC is using Bosnia to carry out “anti-Chinese separatist activities“ and “spread lies” about the situation in Xinjiang province. At a meeting with the representative of the Serbian people in the Presidium of BiH, Zeljko Cvijanovic, the Chinese diplomats defined the meeting of the Uyghurs in Sarajevo as “gross interference in China’s internal affairs.” Cvijanovic agreed with this formulation.
Republika Srpska is concerned that Sarajevo is becoming the center of political radical Islam in Europe. The director of the Center for Socio-Political Studies of Republika Srpska, Dusan Pavlović, even believes that in this way Sarajevo becomes a center of attraction for “Muslim groups radicalized by the intelligence services of the West”. Although far-fetched, this statement sounds good to Chinese ears. The official media in Banja Luka published an interview with the chargé d’affaires of the Chinese embassy in BiH, who called the forum anti-Chinese. So the forum in Sarajevo gave Banja Luka an opportunity to demonstrate its good relations with China.
The radical groups in the Balkans that D. Pavlovich spoke of were supported not so much by the West as by Türkiye, which played a significant role in the establishment of radical Islam in the Balkans. Today, Türkiye does not hide its ambitions to strongly influence the political processes in BiH and, in general, the relations in the Balkans.
Foto: Unsplash
