Report from the Nordic Delegation to China’s Xinjiang Province, 7-15 Sep 2024
FEATURED RESEARCH PAPER, 16 Dec 2024
Jan Oberg, et al. | The Transnational - TRANSCEND Media Service
I. Introduction
16 Nov 2024 – The initiative for the “Nordic Delegation to China, September 7-15, 2024” was taken from the Norwegian side. Journalist and former editor Arild Vollan wanted to investigate claims in the media about an ongoing genocide against the Uyghurs in the autonomous region of Xinjiang in western China. Vollan selected an independent, cross-disciplinary and cross-political delegation group consisting of people who have worked with China and who wanted to get personal impressions of the conditions described in the previous section.
The delegation consisted of:
• Remi Strand, lawyer.
• Thore Vestby, a former member of parliament (H) and former mayor of Frogn.
• Arild Vollan (head of delegation), journalist and former editor.
• Jan Øberg, PhD sociology, director of the Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research, TFF, in Lund, Sweden. (1)
The delegation itself developed the project’s mandate. Following an excursion to Xinjiang province, the delegation’s mandate was to clarify whether observations made during the trip substantiated claims in the media that there is an ongoing genocide in Xinjiang today.
Arild Vollan prepared the excursion program in dialogue with Thore Vestby, who has previously visited the province. The logistics were set up in dialogue with the Chinese Embassy in Oslo.
The delegation participants covered their own travel costs back and forth to China/Xinjiang and accommodation expenses ahead of the excursion in Xinjiang. The regional Chinese authorities arranged transportation, accommodation, and translators in Xinjiang.
In Xinjiang, the delegation members could talk to anyone they wanted. Elements of the program were conducted without participants from local or regional governments. Information was gathered through meeting people and observing cultural expressions both inside and outside local institutions, through talking to representatives from various cultural minorities, and through open sources on the internet.
In essence, the delegation has seen what it was offered to see. The report, therefore, describes a here-and-now impression within the framework that was set. The information gathered is summarized in this report.
II. Norm basis
Genocide (2) is often defined as either:
“Killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; forcibly transferring children of the group to another group”.
The above definition guided the delegation in gathering information. The definition has also guided the delegation’s assessment of the allegations of an ongoing genocide in Xinjiang.
III. Travel route, observations, etc.
The delegation gathered in Beijing on September 6, 2024. Internal planning meetings were held before the delegation flew to Kashgar (3) on the morning of September 7. The delegation went to a hotel and then on an excursion around town.
Fifty-six ethnic minorities are registered in China. Forty of these minority groups live in the Xinjiang province.
The first impression was that the architecture in Kashgar reflects a mix of different cultures living together in the area. Street signs, for example, had both Chinese and Arabic text.
The buildings included both mosques for the Muslims and buildings with a more secular design. The delegation visited the Id Kah Mosque in Kashgar and was shown around by an imam.
The imam talked about the mosque’s operation, with full houses on Fridays and during holidays. Different ethnic minorities used the mosque at various times throughout the year, but the same minority groups celebrated the major holidays together in the mosque. One couple got married in the mosque area when we were there. In response to a direct question, the imam replied that the Chinese authorities do not interfere in the running of the mosque.
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Tags: China, Conflict Analysis, Genocide, History, Investigative Journalism, Islam, Media, Muslims, Tourism, Uyghur
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Thank you for this thorough report of an interesting study tour. I myself served as Turkey Contact person in Amnesty International in the years 1992- 2002 and reported on several issues in these years as well as visiting Turkey. In 1996 the human rights association (IHS) in Turkey was founded and provided an excellent assistance to my work.
The great difference between this repart and the resports I received I wrote while being an AI contact person is that yiur report does not – as far I san see from a cursory reading – contain any statements from people who are strongly opposed to the policies of the Chinese government. These undoubtedly exist, also in Turkey. In Turkey I mainly got informations from 1) people in opposition, 2) local officials who generally admitted that there existed a lot of dissatisfacton with the police, the courts and the gocvernment, but that these compolaint mostly were exaggerated.
But I found no descriptions of this in your report, and no reports of possible talks with dissidents who provided statments anonymously. It is hardly credible that no such voices existed, but the lack of these voices of course represents a problem in a giiven report.
Needless to say, there is a dilemma here. Such study groups as yours in a foreign country will be very unpopular with the hosts and possibly never invited again if you fill your report with uncorroborated negative statements from anonymous sources.
But is some kind of middle road possible, by virtue of which one can develop a more realistic dialogue both with local residents and with the authorities that have responsibility for the same local residents? And did you try to find critical people? Did you try to raise issues with your hosts?