Corrective ‘re-education’ as (cultural) genocide: A content analysis of the Uyghur primary school textbook Til-Ädäbiyat

Mahmut, D; Smith, Finley, J

doi:10.7765/9781526153128.00015

Corrective ‘re-education’ as (cultural) genocide: A content analysis of the Uyghur primary school textbook Til-Ädäbiyat

Downloads

Full text for this publication is not currently held within this repository. Alternative links are provided below where available.

Abstract

In this time of political 're-education', Xi Jinping’s Han-majoritarian state has reconstructed the Uyghur body, mind, language, religion and culture as an existential and biological threat to the Chinese nation (Smith Finley 2019; Roberts 2018). An examination of the 2017 Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region Regulations on De-Extremification and related documentation reveals a disturbing concept of 'correction' that reminds us of Bradley Campbell's (2009) notion of genocide as social control: a top-down moralistic correction of 'deviant' behaviour by an increasingly powerful and violent state. In 2016, one manifestation of such 'correction' was the sentencing of Uyghur literature textbook compiler, Yalqun Rozi, to more than 10 years in prison on charges of 'incitement to subvert state power' and the removal of his textbooks from the shelves of state bookstores. The textbooks were subsequently denounced as 'problematic' and 'treasonous,' and as having 'poisoned Uyghurs with ideas of splitting China'. In this paper, I draw upon Bradley's theory to examine the new, revised content in six issues of the second edition of the children's Uyghur-language textbook Til-Ädäbiyat [Language and Literature, 2018, Xinjiang Education Press). Concurring with Clarke's (2018) view that the Chinese state's true motivation in labelling Uyghur opposition as ‘religious extremism’ is to generate diplomatic capital for the ongoing repression of Uyghur autonomist aspirations, we suggest that 're-education' in Xinjiang is a 'final solution' to defeat a perceived anti-colonialist movement and to erase the Uyghur identity as that movement's life force.