The truth about Xinjiang

by New Worker correspondent

A meeting organised by Friends of Socialist China at the Marx Memorial Library in London last week heard eyewitness accounts from a group of activists, journalists, publishers and businesspeople from a tour of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in the far west of China.
Xinjiang is the size of Iran with a population of 25 million and has, of course, been the target of a Western black propaganda op alleging slave labour and mass 're-education' camps, and the systematic suppression of Islam. It is a multi-ethnic region made up of 44 per cent Uygurs and 42 per cent Han Chinese as well as many other groups including Kazakhs, Mongols, Kirghiz and Tajiks.
There are 50 minority-language newspapers published in Xinjiang, including the Xinjiang Economic Daily, which is well known across China, and TV and radio are broadcast in the Mandarin, Uygur, Kazakh and Mongolian languages.
From the 1990s until around 2015 Western-backed terrorists waged an extremely violent campaign in Xinjiang that claimed the lives of thousands of civilians.
David Peat from Iskra Books said: “A major goal of the USA and its allies is to block the development of transport links through Xinjiang with China's ‘Belt and Road’ initiative. The West stepped up its propaganda and sanctions against China after President Obama's Asia Pivot, essentially when it was realised that the rapidly growing economic competition from China outweighed the massive profits Western businesses had made by outsourcing their factories to China.”
Ali Al-Assam from Friends of Socialist China said that: “The Jihadist terrorism began in Xinjiang at almost exactly the same time as in Iraq, and was linked to the massive promotion of the minority Wahhabist Muslim sect’s ideology around the world through finance and the training of Imams, including in Xinjiang.
“The Communist Party of China uses Marxism as a tool for uniting the people, and for 're-introducing' the unity which had already existed in the province.
“Traditional Islam has also been preserved in Xinjiang, where some of the world's largest Islamic libraries can be found. While Islam makes up just under 60 per cent of believers in Xinjiang, about a third are Buddhists, along with Daoist and Christian minorities.
“Trade unions in Britain have made a very important contribution towards engaging with China and countering the Western media’s lies and fake news about slave labour in Xinjiang.
“Many people in Muslim countries are aware of the West’s attempts to destabilise Xinjiang and make comparisons with the West’s imposition of wars and sanctions on the people of the Arab world.”
Roger McKenzie, International Editor of the Morning Star, said Xinjiang “was one of the most comfortable places I have ever been as a black person. We felt absolutely free to talk to anyone in the streets, markets and mosques”. He recounted experiencing racism in almost every country he had visited, including in every city he had visited in the USA.
"We saw a society trying to build a complete different society, one which most people in Britain wouldn't be able to understand. The media reports we see are straightforward lies and pure propaganda.
“Almost every day we saw huge festivals celebrating the different cultures of Xinjiang in the streets.
“Xinjiang is one of the least developed and poorest of China’s regions, and despite hundreds of billions of dollars in state investment, there is still a way to go. While the West projects fake news about Xinjiang, they don't seem to have any problems with slave labour in countries like the Republic of the Congo, where they are happy to invest huge sums in mineral extraction. But it’s important to remember that there are many on the left in Britain who support these fabricated claims.”
These accounts are fully supported in recent YouTube travel videos made by British visitors to Xinjiang's capital, Urumqi. While Urumqi looks similar to any modern world city, with a high level of use of social media and digital payments, these videos also show a thriving music and dance culture on the streets, both modern and traditional. 

The British volunteers who fought apartheid

by Theo Russell

A major new documentary has just been released and is now showing at community cinemas around the country. But The London Recruits is unlike any other documentary I've seen. In fact it is more nail biting than any thriller film I've seen, and extremely powerful and moving. It tells the story of the British volunteers who were recruited to travel to South Africa to distribute propaganda for the African National Congress (ANC), and to deliver funds.
The operation was mounted at an extremely difficult time for the struggle against the Western backed and armed Apartheid regime, when the ANC had been driven completely underground.
The regime's police were extremely brutal and anyone arrested was likely to face beatings, torture, and possible "accidental" death or execution for any involvement with the ANC. Its spies were everywhere, even in the black townships - and by the way even London was crawling with them at the time.
The ANC realised that the most urgent task was to tell the black masses that they and the struggle were still alive.
Under the leadership of Oliver Tambo, the ANC's leader in exile, and Ronnie Kasrils, a founding member of Umkhonto we Sizwe, they developed the technique of "bucket bombs" which scattered hundreds of ANC leaflets in areas where black South Africans congregated. Eventually they were able to set off multiple bombs on the same day in the main South African cities on the same day, creating an upsurge in the struggle and panic among the authorities. Some of the 'recruits' fell into the hands of the regime and faced torture and prison sentences.
The film expertly combines interviews, archive footage and re-enactments, but it needs to be pointed out that while Chris Hani – the leader of the South African Communist Party and chief of staff of uMkhonto we Sizwe (the ANC's armed wing) who was assassinated by a fascist Polish immigrant in 1993 – was played by an actor.
There is an excellent website for the film - londonrecruits.com/ - which also has a map of local screenings in England and Wales, and if you click on ‘GET INVOLVED’ you can receive updates on screenings and future releases. Catch this film if you can – it’s the best I’ve seen for several years.