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With Uighur comic, Japanese manga artist aims to highlight everday suffering

18 Comments
By Hideto Sakai

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I first learned of the Uighers in the mid-80's as one of their neighborhoods lay behind the walls that encircled my Beijing campus. Uighers and Han have always been like oil and water, particularly as Han love pork and alcohol, both anathema to Uighers. They were known as the "secretaries of Asia" as their literacy in both Arabic and Chinese characters made them indispensable in facilitating trade along the silk road between Persia and China. So I took a week-long spring vacation and turned it into a month to travel out there by steam train. (Almost got kicked out of the program for that stunt.)

Their type of Islam was gentle but deep. I made friends with a local in Turpan and asked if it would be appropriate for me to wear their traditional hat; he enthusiastically encouraged me to do so, and I was welcomed whole-heartedly everywhere. A girl, maybe 15, helped her brother run his restaurant, my favorite haunt, and when I left town, I had been so smitten by her I thought to give her a gift, so I bought a necklace at the market but eventually decided not to give it to her, fearing that the sentiment might be misconstrued.

I wonder whatever happened to her. What is happening in Xinjiang is genocide and nothing less.

18 ( +18 / -0 )

Despite the publicity campaign that the Chinese government has orchestrated for decades, the Communist party is still a ruthless dictatorship.

Thank to Ms.Tomomi Shimizu for highlighting Chinese oppression of Uighurs this way.

It is now a world known fact that Chinese brainwashed Chinese Communist Party are nothing but BEASTS. They are as cruel as Japanese Militarists, German Fascists.

15 ( +16 / -1 )

Why not install sanctions against China?

12 ( +12 / -0 )

Great to see Japanese standing up for the Uighur Muslims persecuted by communist PRC. It is a shame on the International community, particularly UN and USA that they all look the other way and contunue to trade with China, whilst 2 million Muslim men are locked away and tortured simply due to their religion.

Good for this manga artist.

11 ( +16 / -5 )

Do not forget, that the Muslim ifeology was not offered to people as an option by persuassion. It was through murder, pillage, rape, enslavement, and torture.

Ah. So it's a lot like Christianity.

My program was one of the first of college students allowed into the PRC, a different world back then. There was no "radicalized" Islam, yet still, the Han viewed them as barbarous and thieving. Many ran shish-ka-bob carts on a certain corner, and when I organized an Independence Day international mixer at my school, I invited one over in place of barbecue. He agreed with some trepidation that I didn't understand until I saw the apoplectic reaction of the school president.

The Han have distrusted Uighers to the point of hatred for centuries. It is only now that they have an excuse to extinguish their culture.

7 ( +7 / -0 )

It is a shame on the International community, particularly UN and USA that they all look the other way and contunue to trade with China

According to Japan's Ministry of Finance, in 2018, bilateral trade between Japan and China amounted to 34.8 trillion Yen, while in the same period, bilateral trade between Japan and the US amounted to 24.7 trillion Yen.

https://www.customs.go.jp/toukei/shinbun/trade-st_e/2018/2018_216e.pdf

That's right. Japan does more trade with China than it does with the US.

China is Japan's largest export market, but it's a good thing that Japan doesn't continue trading with China like the UN and the US.

4 ( +5 / -1 )

Nope. Completely different ideology. Christianity has no concepts like jihad, jihza, dhimmitude etc. There are very fundamental differences in ideology and history.

If you did even a little research on the history of Christianity you would see many of these acts you denounce occurred under the banner of Christianity.

2 ( +2 / -0 )

There is truth too in what you say, Mr Kipling. China did have a serious recurring problem with Uighur Islamic terrorism.

The solution however has been more radical than anyone else in the world would even consider. Forcible ethnic brain washing, might be one way of describing it.

1 ( +3 / -2 )

@ Mr Kipling

Amazing how people are so easily taken in by the anti-China propaganda.

Google Kunming terrorism or Kashgar or better still Uighur terrorism for a clearer picture as to why China has had to take security measures.

China has been successful in halting its internal terrorist threat.

“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” 

Benjamin Franklin, “Reply to the Pennsylvania Governor”, November 11, 1755

I hope the day comes you lose your basic human rights so your neighbors can feel a little more "secure". But I hope it is just long enough to allow you to empathize since I don't want to be a hypocrite. :P

1 ( +1 / -0 )

PS Whether China has been ‘successful’ is something we will only be able to judge in the long term, IMO.

0 ( +1 / -1 )

they are not ethnically Chinese.

To be honest, I've never met one single person from China who was ethnically Chinese.

0 ( +1 / -1 )

Laguna:

Ah. So it's a lot like Christianity.

Nope. Completely different ideology. Christianity has no concepts like jihad, jihza, dhimmitude etc. There are very fundamental differences in ideology and history.

-2 ( +2 / -4 )

It is a shame on the International community, particularly UN and USA that they all look the other way and contunue to trade with China,

Don't forget Japan now. Abe just went there...

Nonetheless, it's good that the awareness is being raised, but hopefully the comic artist is being sincere about it- because her views about the Okinawa and the "comfort women" situations could raise an eyebrow, like how this article sort of implies.

Shimizu told Reuters that while she felt truly sorry for those women who had been taken against their will, she found dubious some of the accounts told by former comfort women.

I mean, that's kind of ironic based on how it pertains to the creation of this manga. Just saying.

-3 ( +5 / -8 )

endured by the Chinese mostly Muslim minority, she told Reuters.

Uiguirs are all muslim, not mostly (apostecy is illegal in islam), and they are not ethnically Chinese.

China has said Xinjiang faces a threat from Islamist militants and separatists.

While I disagree with China's totalitarian response, the threat is real. The endless string of Uigur terrorist attacks is real, the jihadist teaching is real, and Uigur participants in ISIS are real, even if CNN et all would not report that.

-5 ( +6 / -11 )

Amazing how people are so easily taken in by the anti-China propaganda.

Google Kunming terrorism or Kashgar or better still Uighur terrorism for a clearer picture as to why China has had to take security measures.

China has been successful in halting its internal terrorist threat.

-7 ( +3 / -10 )

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