We all tend to make mistakes. But the worst thing to do in such situations is not to admit one’s mistake, or at worst to present one’s mistake as a misunderstanding of one’s words, but to make one’s situation worse. This is exactly what happened recently in connection with Ravil Gainutdin’s statement that Uyghurs are not persecuted in Communist China, when the whole world is talking about the «gulag archipelago» that Beijing has turned the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region into.
Since then, each new statement by Ravil Gainutdin’s representatives in the media has put him in an increasingly uncomfortable position, especially against the principled position on this issue taken and expressed by the Mufti of Tatarstan, Kamil Samigullin.
This time, the press secretary of the Spiritual Administration of Muslims of Russia, Gulnur Gazieva, stood out, comparing the situation of the Uyghurs with the problems… of the Catalans, who are peacefully fighting for their self-determination in a civilized EU country. «We believe that there is no need to amplify this issue. It is very difficult for the Uyghur people. No less difficult than the problem of Ireland or the problem of Catalonia in Spain,» she said.
No less difficult?! Really, this is like comparing the problems of someone living in a five-star hotel, such as a lack of breakfast options, with the «problems» of Auschwitz or Treblinka prisoners! Perhaps Gazieva is unaware that in Catalonia, not only is there no problem with being Catalan or with the existence of Catalan culture, but it is perfectly legal to call for secession from Spain and to fight for it, as Catalans have been doing for decades. Hundreds of thousands of them take to the streets in independence demonstrations, referendums are held on this issue — and this is what the press secretary of the Spiritual Administration of Muslims compares to the persecution of Uighur intellectuals, the ban on visiting mosques, fasting during Ramadan, the forced extradition of Uighur women to atheist Chinese men, or the forcible feeding of Muslims in camps with pork and forcing them to renounce their faith…!