Against the backdrop of events in the United States this week that have captured the attention of American society, the Chinese Embassy has decided to make a statement «beyond borders». On January 7, the Twitter account of the Chinese Embassy in the United States inexplicably decided to promote the propaganda… of concentration camps for Uighur Muslims, called «re-education centers» in this country. It included a link to a related promotional article from the official Chinese press with the following preface «Research shows that by re-educating Uyghur women in Xinjiang in the spirit of anti-extremism, they have become free, they have come to understand the meaning of gender equality and reproductive health. They have become strong, independent, and have stopped being ‘baby-making machines.'» The article itself talks about how, due to a change in consciousness among Uyghur Muslims, «the birth rate in Xinjiang fell from 1.6 percent in 2017 to 1 percent in 2018, and natural population growth fell from 1.1 percent to 0.6 percent.»
Overall, of course, an interesting question arises: was this statement made coincidentally on the day of Donald Trump’s defeat in the recent election, in which he declared China’s communist regime to be the main adversary of the United States and actively used the issue of Uyghur concentration camps? If it was a «parting gift» to Trump, it is unlikely to have reached its recipient — he is clearly not interested in Chinese trolling at the moment. But could it be a symbolic message that with the victory of the Democratic Party in America, which has now won not only the presidency but also a majority in both houses of Congress, a new era of the dominance of new values is beginning?
If you think about it, Communist China is propagating the eradication of religious values and ways of life through totalitarian methods. Earlier, in connection with Emmanuel Macron’s initiatives in France, we wrote that the same methods could be adopted by outwardly liberal regimes for the same purpose. And now we have new evidence from Australia, where a bill has recently been introduced in Parliament targeting religious communities based on «illiberal» values. If passed, religious leaders who advise homosexuals to abandon their orientation and become normal could face draconian fines or even imprisonment.
Of course, some of our readers in Russia may breathe a sigh of relief — there is currently no such thing there, and even laws prohibiting the promotion of homosexuality are in effect. But even in Putin’s Russia, given the news we published this week about the holding of an LGBT festival with the involvement of the Ministry of Culture, we would advise against harboring any illusions on this issue. Few seriously believe in the sincerity of the current regime’s conservatism, but if the older generation is still forced to defend its «bond,» the younger generation has a completely different attitude.
For example, Vladimir Putin himself was an advisor to Anatoly Sobchak, and his daughter Ksenia Sobchak actively promotes the defense of LGBT rights. One of the regime’s main propagandists, Dmitry Kiselyov, has long been calling for the registration of homosexual partnerships in Russia, and he is not alone in this, considering that Russia Today, under the leadership of Margarita Simonyan, employs an openly homosexual Putinist named Anatoly Krasovsky.
But now we are not talking about homosexuals, but about religious freedom. Because if the country is under a totalitarian regime, just as it now prohibits the promotion of homosexuality, tomorrow it can start persecuting those who promote against homosexuality. This raises the question of guarantees of freedom for religious communities, especially Muslims, who, as we can see, can be victims not only of totalitarian communist regimes, but also of totalitarian liberal regimes. Of course, for the Muslim world, the most effective guarantee is control of their territories in one form or another, allowing them to live according to their religion. It is more difficult for those who live outside Muslim territories, partly because many of them are under the control of anti-Islamic forces.
And on that note, let’s return to the context in which the Chinese statement was made. We have no illusions about Donald Trump and have never supported him. However, it must be understood that many of those who stormed the Capitol on January 6 did not do so out of love for Trump, but out of fear of the establishment of a new one-party dictatorship.
It is also interesting that many of them carried libertarian flags — supporters of the doctrine of non-interference of the state in the private life of citizens and their right to live according to the principles they want and also to promote what they want, if it is not imposed on others and does not threaten them. By the way, there are already Muslim libertarians in the United States. And perhaps in places where Muslims live outside traditional Muslim lands, they should consider this social doctrine as an alternative to tyranny.