By Asiye Uyghur
Recently, Chinese media has been intensely propagating claims that China has begun making significant investments in the football sector in the Uyghur region, establishing thousands of professional football schools, and implementing “football base” projects. Such propaganda creates the impression that only Uyghurs can create the future of Chinese football. However, when we compare the “present” with the “past” of Uyghur football, it is not difficult to realize that the so-called “future” is actually a propaganda play carefully prepared to conceal the Uyghur genocide. Let’s take a closer look at the facts of the matter.
In 2018, it was revealed that Erfan Hezim, a 19-year-old Uyghur footballer who was a member of China’s national football team, had been detained by the Chinese government in a mass internment camp. According to reports, the reason for Erfan’s arrest was cited as “traveling abroad.” What is surprising is that in 2019, Asia News reported that Erfan Hezim had finished his 11 months of camp life, reappeared on social media, and “thanked” the Chinese government. However, a piece published on China’s Baidu site in November of the same year shows that Erfan’s football career had largely ended due to those 11 months of political detention.
Another case is that of the Uyghur footballer Erpat Ablekrem. The news of this Uyghur player’s detention was revealed by his niece, Muyesser Abdulahat. The report stated that this Uyghur player disappeared because he had been communicating with his relatives abroad. However, it is impossible to access any information about this Uyghur footballer from Chinese sources, leaving no doubt that he is among the missing.
In addition to the two footballers mentioned above, Radio Free Asia’s English channel published a report about Uyghur footballers in 2016. According to the report, nine Uyghur footballers training at a football club in China’s Hebei province were ordered from above to be dismissed from the club on the grounds of “counter-terrorism and security.”
Indeed, from the examples above, we can see that while China wants to train talented Uyghur youth in football, it simultaneously restricts their freedom, confines them to internment camps, ostracizes them, and even causes them to disappear. The truth is that long before Uyghur footballers can become “the hope for the future of Chinese football,” their fate falls under the complete control of the Chinese state.
It is also clear from Chinese academic publications that the incentives to revive football in the Uyghur region are not simply about developing local football, but rather that this is part of China’s policy for governing ethnic groups.
Currently, China is organizing large-scale football competitions in Uyghur-majority areas like Artush (Atush) and promoting them with great fanfare. Has China forgotten that it has banned Uyghurs from gathering for permissible entertainment, performing the Sema (Uyghur dance) in front of mosques during holidays, gathering in mosques for prayer, or even organizing Uyghur art nights and cultural programs? Has it not turned thousands of Uyghur intellectuals, artists, scholars, clerics, celebrities, and even ordinary farmers into “enemies of the state” simply for being Uyghur? Has it not forced every Uyghur to choose a path between “being Chinese to survive or being Uyghur to perish” by issuing open letters to the entire Uyghur nation? It is clear that the real purpose of China organizing this competition is to create a false image about Uyghurs with the spectacle of the so-called “Artush Longqisi Football Competition” and to conceal the Uyghur genocide. Therefore, when we look at the fate of the Uyghur footballers who were arrested, disappeared, and expelled from teams, it will not be difficult to understand that the “revived Uyghur football” in Artush and Kashgar today is a political play.
In summary, although China’s propaganda gives people the feeling that the time has come for the development of Uyghur football, we must not forget the true intentions behind it. We must contemplate who designed these kinds of powerful propaganda campaigns and whom they serve. Is this a stage where Uyghur footballers can genuinely showcase their talents, or is it a fake stage designed by China to conceal its crime of genocide? We must consider this. More importantly, when Uyghur football is widely propagandized by China as “the future hope of Chinese football,” we must ask ourselves: “Who are the designers of this path that will link Uyghur football to the future?”
