A Stone is Most Precious Where it Belongs is the most powerful and disturbing memoir I have ever read. Written by Uyghur journalist Gulchehra Hoja, it tells the story of her life in Urumchi, East Turkestan. She grew up happy in her family, a good student and award-winning dancer. She avoided the creeping reach of the Chinese Communist Party until she became a news celebrity on the local television station and was told what her programming must say.
You haven’t heard of East Turkestan? Neither had I. That is the name of the country that the CCP calls Xinjiang Autonomous Region.
Their cultural autonomy goes back thousands of years, and even when China took over, they didn’t attempt to directly control the area. Only in 1884 was it named Xinjiang, meaning new territory, and for 65 years afterwards it was still flying its own flag and its majority Muslim population continued worshiping traditionally. But when the CCP came to power in 1949, they decided that the Uyghur area and people had to be controlled. Han Chinese proceeded to colonize the region, extracting minerals and resources. Mandarin Chinese was promoted as the correct language to speak.
But only in 2017 did the Chinese message that Uyghurs are a backward people who need to modernize lead to the incarceration of Uyghurs. Religion has been outlawed by default with regulations against attending mosque, refusing alcohol and “overly modest dress.” Religious dress results in arrest. Between one and three million Uyghurs have been disappeared into these “re-education” centers. After 9/11, the CCP used national security as a reason to label many Uyghurs as terrorists and religious extremists.
It’s difficult to believe this is happening. But Hoja is a journalist with firsthand information and personal experience. She moved to the United States in October 2001 after the opportunity to read worldwide media during a visit to Vienna gave her the bigger picture on China. That’s when she realized her work as an announcer and host for the Urumchi television station was hurting her own people and systematically destroying their culture, in the name of Chinese unity.
No longer are these internment facilities just a rumor. Hoja did the research, contacting inside sources after she left the country, to present the truth to the world. She appeared before the US Congressional-Executive Commission on China in 2018 with her message. She has continued to share it through other platforms, including when she received the Magnitsky Human Rights Award.
Now that the US knows what China has become and sees clearly the path it set out on years ago when Tibet and Inner Mongolia were sucked in, what are we to do? Hong Kong down, Taiwan to go. What are we to do when we have a smaller army than the CCP, and we can’t afford to cross them either militarily or financially? The US is much too dependent on China for goods and tech to be able to object.
Now Uyghurs are subject to surveillance in the street, home and marketplace. They cannot buy gasoline without an ID. Travel is restricted or impossible. Sometimes they must accept a “Chinese friend” living in their homes to ensure their compliance to the party line. They hope to avoid the same fate as their family and friends, while we walk freely.