by Makhdoom Babar

 

For the past many weeks, toeing the official stance of the US government, based on China containment policy, certain sections of the Western Media have been propagating against China on the basis of certain dubious documents, terming those suspicious papers as the Xinjiang Papers whereas they could never prove by any standards that the documents were actually some official papers, belonging to the Chinese government. With fabricated heap of trash, these media outlets started a motivated campaign to portray Chinese government as an Administration that has unleashed hell over the Muslim minority in its ambit. After setting this theme by its embedded media partners, the Trump Administration orchestrated a move at the Capitol Hills and got a controversial legislation passed from the US House, naming it as a Bill in supports of Uighur Muslims of China.

 

 

 

The visit of the delegation, comprising journalists, intellectuals and religious scholars and clerics, to Kashgar, itself was a crystal clear proof that the Chinese government had nothing to hide from foreigners or foreign media but instead they had a lot to show with pride and honor. Upon reaching Kashgar, the delegation was very pleasantly surprised that to receive them at the airport was an elegant lady who was the top official, in fact Deputy Commissioner of Kashgar Prefecture.

 

 

Being a lady a Deputy Commissioner of a Prefecture in China was obviously not a matter of surprise but what surprised them was that the lady Deputy Commissioner was from the Muslim Ethnic minority of the area. After listening to the Western propaganda that only depicted that Xinjiang had been turned into a hell for Muslims by Chinese authorities, no one was expecting that the Western Propaganda will start to get exposed as a fizz right in the beginning.

 

 

The first expression on the faces of all the delegations members was a clear but pleasant surprise. The Muslim Deputy Commissioner took the delegation to the Kashgar Old City that actually comprises business outlets and residences of Uyghur Muslim ethnic group. The way these Uyghurs had been provided with the new accommodations and shops by the local authorities as the previous ancient Kashgar city had caved in, one was touched with the approach of Chinese government to give maximum possible facilities to all citizens on the basis of equality, irrespective of their ethnicity or religious faith following.

At the same time there was immense anger amongst the delegation members about the Western media and Western government officials who had constantly been putting completely wrong picture with comprehensively distorted facts. Finding young Uyghur boys and girls dancing to the tunes of folk songs and enjoying every moment of life was more than enough to start puncturing the bubble of Western Propaganda Balloon.

 

 

When the delegation reached the Eidgah Mosque, the most famous, biggest and ancient Mosque of Xinjiang with a very rich historic background, the termination of Western propaganda reached its peak. About this Eidgah Mosque, the media reports, emerging from West and India had been claiming that this Mosque was sealed and declared prohibited for prayers offering with some reports even suggesting that the Mosque was completely erased by Chinese authorities. Some Western Media houses even went on to show some fabricated satellite images of the debris of this mosque and those of ground zero.

 

 

Some delegation members, including this author, who had seen this mosque almost a decade ago and were very disturbed after going through the Western media propaganda reports, went extremely jubilant to see that the mosque was very much there, in fact with a rather improved infrastructure and local Muslims coming to offer prayers and non-Muslim tourists visiting the place to see the historic building and its compound. This scribe even found the old shops, adjacent to the mosque from where the shopping was done back in 2006 and also met the same shopkeeper, Mamtay. When asked a few questions about life of Muslims in Kashgar and elsewhere in Xinjiang in the background of Western Media report, Mamtay first bursted a big laughter and then said” You can see with your own eyes, the mosque is still there, I am still doing the same business and my shop, you can see has more stuff to offer which means my business had improved since you met me last in 2006 on the eve of Kashgar International Trade and Commodities Fair. You tell me what do you think after seeing this?” questioned Mamtay. He said that many foreigners including foreign media persons had been visiting his shop and buying musical instruments and other gifts from his shops and saying lot of good things about Kashgar and Muslims and others of this city. “But I am hearing from you that they have been reporting like if we are being treated badly or being put in some concentration camps, Asr prayer with some local Muslims at the Eidgah Mosque.

 

 

 

Since this scribe had been covering Kashgar International Trade and Commodities Fair for almost three consecutive years. Back in decade of 2000, I was very familiar to many places and restaurants of Kashgar city, including the hotel where arrangements were made for the stay of delegation, the Kashi Hotel.

 

 

When I last stayed at this hotel, the property was located on the outskirts of the city and was surrounded by agricultural farmlands. But not anymore, now the hotel had become the middle of the city and is surrounded by latest and advanced building and new blocks of the hotel are also constructed with latest technology and keeping the global norms of hospitality industry. It was just one proof that how the Chinese government increased the infrastructural development of the city that was portrayed as a war-hit and devastated destination.

 

 

 

I also found latest shopping malls and plazas full of foreign and local tourists with lot of new hotels offering variety of packages to tourists. There was also a wonderful nightlife to cater the needs of party animals with scores of discos and bistros etc.