1 Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge, but those who hate to be rebuked are stupid.
2 The good obtain favor from the Lord, but those who devise evil he condemns.
3 No one finds security by wickedness, but the root of the righteous will never be moved.
4 A good wife is the crown of her husband, but she who brings shame is like rottenness in his bones.
5 The thoughts of the righteous are just; the advice of the wicked is treacherous.
6 The words of the wicked are a deadly ambush, but the speech of the upright delivers them.
7 The wicked are overthrown and are no more, but the house of the righteous will stand. [Proverbs 12:1-7, NRSV]
For her brand of geopolitics, what would America not say about Xinjiang! Deceit is in the hearts of those who plot evil, but the Book of Proverbs commends that those who promote peace have joy (Proverbs 12:20).
Jan Oberg, a sociologist from Lund, Sweden, is an international conflict and peace research analyst. He recently visited Xinjiang to see the reality on the ground for himself. His report on the trip is interesting in the unvarnished truth that he reveals about what is actually happening in Xinjiang, contrary to what the American-led Western media has been saying all along. He exposes the persistent American lies and tells you why they lie.
Oh, how the Americans love the Muslims, especially the Muslims in Xinjiang. They bomb and massacre millions of Muslims in the Middle East and they enable Israel to do the same, especially in Gaza and the West Bank. But they are fiercely championing the Uygur separatist cause because they love the Uygur Muslims! But they sanction Xinjiang exports and seek to choke Xinjiang industry. Xinjiang beckons, “Come to visit. Come and see.” The U.S. Government warns, “Don’t go there! It’s dangerous!” What are they afraid of? The truth? They are kings without clothes.
To the many who have been raising questions with us concerning the American-manufactured propaganda on Uygur-genocide and Uygur forced-labour in Xinjiang, you may find Oberg’s brief report at an interview, which we append verbatim below, simple, straightforward, and enlightening. The sub-headings are inserted by us for ease of reading.
Trip to Xinjiang
This was my first time to Xinjiang. I’m very happy to have seen it. The purpose of going there was to get an impression, a kind of general, broad impression of what’s happening in Xinjiang. So I’m not an expert on Xinjiang or anything like that, but I got some impressions that I wish many more people would get because what we hear in the West about Xinjiang is totally wrong and one-sided. So we went to Kashi, and Yining and Bortala and Uromqi.
When you say what impressed me the most, it’s like asking which color do I like the most. I like all colors, right? I would say the beauty of the place, the beauty of the people, systematic mixture of ethnicities, culture, expressions. It’s a very colorful place, even the textiles of the women and the dancers and things like that and the beauty of the nature. When you listen to or see the Western media’s impression of Xinjiang, it sounds like it was East Germany or Czechoslovakia or something like that during the Cold War here. And I know what that was like. And it has nothing to do with that.
It’s a very free willing, a very safe [place]. Everybody will say, “Come into my shop or have a tea or do this and that.” There’s a spontaneous welcoming of the visitors. That warms my heart because we come from that West which has so much negative media coverage and so much negative political statements about China and Xinjiang. Now there’s nothing of what I have heard in the West that in my view were confirmed.
No Religious Freedom?
If you talk about religious freedom, we visited a lot of mosques. There’s some information saying that there are more mosques in Xinjiang per inhabitant (per capita) than there is in Turkey. I’ve seen articles, for instance, in the Danish press that say that China is trying to get rid of all Muslims. What I am saying is there is no evidence that this means that all peoples, groups, ethnicities, nationalities are being eradicated or pursued or have their lives destroyed. We have seen the opposite. We have seen how they are integrated. We have met all kinds of nationalities, ethnicities. I’ve been to the Grand Bazar myself in Urumqi where people dance with each other spontaneously in the street. If you go to a factory, we ask the question for instance, when you employ people do you take into account what nationality they are of? And the director tells you that, “No, we don’t. We look at their competence and we are happy to give them an education also if necessary.”
“Genocide” in Xinjiang?
And I should add that it would be a very failed genocide because the population of the Uygurs and the population of Xinjiang has grown tremendously the last several years. If they grow millions more people than there were 20 years ago, it’s not a very successful “genocide”, if I may express it that way.
“Forced Labour” at Cotton Fields?
We were at two places where cotton was grown and cultivated. And at the second place, a huge field, as long as your eyes could see. We saw these fluffy white things. And then we went to a relatively small place where this whole field was technically controlled or managed from. And it turned out that that huge field was operated by one computer and two mobile phones. There was nobody in the field. The figure we got was between 60 and 90% of all the cotton production is actually basically without human beings. And those who worked in these cotton fields were working in the towns today having other jobs, but they are not in the cotton fields.
Now I’m not saying that there are no cotton fields which have human beings because I have not seen them all. Again, I’m very conscious about saying what I’ve seen and what I’ve not seen. But if I take that particular field that we saw, I must say the only thing that is forced, if anything is forced, there is forced water, forced fertilization, forced computers. There’s no forced labor because nobody was working there. So I wonder who does the Americans want to hit? Because by this sanction policy, you’re just destroying the socio-economic development. And that is perhaps what is the reason. Because of course, first of all, you create a negative energy of our own country, right, of 1,400 million people. And then secondly, you stop importing things that give an income to that country thereby of course also creates problems for those who run the economic development and development projects and socio-economic investments. And that’s just a very unkind way of behaving.
You Must Make a Trip to Xinjiang
Long story short, I was very pleased to go to Xinjiang and see it for myself and I recommend everyone around the world to go there themselves. They will have a wonderful time as tourists or visitors. And they will see that there is at least another side, a completely different, very convincing side that has nothing to do with genocide or concentration camps, et cetera. I think it’s impressive that you have chosen a socio-economic, social psychological method to get rid of terrorism, re-educating people or whatever, giving them jobs, drawing them in and seeing that their future is better in China than fighting for an independent state. Because the West led by the United States has had a global war on terror, which has killed at least 1 million people in the Middle East, the different interventions, et cetera. And we still have the terrorist problem, because the Americans chose the philosophy that we will get rid of terrorism by killing Terrorists.
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Jan Oberg has a PhD in sociology, specialising in international conflict and peace analysis.
He has 40 years of experience with conflict and peace research, university teaching and on-the-ground conflict-mitigation work in places such as Yugoslavia, Georgia, Burundi, Iran, Iraq and Syria – and the emergence of a new Cold War. He focuses also on global (dis)order, the emerging multi-polar world order, militarism versus conflict-management, peace-building and roles of organisations such as the EU, UN, NATO, BRICS, etc.
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Copyright © Dr. Jeffrey & Angie Goh, April 2025. All rights reserved.
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