Daily Times

The Uighur community living in Pakistan, also called Ex-Chinese Community of Pakistan, are actually citizens of Pakistan but historically descendants of Chinese Xinjiang-based Uighurs migrated families, with ancestral roots in Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region of China.

The Ex-Chinese community in Pakistan has contributed a lot to build strong people-to-people relations between China and Pakistan as after opening of the Karakuram Highway, they become a bridge between two nations. The Ex-Chinese Association was established in 2007 with an aim to work for the wellbeing of Xinjiang-based Uighur community living in Pakistan almost for last two generations. The sole purpose to establish the Uighurs representative association was to bring the community under one umbrella to provide educational facilities to every community member and also to facilitate the deserving families.

In early days of the association, we were struggling with the financial hurdles to ensure a better future for each and every community members equally. Our weak financial conditions and lack of resources would often put us in a situation where we were not able to provide assistance equally to all the deserving families. So our association made request to the Chinese Embassy for education and livelihood assistance, which has always been supportive to overseas Chinese. The embassy agreed to help in providing tuition to the children and also donated winter goods, such as rice, oil, blankets to the needed families.

As Uighur Chinese community living in Pakistan, we are facing huge western propaganda campaign which is totally groundless. For the last many months, many western attempts to defame China have been noticed which are politically motivated and their only aim is to presenting very negative picture of China and damage its friendly and brotherly relations with Pakistan. To give credence to their propaganda campaign, they also use some Uighur people living within Pakistan who don’t have good reputation and have been found involved in doing negative propaganda against Pakistan-China relations in the past as well.

One such person is Umer, who is resident of Rawalpindi and is part of the Uighur community living in Pakistan. Unfortunately Umer is badly influenced by the Uighur separatist movement of Rabia Kadeer. In the past, he has tried to establish his office in Afghanistan also. During his visit to Afghanistan, Umer, in a recorded phone call to a Turkey-based Uighur news channel admitted his affiliation with Kadeer. He also admitted that he visited Afghanistan on the advice of Rabia Kadeer to influence the local Uighur Afghan community. This conversation is available in a recorded form on the social media page of Turkish Uighur news agency.

This time Umer crossed all the limits by hurling allegations not only on China but also on Pakistan. In his recent allegations, he has accused Ex-Chinese Association of collecting data of Uighur Pakistani residents on behalf of the Chinese Embassy. He provided the association’s internal membership form as an ‘evidence’ of collection of data. He further claimed that China is collecting data for forceful extradition of Ex-Chinese Uighur Pakistanis to China. On the other hand, Umer and his family always enjoy the benefits of being member of the Ex-Chinese Association as his children receive free education from the community school and his family also receives the yearly assistance.

The allegations are childish in nature but the western elements have found another opportunity to malign China and its relations with Pakistan. The Ex-Chinese Association and the whole Uighur community living in Pakistan takes a recently published articles based on such false claims as a charge sheet against Umer and demands that the Pakistani authorities investigate the matter and help dismantle the baseless propaganda against the Ex-Chinese Association.We openly and strongly demand that there should be a mechanism to expose all such baseless propaganda campaigns against China-Pakistan relations, and anyone who attempts to dent this bond of brotherly relations with baseless propaganda should be punished severely.

Pakistan-China Friendship Zindabad.

The writer is the general secretary of the Ex-Chinese Association, Rawalpindi-Pakistan.