In the middle of nowhere: As here with the »Oynak Ski Resort«, China is trying to market the homeland of the oppressed Uyghurs in its favor with a few other white spots in the Xinjiang region.
Foto: imago images/Ding Lei
54-year-old Huang Kezhong is clearly proud. The Chinese has dedicated himself to winter sports all his life, including as a jury member at ski jumping competitions. Finally, five years ago, he settled with his family in Xinjiang to set up the »Koktokay International Ski Resort« there. There are now 27 pistes and five gondola lifts in the Altay high mountains, not far from the Mongolian border. “You might think I’m showing off, but I actually think the ski resort here in Koktokay is the best in China, if not Asia,” Huang Kezhong said in a recent segment on Chinese state television.
And in fact, Xinjiang, which is on paper the autonomous region of the Uyghurs, offers excellent climatic conditions for winter sports: In contrast to the mountains in the Beijing area, there is enough natural snow here and the temperatures are also much more moderate. Accordingly, it seems logical that the government is marketing the area in the northwest of the country as a ski paradise. There are said to be over 70 resorts here already. They are all hoping for the boom that President Xi Jinping has promised: around 300 million Chinese are to be turned into winter sports fans, and in three years they want to be the world’s largest market for the industry.
For international experts, Chinese marketing efforts in Xinjiang represent above all a cynical attempt to whitewash the region of gross human rights abuses. It is precisely there that the security authorities have gradually built up an open police state over the past eight years, which is directed against the Uyghurs who live there – a Turkic people with a primarily Muslim faith.
Since the turn of the millennium, there have been separatist radicalization movements among some of them. The Communist Party, led by President Xi Jinping, has responded with the proverbial sledgehammer: according to estimates by human rights organizations, hundreds of thousands, possibly more than a million, Uyghurs have been put in political re-education camps where, according to witnesses, the inmates are at risk of physical torture and ideological brainwashing. As can be seen from leaked documents, even harmless “crimes” are enough to be sent to the camps – such as calling from abroad or possessing a Koran. Recently, more and more foreign governments have described the actions against the Uyghurs as “cultural genocide”.
According to research by the Australian think tank ASPI, there are at least a dozen such camps in the Altay Mountains, where the Koktokay International Ski Resort is located. These are very well documented by ordinary satellite images. In the Chinese discourse, on the other hand, these are only “inventions of Western media” – the prisons are described as “training centers” for deradicalization.
In the course of these Olympic Winter Games, the government is now trying to distract attention from the human rights crimes in the province. During the torch ceremony, among others, a Uyghur cross-country skier carried the Olympic flame, her sinicized name is Dinigeer Yilamujiang. The choice of the athletically average athlete, who, contrary to convention, was not available for interviews during the Winter Games, is interpreted by many activist groups as a demonstration of power. The message behind it is: China’s 56 ethnic groups live together in happy harmony, and the Uyghurs are also prospering under the leadership of the Communist Party.
The marketing campaign for Xinjiang as a winter sports paradise is now taking the same line. The state-controlled media has recently even claimed that the region is the true birthplace of skiing. Researchers have found cave drawings in the Altay Mountains that prove that people sped through the snow on two skis 10,000 years ago on what is now Chinese territory. Such statements are by no means scientifically tenable. But ideologically, they fit into the embellished image that the Communist Party wants to convey of its “troubled province.”
