Chinese Atheist Jihad Hits Michigan

This week saw a typical example of official accounts of “terrorism” in Xinjiang and the importance of power in the reproduction of “knowledge”: un-named Chinese officials from un-named departments spoke anonymously and without any evidence to claim that Uyghur “terrorists” are training and operating in Syria. Just to illustrate the point, we would like to announce that we have discovered that Han Chinese terrorists are training with the Michigan militias under the command of the HAM (Han Atheist Movement). How do we know this? Well we can’t tell you but we can assure you that this is a grave threat to the unity of the nation and social stability. Now these shocking revelations are unlikely to be picked up by news agencies and instead will be taken as the random, baseless, and concocted nonsense that they are. Of course, if you are a Chinese official then you have the power to randomly disseminate your ‘truth’ but if you are a blogger, you are actually burdened by the need to have evidence! One of the groups allegedly responsible for this international terrorist threat, the East Turkestan Education and Solidarity Association (ETESA), responded by saying that these claims are only designed to marginalise Uyghurs in the international community because they are not a terrorist organisation and have been legally established in Turkey. The East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) has yet to respond because even they don’t know who they are! Thankfully these stories didn’t make too much impact on the international news but they do indicate that the party-state’s strategy in speaking to the world about Uyghurs centres on imagining a transnational terrorist threat.