On March 21, foreign-funded Uyghur activists were caught on video disrupting a gathering against anti-Asian racism in Washington DC, barking insults at demonstrators including, “Wipe out China!” and “Fuck China!”
The Uyghur caravan flew American and “East Turkestan” flags and drove vehicles adorned signs bearing slogans such as, “Boycott China,” and “CCP killed 80 million Chinese people.”
Organised by the Uyghur American Association (UAA), the drive-by heckling of anti-racist demonstrators drew widespread condemnation on the social media, including from other sections of the Uyghur separatist movement.
Salih Hudayar, the self-proclaimed “Prime Minister of the East Turkistan Government-in-exile,” slammed “the UAA’s reckless drive-by” for causing “severe backlash against Uyghurs,” and insisted that Uyghur Americans were “not racist.”
The UAA has attempted to distance itself from accusations of extremism and racism, stating that its members’ actions were misrepresented. Despite refusing to rescind their call for China to be “wiped out,” the UAA declared that it “condemns any form of bigotry and stands with all victims of racism.”
However, an investigation by The Grayzone into the Uyghur separatist movement in the Washington area has uncovered a jingoistic, gun-obsessed subculture driven by the kind of right-wing ideology that was on display during the March 21 car caravan through downtown.
Leading figures of the UAA operate a right-wing gun club known as Altay Defense. Proudly dressed in US military fatigues, Altay Defense drill in advanced combat techniques with former members of US special forces.
The UAA is the US-affiliate of the World Uyghur Congress (WUC), an international network whose first president outlined an objective to precipitate the “fall of China” and establish an ethno-state in Xinjiang.
The recipient of millions of dollars of funding the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), this network works closely with Western governments to escalate hostilities with China.
Despite claiming to represent the interests of China’s Uyghur and Muslim minority populations, many of the UAA’s closest allies represent some of the anti-Muslim, far-right forces.
During the pandemic, the UAA and members of its affiliate organisations helped inflame anti-Asian resentment by spreading far-right propaganda referring to Covid-19 as the “Chinese virus,” and claimed that China was waging a “virus war” against the world, “[p]urposefully, intentionally export[ing] the virus to cause the pandemic.”
Behind its carefully constructed image as a peaceful human rights movement, the UAA and its offshoots in the DC-based Uyghur separatist lobby are driven by far-right ideology and envision themselves as militant foot soldiers for empire.
The UAA’s ultra-patriotic reverence of the US and fanatical anti-China politics have been on full display under the organisation’s current president, Kuzzat Altay.
