One thing that has not got enough attention: the new "Uyghur language and literature" textbooks that replaced the supposedly subversive (CCP approved) old ones, teach Uyghur language with old Chinese lit translated into modern Uyghur. Uyghur literature itself was mostly cut.
https://twitter.com/AndersonEliseM/status/1378025771411865603
This is like teaching Spanish literature, not with Don Quixote or Garcia Marquez, but with Shakespeare or Updike translated into Spanish as the main texts. And saying that teaching Spanish with Don Quixote is separatist, and throwing the textbook editor in prison.
The "old" textbooks were produced 2010-11, burned 2016. The clear intent of the ginned up textbook scandal was to undermine Uyghur as language, and reflects the shift to assimilationist policies following Xi Jinping's rise to power. Intellectuals were arrested on this excuse.
If anyone has copies of either older or newer Uyghur til-ädäbyat textbooks, it would be very helpful to see them!
Uyghur literature is older than Beowulf. PRC assimilationist policies are trying to erase it by cutting it from textbooks and calling it subversive and separatist for Uyghurs to study their own mother language and its history. Same as demolishing old architecture:
a cruel, desperate effort to wipe out the past that PRC propaganda can't explain away with false historical narratives. Shows how profoundly insecure the CCP is about Xinjiang that it can't figure out how Uyghurs are part of PRC without trying to deny obvious cultural diversity.
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