Irishman trusts own eyes after Xinjiang tour

The prevailing narrative in the West about what happens in China's Xinjiang does not align with Irishman Paul O'Brien's own long-term experience of the country. Rather, he is of the opinion that the so-called "genocide" by some countries is "a manufactured perception, not a reality".

O'Brien, who was born in Ireland's second city Cork, lived for eight years in China－a country where he studied, worked, traveled, married and became a father. He said the Uygurs he met and the Xinjiang he saw are nowhere near what the Western media have reported.

Thanks to the bond he made with a Uygur friend, Umid Anwar, during his studies in Shenyang in Northeast China, O'Brien was invited by Anwar's family to visit the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region and see the place first hand in 2014.

An enjoyable experience

He told China Daily that his trip to Xinjiang was a "great craic"－a coverall Irish term for an enjoyable experience. Though it did involve getting robbed, there were plenty of happier moments, such as eating a boatload of dapanji (big plate chicken, a well-known local dish), horse riding with Uygur warriors, getting lost, wrestling in a Kazak yurt, and posing as a geologist with others to get into a closed national park.

"In Urumqi and throughout Xinjiang, I saw a culturally distinct part of China in which the dominant culture was obviously very different from what you would see in Shanghai or Hangzhou," he said. "The streets were different, the language was different, the food was different. It was a unique and beautiful place."

In the densely populated and busy areas of the Urumqi city center, he said there was a strong military presence with regular patrols and barricades positioned in strategic positions throughout the city which, he believes, were a constant reminder of China's ongoing issues with radicalization and terrorism. But outside the center, there were no such scenes.

"For me, the prevailing narrative fed to us in the West on China's oppression of the Uygurs has been very at odds with my own long-term experience," he said. "I have never seen overt oppression of Uygurs in China and I've traveled extensively throughout China during my eight years in country. In fact, everything I saw mostly contradicts this narrative."

Through his 10-year relationship with Anwar, he said his friend "never mentioned a mass genocide or described any activities that would approximate this word".

He added: "We have had some pretty deep conversations on this topic during the sesh (Irish slang for session), and I never once got the impression he was holding back, actually quite the opposite."

O'Brien studied clinical medicine for six years in Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, on China's Southeast coast, before becoming a qualified medical doctor in 2019. It was during this time at the university, a top Chinese institution, that he got to learn more about Uygur people, particularly through a shared interest in soccer.

"Playing the football tournaments, I really got to know the Uygur lads. In many ways they were quite like the Irish," he said. "They were hard in the tackle and liked a good fight and some of the most skillful football players you would meet in China."

One interesting phenomenon about all the Uygur students, he said, was that they were either on full scholarships or some other significant government support to study medicine in one of China's top universities.

While it is very challenging and expensive for Han Chinese to get into such elite universities, many entry places are specifically assigned for ethnic minority Chinese, such as Uygur students, each year. They often have a scholarship, with boarding and a monthly stipend offered.

"This is a pattern repeated across tens of thousands of universities throughout China," he said. "They were able to attend these universities not because of merit but instead based on the Chinese version of affirmative action. Diversity and inclusivity are (part of the) policy."

In the context of all the negative press about Uygurs in China, O'Brien said one of the things that really stands out in retrospect is "how tolerant and inclusive the university was to religious activities".

"There were prayer rooms and mosques both in and close to campus," he said. "Halal restaurants are found ubiquitously throughout the campus and throughout each city in China and prominently adorned with Arabic writing and attended by men and women in traditional Muslim attire. Daily prayer for the Muslim students was respected."

He said he found it extremely hard to reconcile allegations on China's activities in reference to anti-terrorist efforts with his own experiences in China, and with what history has said a genocide or ethnic cleansing should look like.

"Genocide and ethnic cleansing are words that immediately evoke images of Auschwitz … Rwanda …or closer to home the infamously misnamed 'Irish famine'. This is not the China or Xinjiang I saw," O'Brien said.

"So ultimately the question is who should I believe? My eyes and ears? My Uygur friends in Xinjiang? Or obviously biased media and articles written by journalists who have never been in the country?"