“To enter your housing area, you need to have your face scanned and match your ID. It’s sort of like a keyless entry, but in this case the keyless entry is controlled by the police. They’re also at many of the checkpoints checking people’s phones, so you have to carry your smartphone with you and that’s an additional way that they’re tracking your movement."
"Among the panoply of bizarre memes that far-right extremists flash at Trump rallies and share obsessively online, one of the more disturbing for its frightening historical reference is that of the “Hoppean Snake.” The image typically consists of a coiled serpent sporting the officer’s cap of notorious Chilean Gen. Augusto Pinochet. In the background fly childlike depictions of helicopters from which stick figures are jettisoned to their death, crying “Aaaahhh” in a barely legible scrawl. In one of its many variants, the snake-as-Pinochet proclaims with a sardonic smirk, “I’m evil for throwing people out of helicopters? False. Commies aren’t people.” It’s unclear why Pinochet is depicted as a snake, though it may be inspired by the recalcitrant snake on the Gadsden flag that warns “Don’t Tread on Me.”
Far from being a joking homage to Pinochet — putschist, tyrant, torturer, mass murderer, puppet of the CIA, and hater of all things socialist, who ruled Chile from 1973 to 1990 — the fetishized totem of the Hoppean Snake has dire significance for U.S. paramilitaries. When Boogaloo Bois, Proud Boys, Three Percenters, Oath Keepers, armed Trumpists, and the like wear T-shirts that offer “free helicopter rides,” they are referencing a program of extermination.
Following Pinochet’s 1973 coup d’état, which ended the short-lived and turbulent administration of Chile’s democratically elected president Salvador Allende, an avowed Marxist, thousands of Allende’s supporters were killed, tens of thousands of perceived enemies of the putschist regime were tortured, and thousands of others were disappeared, often after being flown in a military helicopter and toppled from the sky. Sometimes this free helicopter ride included splitting open the guts of kidnapped victims while they were still alive so that their bodies wouldn’t float when dumped in the sea."
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When Trumpists use images of the “Hoppean Snake,” offering “free helicopter rides,” they’re advocating a program of extermination.
Christopher Ketcham February 4 2021, 8:00 a.m.
If we do not take our democracy back from libertarian corporate control this could happen here:
“To enter your housing area, you need to have your face scanned and match your ID. It’s sort of like a keyless entry, but in this case the keyless entry is controlled by the police. They’re also at many of the checkpoints checking people’s phones, so you have to carry your smartphone with you and that’s an additional way that they’re tracking your movement.
The “counterterrorism sword” or “anti-terrorism sword” is a device that’s something you can plug into your phone and then it will scan through the files that are on your phone or computer. It will look for things that you’ve deleted in the past or thought you deleted. In some cases it will access your social media as well, looking for around 50,000 different markers of Islamic activity or political activity. So it’s a way of scanning someone’s digital history really quickly. And there’s always a traumatic experience because you never know what this device is going to find.”
I feel that Uyghur is me. Uyghur language is me. It means that I’m in danger. So it gives me strong feeling that, “What am I doing here? What should I do?” And then I decided to do something to protect language, to protect Uyghur alive. So I thought that I should have a Uyghur kindergarten, mother language kindergarten in Ürümqi. Someone should do it, even if it’s dangerous!
The first we recruited 15 students, 15 kids. The next semester it increased to 57. The local authority began to bother me. Like three guys came and two asked questions and the one record, “What are you doing? And why are you doing? Like who are you talking with? We are watching you and you should be careful.”
But at the time they didn’t say to stop. I was very happy.
2013 August 19th, at that day I was at my kindergarten. The police came about 2 o’clock in the afternoon. So I go directly and told them, “So let’s talk in your car.” Get in the car and then two police put black hood on my face and they paste my mouth with the bandage, put the handcuff on my hand and they drove me to a detention center. They put me in the office. Inside the office there’s a cage and inside the cage there’s a chair. In Chinese it’s a laohu, like a tiger chair. In Chinese, if you call something “tiger” it’s horrible. Like “tiger chair” it means horrible chair. They bind my feet, arms and the neck with special equipment. You cannot even move. I felt nervous and afraid.
They started interrogation. They accused me of separatism. I have nothing to do with separatism. I was abused — sexually, physically — and tortured and got electric stick. But I told them that, “You can kill me. It’s ok, but I will never tell something I have never done.” They released me because during this 15 months I have never compromised, I have never admitted anything I have never done. And then I feel there is no way to protect my language and there’s no way to protect even myself. So I have to leave. And then I left in 2015.
I feel that somebody’s watching, something will happen in next hour and my every action and my every word recorded, the camera all the time looking at me and every moment the camera just take picture of me. And that feeling is horrible. And because of that people cannot even speak what they want to speak. They cannot be as a normal human being.
My niece, her father arrested in 2017 and she went back to China because she wants to see her father. Last year, 2020 December 20th, I received a message that she died. I know she got arrested after she went and I know she was in the camp. She died. I don’t know what happened to her and I cannot even call her. And I don’t know the reason. And I know she was living in Japan and she said she missed her father very much and she wants to see. I said that, “You cannot see your father. Believe me, it’s impossible to see your father. You father is in concentration camp. It’s not possible.” And she went back and she died. She even didn’t get married, she’s just 30 years old, just 30. Yeah. I, like, I wrote poetry for her. Let me read it in Uyghur first and then translate into English.
I wish I would be your country.
I wish I would be your safe place.
[reading Uyghur]
I know you would not be disappeared if I was …
You can smell, you can smell inside me.
And if I, if I’m your father, you’ll not go back. You will not leave me. You would stay with me.
If I’m your country, if I’m your free land, if I’m your promised dream, you will never leave.
You will never disappear — as a star, as a drop of rain, as a kite without thread.
If I’m a wind in your hot, stifled summer.
If I’m a water in your endless desert, you will not wither. You will not die as a flower.
If I was a garden for you.
If I was her father.
Thank you. We have an endless desert without a drop of rain, without water, it’s just a flower there. She disappeared because there is no water. There is no rain. It’s too sad. She is the most successful one in our family. She got the scholarship from the Tokyo University and she left message to her friend that she’s going to have a school in Kashgar and she’s going to teach science. She’s going to teach love. She’s going to teach about the world to the kids. Like, somehow I think that she was following my dream to have a school, to have kids, to hold their future. Like, I sacrificed 15 months. It’s enough for me. But my niece sacrificed her life for my dream. So I feel very mad, very sad about that.
What’s happening is horrible to Uyghur and horrible to me and to my family, but it’s the future of other people. And if we allow this atrocity continuously happening, it will happen to millions of people. So we should stand up and we should say “no” and we should stop this. Even one interview — we should keep doing this until we stop this genocide and we stop this atrocity. Thank you for giving me this chance.
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Inside China’s Police State Tactics Against Muslims
A new report from The Intercept provides a raw glimpse into the persecution and sweeping internment of Muslims in northwest China’s Xinjiang region.
February 3 2021, 6:01 a.m.
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