That’s why, as a westerner, I consider the Uyghur issue not to be ‘our’ problem. It’s terrible what’s happening there, but there are more than 2 billion muslims in the world who can do something about it.
What’s happening to the Uyghurs is definitely a humanitarian catastrophe. The Chinese are eradicating muslims from their territory and if the Muslim world are not willing to do anything about it, than there is little the West can do. You can’t fight other peoples battles they are not willing to fight themselves. We have seen this observation over and over again in human history.
You may not consider it "our problem" but systematic violation of basic rights is a pain for anyone who has empathy with the oppressed and violated. If you don't feel it, my fellow westerner, that is your problem, not ours.
As someone firm in belief in Humanism and Liberalism, i consider it a crime against humanity. It is not an east/west issue and not a religious issue to be of concern only for people of the same religion. China does this because they want the border to be more than a line on the map, to be a border of their socialist nation, a border of thought, culture, language, of national identity. Their central government hates that people in Xinjiang have family in Kazhakstan, Pakistan and Kashmir, that they speak with those people, share traditions and religion and history with them, instead of identifying first and foremost with the nationality of the capital city. For them that is a weakness of their nation, a discrepancy from their ideal, a problem for their central bureaucracy in need of a solution, and the authoritarian-nationalist solution is to destroy the very concept of an Uyghur using violence to the point where it becomes a genocide. This is not a problem of uyghur ethnicity, religion or culture, it is a problem of chinese national-socialism.
And that China subscribes to such an ideology is very much our problem as westerners as well, not only because humanitarianism calls for solidarity with the oppressed, not only because liberalism must oppose such ideologies on principle, but because the world is unifying and the Chinese Government will throw in a billion rigged votes while holding a gun to the head of all those unwilling to agree. Ignoring the chinese governments abuse of the people living inside their borders is like ignoring some rich neighbor beating their kids and shouting they will kill anyone looking funny at them, while they run for major, saying it will all be fine as long as you keep looking away.
They can BUY products from Xinjiang, instead of boycott it, raising the living standard of the region and people will be better off, have more choices. They can open border to people from Xinjiang if they want to go for a short term solution. The evil of everything is poverty, nothing else. No religion, no politics. Thinking how America was the paradise for immigrants in the past, no one hates immigrants when economy is good.