China emptied the word ‘terrorist’ of meaning and used it to suppress Uyghurs

Evidence

But the middle-aged Uyghur woman and the vast majority of the prisoners were no terrorists. That very word was “stripped of its meaning” and deployed by the state to suppress a people long cast as oppositional and subversive. The state deployed counterterrorism law to intensify its crackdown on the Uyghurs, doing so behind the curtains of the camps and the digital walls that surrounded Xinjiang, or what the Uyghurs call East Turkistan. Eventually, Jelilova confessed to the charge of terrorism. — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 534

Categorization

• XREF: Complements the Iftikhar read — shows counterterrorism law weaponized as an empty signifier for ethnic suppression.