Kawa Mahmoud, secretary of the Central Committee of the Kurdistan Communist Party/Iraq, speaks during an interview with Xinhua in Erbil, Iraq, June 22, 2024.(Xinhua/Li Jun)
BAGHDAD, July 13 (Xinhua) -- Reflecting on his visits to China's Xinjiang in 2019 and 2024, Iraqi politician Kawa Mahmoud marveled at the region's leap in economic development, social progress, ethnic unity, and cultural advancements.
He is delighted to see that Xinjiang, leveraging its geographical advantages, has become a trade hub linking China closer with neighboring countries, said Mahmoud, secretary of the Central Committee of the Kurdistan Communist Party/Iraq.
"The booming development of the Xinjiang Pilot Free Trade Zone has propelled Xinjiang's foreign trade volume to increase year by year. Xinjiang's social stability and harmony have attracted a large number of domestic and foreign tourists. Significant breakthroughs have been made in modern agricultural development and desertification control," he told Xinhua in a recent interview.
Xinjiang's development is inseparable from the coordinated support of the Chinese central government. "The Chinese government attaches great importance to balanced regional development and has implemented targeted assistance policies to solve development challenges in Xinjiang, yielding fruitful results," he said.
As he sees it, Xinjiang, a region with diverse ethnic groups, enjoys harmonious ethnic relations where people of different ethnicities live in unity and friendship, each celebrating their unique cultures.
The Chinese government highly values the protection of ethnic cultural heritage, fully respects the customs of different ethnic groups and the freedom of religious belief, and actively promotes cultural exchanges and mutual learning, he said.
Mahmoud said the smear campaigns and misleading propaganda by Western media about Xinjiang are complete distortions of the true development status of Xinjiang, reflecting their double standards on issues like democracy and human rights.
Their real aim is to create internal conflicts in China, deliberately generate external pressure, and hinder the positive development momentum of Xinjiang and China on the whole, he said.
"In recent years, some Western media have widely spread lies about 'forced labor' and maliciously discredited Xinjiang's counter-terrorism achievements, attempting to use Xinjiang to contain China by creating internal chaos. However, a visit to Xinjiang reveals that the Western media's portrayal of the region is vastly different from reality, and their rumors collapse in the face of facts," he said.
Mahmoud believes that China's regional ethnic autonomy system has paved a unique and correct path for handling ethnic relations, providing valuable insights for Arab countries facing similar issues.
As Xinjiang continues to develop and open up further, Arab countries are gaining a more comprehensive and objective understanding of Xinjiang and the whole of China, and the rhetoric of deliberately smearing Xinjiang is losing ground in Arab countries, he added.
Mahmoud said terrorism is a significant obstacle to development and Iraq has been one of the countries most affected by terrorism in recent years.
Mahmoud said Xinjiang's counter-terrorism efforts, focusing on education and guidance to prevent the infiltration of terrorist and extremist religious ideologies among the populace and guiding religion to adapt to China's socialist society, offer valuable lessons for the international community.
On the new journey of building a closer China-Arab community with a shared future, both sides should work together to strengthen exchanges and cooperation in the field of counter-terrorism, oppose linking terrorism with any ethnic group, religion, nationality, or civilization, and reject double standards in counter-terrorism, contributing to the stable development of society and economy in both China and Arab countries, as well as world peace and stability, he said. ■