This article was first Published on Sunday, March 23, 2008 at – :
http://worldmuslimcongress.blogspot.com/2008/03/chinas-uighur-muslims.html
UIGHUR CHINESE MUSLIMS
TheStar.com World The other thorn in China’s side
The other thorn in China’s side
While the world focuses on Tibet, Beijing is also putting pressure on its Turkic Muslim minorityMar 23, 2008 04:30 AM Andrew Chung Staff Reporter
http://www.thestar.com/News/World/article/349844
As Chinese troops have been fanning out across Tibetan regions inside China in an attempt to quell spreading anti-government riots, another restive group has also come under intense police scrutiny in the country’s northwest.
The Uighurs of Xinjiang province – a largely Muslim ethnic minority of Turkic descent that has long inhabited the Central Asia region – have felt the strong arm of a stepped-up police presence since the Tibetan protests began two weeks ago.
“Because of what’s going on in Tibet, the government has stepped up its security measures to make sure no Uighur would stand up against it,” says Rebiya Kadeer, president of the German-based World Uighur Congress, in a phone interview via an interpreter.
“In the streets, whenever three or four Uighurs come together, a van appears and plainclothes police arrive and either disperse them or take them away.
“I have also learned that the Chinese authorities have sent plainclothes Chinese police into Uighur schools … to make sure nothing is going on there.”
She says there are also curfews in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region’s cities and the government is also rounding up Uighurs (pronounced WEE-gurs) previously released from prison for political offences.
The actions appear to signal China’s willingness to take pre-emptive action against perceived threats as it steps up security in advance of the Beijing Olympics in August.
“There is great potential for the people (in Xinjiang) to follow the Tibetans and make some noise there,” says Mehmet Tohti, president of the Uighur Canadian Association. “That’s the fear of the Chinese government.”
Wang Baodong, a spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington, said it’s understandable that authorities would take action to prevent problems from arising in the wake of the Tibetan riots.
“In the Xinjiang Autonomous Region, there are people calling for the independence or the separation of the region from China, and some extreme or fundamental elements, both outside and inside the region, have been engaged in various kinds of activities to try to realize their scheme.”
Wang could not provide details of specific police actions but said “it’s only natural for the local governments and relevant agencies to take preventive measures.”
Chinese authorities have numerous times in the past clamped down on Uighur communities in Xinjiang, which borders Pakistan, Afghanistan and a handful of other Central Asian republics.
There is a fierce mutual mistrust between the Uighurs and the Han Chinese, the country’s majority ethnic group.
For decades, the Han have migrated, with the government’s active encouragement, into Xinjiang. In 1949, when the Communists took over China and assumed control over Xinjiang, they made up just 5 per cent of the population. Now they’re threatening to reach majority.
Like the Tibetans, Uighurs say the Chinese have run roughshod over their culture and livelihoods.
The region is booming economically with tremendous development, especially in oil production, but observers note that it’s mostly the Han who benefit, dominating the region’s commerce and accessing the best jobs and education.
Han Chinese tend to live in newer areas, while they have also torn down historically and architecturally significant Uighur neighbourhoods.
“There does seem to be a sense among Uighurs, as well as Tibetans, that they are not benefiting from the development of Xinjiang as much as many Han immigrants are,” says James Millward, a professor of history and expert on Xinjiang at Georgetown University.
Many Uighurs resent government control over their religious practices, including the banning of religious schools.
Uighur separatists, who reject the name “Xinjiang” and instead use “East Turkestan,” have shown no compunction about using violence. The 1990s saw widespread riots and murders of Han Chinese and officials also blamed a 1997 Beijing bus bombing on Uighur extremists.
But iron-fisted rule has allowed China to thwart most violent activity.
In January 2007, Chinese forces killed 18 people in a raid at what Beijing described as a training camp in the mountains of southern Xinjiang, run by the ETIM.
This year, China acknowledged launching a Jan. 27 raid on a “terrorist gang” in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang.
State-controlled media reported that two members of the cell were shot dead, but not before the militants lobbed homemade grenades, wounding two police officers. Fifteen others were arrested.
It was alleged that the group had collaborated with the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), which the United Nations has listed as a terrorist organization and the U.S. insists has ties to Al Qaeda.
Xinjiang’s Communist party chief Wang Lequan recently told Xinhua News Agency that investigators seized weapons, books on terrorism and materials that suggested the group was planning an attack on the Olympics.
Then came reports of a March 7 incident in which a China Southern Airlines flight crew broke up an apparent attempt to down a plane flying from Urumqi to Beijing. Reports said a female passenger had smuggled gasoline aboard the plane and there was an attempt to ignite it in a lavatory toilet.
The alleged plot was discovered and the passengers, described by some witnesses as Uighurs, were apprehended. The flight made an emergency landing in Lanzhou, in Gansu province.
Some human rights groups, including Amnesty International, have expressed skepticism over the reports, saying Chinese authorities don’t give details about these incidents and restrictions make it impossible to verify them.
“I think that in many Western countries, these kinds of announcements would not have been met with skepticism,” says Georgetown professor Millward. “Some of that arises from the way the media is so closely allied with the (Communist) party and government authorities in China.”
In fact, human rights groups have long suspected China of overstating the terrorist threat as a pretext for smothering Uighur separatism.
China’s claims to Xinjiang and Tibet remain controversial but uncontested by the world community, observes Millward, who published a book last year called Eurasian Crossroads: A History of Xinjiang.
Both regions were under control of the Qing Dynasty in the 18th century. With the 1911 fall of the dynasty and rise of the Republic of China, their status became questionable. The Nationalists never actually had control over Tibet and wielded little influence in Xinjiang, Millward explains, “but always maintained claims” to them.
The Uighur people had their own state in the region, both in 1933 based in the city of Kashgar, and again just after World War II in northern Xinjiang.
Taiwan was also part of the Qing Dynasty and it was to the island that Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist army fled in 1949 to escape Mao Zedong’s conquering Communists. Mao’s forces also took control of Xinjiang in 1949 and did the same in Tibet two years later.
China has made it clear it will not countenance a formal declaration of independence by Taiwan, nor any kind of “splitting” activity from either the Tibetans or Uighurs.
Notes Millward: “They were all part of the Qing empire, for which the transition to being part of the modern Chinese state and being part of the People’s Republic of China has been at times difficult.
“There remain tensions and contradictions about their status that have yet to be fully resolved and fully faced.”
As the Tibetan riots and apparent resurging struggles in Xinjiang attest, China is facing touchy political battles under a heavy international gaze.
“It’s a lot for China, just as it would be for any country, to deal with,” says Millward. “There are lingering contradictions from the Qing Dynasty to the modern Chinese state and these have not so far been treated openly.”
World Uighur Congress president Kadeer says she worries that the Chinese government will use the Tibetan riots as an excuse to harass Uighurs and implement policies that would have seemed too heavy-handed in the past.
She estimates tensions in the cities to be “very high right now as a result of the Chinese government’s media portrayals of both the Uighurs and Tibetans as the enemy.”
However, it’s not easy to get a true picture of what is happening on the ground at any given time.
The Uighur Canadian Association’s Tohti says southern Xinjiang had been closed to tourists, foreigners and media – just as in Tibet and Tibetan cities in neighbouring provinces.
But a call from the Toronto Star confirmed with a hotel in central Kashgar that it was accepting reservations from Western tourists.
The latest Tibetan uprising has brought an outpouring of concern from around the world. But little is heard about the plight of the Uighurs.
To explain the disparity, Millward points to a well-worn maxim concerning China’s ethnic minorities.
“Tibetans are like pandas,” he says. “Uighurs are like camels. The pandas are cuddly – there is great sympathy for Tibetan Buddhism and no fear of it. Camels are prickly beasts, not something you necessarily want to cozy up to.
“Yet pandas and wild camels, both, are endangered species.”