BY EVA CHENG
Of the world's rulers, China's were among the most shaken by the September 11 attacks. Their highly oppressive methods have long bred resentment, especially in China's vast north-western territory of Xinjiang, which borders Afghanistan.
Beijing has ruled the territory as a virtual colony for more than 120 years. The Communist Party bureaucracy, which took power in 1949, has carried on with its predecessors' methods.
This has led to periodic outbursts of violent resistance — answered with yet more force. The repression has produced a stream of exiles fleeing into neighbouring Central Asia, with some of them continuing their resistance from there. The Central Asian countries are mostly home to Turkic peoples who share an ethnic, language and cultural heritage with the traditional inhabitants of Xinjiang.
For more than 2000 years, the Turkic inhabitants of what is now called Xinjiang have mostly been Uigurs; they still constituted 96% of the territory's population in 1949.
Though their presence has been significantly diluted by Beijing's promotion of ethnic Chinese settlements, the Uigurs continue to call their original homeland East Turkestan or Uiguristan, rejecting the name imposed by the occupiers — Xinjiang — which means "newly conquered frontiers". The Uigurs' aspirations for independence have remained strong.
Some Uigurs may have sought refuge in Afghanistan but there is no indication that this is a significant destination. This hasn't stopped Beijing from seizing on US "war on terrorism" and turning it into a new weapon to undermine the Uigur resistance.
According to the October 26 China Daily, the Communist Party secretary of the Xinjiang Uigur Autonomous Region, Wang Lequan, called the Uigur opponents "terrorists" and declared Beijing's intention to stamp them out as part of the global anti-terrorism campaign.
Then, on November 12, Chinese foreign minister Tang Jiaxuan claimed at a UN conference that there was a "East Tujue ... out-and-out terrorist force" among the Uigurs which had long been receiving training, financial aid and support from an "international terrorist clique".
The November 16 official People's Daily named that ultimate backer as Osama bin Laden's network, alleging that he has been supporting "terrorist activities in Xinjiang".
"East Tujue", meaning East Turk, is a reference recently adopted by Beijing. Foreign ministry spokesperson Zhu Bangzao poured scorn on the Uigurs' attempt to set up a "so-called East Turkestan", stressing they are mere "East Tujue terrorists".
Since "these terrorist activities are linked ... we must get united to combat [them]", he added.
Beijing hasn't provided a shred of evidence to prove the bin Laden link. Even if such a link exists, it does nothing to remove the history of Chinese oppression toward the Uigurs or their desire to struggle against it.
A long struggle
During the pre-capitalist era, the rulers of China, already a more powerful country, made many attempts to conquer East Turkestan, but they were fiercely resisted.
Successful conquests were short-lived: there were six of them between 104 BC and 751, adding up to only a total of 157 years over a 855-year period. For the next 1000 years, East Turkestan was independent, although for 207 of those years it was a voluntary part of the Mongol empire.
The Manchus launched new attacks in 1759, occupying East Turkestan until 1862, a period marked by 42 revolts which ended with the expulsion of the occupier in 1863.
The Manchus invaded again four years later, succeeding only after killing one million inhabitants, and formally incorporated East Turkestan, as Xinjiang, into the Manchu empire in 1884.
When the Manchu feudal emperor was overthrown in China in 1911, China's new capitalist rulers retained control of Xinjiang.
But the people of East Turkestan never stopped resisting. They staged sporadic revolts, and were able to establish an "East Turkestan Islamic Republic" in 1933 and an "Eastern Turkestan Republic" in 1944. These successes were shortlived, lasting only a few years each time.
After 1949, the Uigurs "continued to wage a small war against Chinese occupation until the early 1960s when whole Uigur tribes and clans immigrated, often on foot, to neighbouring countries", according to Amir Taheri writing for Arab News in early 1997.
An Amnesty International report issued in 1999, Gross Violations of Human Rights in the Xinjiang Uigur Autonomous Region, said of the Uigurs' post-1949 resistance, "various opposition groups militating for East Turkestan's independence were formed clandestinely in the XUAR — some reportedly supported by exiled nationalist groups among the Uigur diaspora in various countries. Some of these groups have resorted to violence, including attacks on government officials and offices, and the planting and detonation of bombs."
But in the "Uigur Document", a 1998 outline of their plight prepared for Canadian MPs, Uigur exiles in the US denied their people had adopted violence as their main method of struggle.
The document accused Beijing of framing Uigurs for several "terrorist incidents", including three bus explosions in Urumqi, Eastern Turkestan's capital.
It continued, "This made it possible for the Chinese government to use the internationally popular terms such as 'Muslim fundamentalists', 'Muslim terrorists' and 'separatists' to label those Uigurs who could not tolerate the Chinese oppression anymore and showed some resistance towards the inhuman [acts] and the human rights abuses of the Chinese."
It further emphasised, "The Uigurs [are] not responsible for any of the terrorist activities, on the contrary, they are currently living under the very serious terrorist control of the Chinese government."
The Uigur Document accused the Chinese government of implementing a policy of "systemic cultural genocide" towards the Uigurs: racially discriminating against them, outnumbering them through mass immigration of Han Chinese into Eastern Turkestan, restricting their religious practices and harshly persecuting them.
The Han immigrants are organised by a large network of quasi-military settlements known as the Production and Construction Corporations, populated mainly by demobilised soldiers and their families.
Disturbing repression
The document also listed disturbing patterns of serious social injustices and human rights abuses targeting the Uigurs, such as:
- unfair coercive birth control policy towards Uigurs despite a population of only about 7 million (down from 17 million in 1949);
- economic policies which deny Uigurs the benefits of East Turkestan's rich natural resources, including oil, natural gas, iron and steel, grain, cotton and gold;
- the use of Eastern Turkestan as the testing site for all of China's nuclear tests;
- the use of Eastern Turkestan as home to most of China's prison camps;
- education policies which deny any knowledge of Uigur language or customs to either Han immigrants or government officials; and
- the appointment of all Uigur government officials by Beijing, on the basis of their loyalty.
Amnesty also reported that Beijing had further tightened control in Eastern Turkestan in the past decade, a period coinciding with the independence of five Central Asian republics from the former Soviet Union.
"Scores of people have been arbitrarily detained in the region over the past few years ... Thousands of political prisoners, arrested at various times during the 1990s, are reported to remain imprisoned ... Scores of Uigurs, many of them political prisoners, have been sentenced to death and executed in the past two years. Others, including women, are alleged to have been killed by the security forces in circumstances which appear to constitute extra-judicial executions ... attempts by Uigurs to air their views or grievances and peacefully exercise their most fundamental human rights have been met with repression."
In this context, Uigur resistance should surprise no-one.
Incidents have included a 1985 demonstration by 7000 in Urumqi against nuclear testing, birth control and Han migration; mass protests and subsequent witchhunt in Khotan (Hetian) sparked by the July 7, 1995 arrest of an Islamic imam, which resulted in some participants being sentenced to up to 16 years imprisonment; the July 25, 1995 sentencing of 10 Uigurs in Guma (Pishan) to 10-21 years' imprisonment for allegedly being members of the clandestine East Turkestan Democratic Islamic Party.
In addition, the mass "riots" in Gulja (Yining) on February 5, 1997 took recent Uigur resentments and resistance to a high point. According to Uigur political exiles, 100 Uigurs and 25 Han Chinese were killed in the incident, which was followed by the execution of 31 more Uigurs by the Chinese army and a large number of arrests and imprisonments.
Many public executions have taken place since then of alleged participants in the February 1997 "riots" and related disturbances, with the clear intent to intimidate.
Organised resistance exists: as can be glimpsed from Xinjiang chief Wang Lequan's 1999 revelation that there were 68 underground organisations in the region.
In an interview with the Taipei Times published on October 11, 1999, Abdullhekim, the executive chairperson of the East Turkestan National Centre in Istanbul, which opposes China's occupation, said that the East Turkestan People's Party alone had more than 60,000 members and 178 underground branches inside East Turkestan.
Abdullhekim said there have been more than 130 uprisings in the previous few years, with underground organisations working with groups outside.
The East Turkestan National Centre itself was formed in late 1998 following a gathering of pro-independence Uigur groups based in 18 countries. It adopted non-violent principles but Abdullhekim said some groups based in Kazakhstan, which advocated armed struggle against the Chinese, were excluded from the centre.
With the clear intention to undermine these exile groups, Beijing formed a coalition with Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan — the Shanghai Five — in 1996 and expanded it into the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (adding Uzbekistan) in July this year to jointly suppress "terrorism, separatism and extremism" in the region. The organisation met again in Alma Ata, Kazakhstan, three days after the September 11 events, to step up collaboration.
From Green Left Weekly, November 28, 2001.
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