Produced by the Eastern Turkistan Information Center

2 July 1998

(1) HONG KONG JOURNALIST SAYS CENSORSHIP KILLED SHOW ON REBELS

July 2, 1998, Page A26, Washington Post Foreign Service By Keith B. Richburg

(2) XINJIANG'S REBELS LISTED ENEMY NO 1

July 1, 1998, South China Morning Post, Hong Kong by Willy Wo-Lap Lam

(3) JIANG AIDES DRAW UP BLUEPRINTS FOR DEMOCRACY

June 26, 1998, South China Morning Post, Hong Kong, by Willy Wo-Lap Lam

(4) PRESIDENT JIANG TO ATTEND RUSSIAN, CENTRAL ASIAN SUMMIT

June 26, 1998, CND-Global (GL98-092)

(5) KAZAKH MILITARY CHIEF PRAISES CONTACTS WITH CHINA

June 24, 1998, Newsroom of the BBC World Service

(6) FRANCE READY TO TRANSFER TECHNOLOGY TO CHINA

June 9, 1998, CND-Global

(7) DALAI LAMA OFFERS TO QUIT POLITICS IN EXCHANGE FOR TIBETAN  AUTONOMY 

[ June 9, 1998, CND-Global ]

(8) DALAI LAMA AGAINST TRADE BOYCOTT OF CHINA

June 10, 1998, CND-Global (GL98-084)

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(1) HONG KONG JOURNALIST SAYS CENSORSHIP KILLED SHOW ON REBELS

July 2, 1998, Page A26, Washington Post Foreign Service
By Keith B. Richburg

HONG KONGA two-part television documentary by Hong Kong-based journalist Christopher Leung lifts the veil on one of China's most troubling, if rarely seen problems -- an insurgency in the Xinjiang region in the far northwest.

Among other journalistic coups, the series features the first interviews with leaders of the elusive Uigher rebel movement, and last month it won a special merit award at the Hong Kong Foreign Correspondents' Club's annual human rights ceremony.

The only problem is that the documentary, "Crying Wolf," has never been aired.

Claiming that the piece is "unbalanced," among other things, Leung's station has been sitting on the documentary for more than a year. But Leung, 51, offers a different reason for the delay. He calls the China Television Network's refusal to air his work a classic example of how press freedom has eroded in Hong Kong since its transfer to Chinese control in 1997. Censorship is "everywhere," said Leung, who in May quit his job as a senior reporter at the Taiwanese-owned network.

Local journalists tend to agree. Carol Lai, chairwoman of the Hong Kong Journalists' Association, said Leung's case is typical of the constraints reporters here face when they tackle subjects that might offend Hong Kong's new rulers in Beijing. "This is very serious and illustrative of what is going on in Hong Kong right now," Lai said. "It's a very typical case, and there are others as well involving sensitive issues like Tibet or Taiwan."

Network executives denied that they had killed the documentary under pressure from Beijing. "That's a joke," said Edward Ho, deputy editor for programming. "You are insulting me as a professional journalist."

A Shanghai native who fled to Hong Kong at age 24, Leung became interested in the Xinjiang independence struggle while studying for a master's degree at the College for Advanced Christian Studies in Berkeley, Calif.

Leung said he spent many hours in libraries researching the history of Xinjiang, which is situated on China's far western frontier and enjoyed a brief period of independence as "East Turkistan" before Mao Zedong's troops occupied the largely Muslim area and claimed it as an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China in 1949.

Leung made several trips to Turkey and Kazakhstan, where he met and befriended key leaders of the insurgency from the province's Muslim Uigher population. When he joined CTN, he felt the time was finally right to use all his connections and produce the definitive documentary on the Xinjiang independence movement.

Filmed over three weeks in China, Russia, Turkey and Kazakhstan, "Crying Wolf" -- named for the animal that is the symbol of the independence movement -- includes rarely seen footage of Xinjiang Uigher refugee camps in Kazakhstan and on-camera interviews with top leaders at the insurgency's headquarters in Istanbul.

"East Turkistan is not a separatist movement but an independence movement," a rebel spokesman declares in one segment. "We are not separated from any country. East Turkistan itself is a country. Our country was illegitimately occupied by the Chinese Communist Party in 1949, and since then we have initiated large-scale independence activities."

Beijing considers such talk subversive. Hong Kong's Beijing-appointed chief executive, Tung Chee-hwa, has also said in interviews that Hong Kong citizens should not be allowed to advocate independence from China of Taiwan or Tibet once new rules are drafted to give teeth to a prohibition in the territory's basic charter against "treason, secession, sedition [and] subversion."

By Leung's account, a supervisor at the network told him his script was sent all the way to Beijing, where Chinese authorities expressed their disapproval. And in the year since he completed "Crying Wolf," he said, he has not been given choice assignments inside China and was unable to book time in his station's editing room to fine-tune his languishing documentary.

Press censorship in Hong Kong, Leung said, is like sexual harassment in the workplace -- it is difficult to prove and easily denied with a battery of alternative explanations. "Hong Kong is strange," he said. "Everyone pretends like they are gentlemen. But they want to practice sexual harassment every day. It's difficult to prove. But you need to collect the evidence, even if you cannot do anything."

The censorship charge was denied by executives at CTN, a satellite network owned by Taiwanese and broadcast in Mandarin to Chinese audiences worldwide. "Nobody in Beijing told me not to run it," said Linda Lin, a CTN vice president based in Washington who was the chief
editor in Hong Kong last year when Leung completed "Crying Wolf." "I can only say I didn't do it because of censorship," she said, referring to her decision not to run the documentary.

In a telephone interview, Lin said she decided not to air the piece because the timing was wrong -- public interest in the topic was waning after a March 1997 bus bombing in Beijing claimed by the separatists, she said -- and because it was journalistically flawed.

She said she encouraged Leung to add a response from the Chinese government to the report to make it more "balanced" and less subject to criticism from Beijing. "If he could have gotten that, it would have been more of a balanced story," she said. "If we do a very balanced story, I think we can run it."

When asked if she suspected the Beijing leadership would react angrily to a story on Xinjiang separatists, Lin replied: "Oh yes.  When I heard they did such a story, I knew there would be some problems. But it was already done." Leung, for his part, is contemplating returning to the United States, his adopted country, of which he says proudly: "That's the only country that fights for its citizens."

(2) XINJIANG'S REBELS LISTED ENEMY NO 1

July 1, 1998, South China Morning Post, Hong Kong
by Willy Wo-Lap Lam

Pro-independence elements in Xinjiang remain the main threat to political stability, according to internal instructions the Beijing leadership has given security departments.

Next are "splittist" groups in Tibet, including followers of the exiled government of the Dalai Lama. Laid-off workers are the third-most-likely group to pose challenges to the administration.Other sources of instability listed include unofficial religious organisations, particularly those linked to the Christian underground church.

Beijing sources said yesterday that while the leadership of Jiang Zemin had consolidated control over the nation after Deng Xiaoping's death, it remained vulnerable to outbreaks of disorder.

The internal instructions said Uygur nationalists in Xinjiang remained dangerous as they used terrorist tactics to achieve their goals. While Beijing had improved ties with Muslim countries bordering the autonomous region, arms and other supplies continued to flow from sympathisers in the Muslim world.

Political analysts said more laid-off workers and pensioners were staging protest actions. The leadership was particularly alarmed by the growth of wild-cat trade unions in provinces including Liaoning, Sichuan and Hubei.

The analysts said this was a major reason why the economic team led by Premier Zhu Rongji had decided to slow radical reform of state-owned enterprises. State banks have again been told to provide extra loans to loss-making factories to check unemployment.

A security source said the leadership was also losing control over the mushrooming underground church movement. "Beijing is trying to improve relations with the US and Europe, and it does not want to invite international criticism by cracking down hard on the underground churches," he said.

The source said newly converted Chinese included not only "Westernised" urban intellectuals but government officials and rural residents. It is understood that the leadership has also begun to doubt the loyalty of traditionally pro-Beijing elements, such as the eight "democratic" parties financed by the Communist Party. The parties have boosted recruitment of elite intellectuals, many of whom are demanding a much faster pace of political reform than the party leadership will allow.

(3) JIANG AIDES DRAW UP BLUEPRINTS FOR DEMOCRACY

June 26, 1998, South China Morning Post, Hong Kong, by
by Willy Wo-Lap Lam

Aides to President Jiang Zemin have unveiled new plans for democratisation in closed-door brainstorming sessions.  Sources close to Mr Jiang said yesterday it was up to the politburo standing committee to decide when the blueprints would be implemented.  In the run-up to the visit by US President Bill Clinton, mainland media have been publishing more stories on political reform.

The sources said a key adviser to Mr Jiang had proposed reforms be expedited in areas with higher economic and educational levels.  ] The adviser, a former Shanghai social sciences professor, cited Guangdong and rich cities including Shenzhen as areas where "expedited reforms" such as elections by universal suffrage could be tried out.

Other members of Mr Jiang's think-tanks have mapped out changes in government regulations and policies that must be made after the country's expected adoption of the international covenant on political and civil rights later this year.

The national media have highlighted speeches on political reform given by Mr Jiang and politburo members such as Hu Jintao.  Beijing newspapers yesterday quoted Mr Jiang as saying the mainland would become a modern, democratic country in about 50 years.

"China will basically have transformed itself into a modern, powerful, democratic and civilised socialist country by the middle of the next century," Mr Jiang was quoted as saying.

"You will be my age when that happens.  As youngsters, we participated in the struggle to overthrow the reactionary rule and worked for the founding of New China under the leadership of the party."

Several members of the so-called Communist Youth League Faction, a liberal wing of the party, have recently been given promotions in party and government posts.  However, it is understood Mr Jiang, 71, has cited recent labour unrest and other problems in law and order as reasons why Beijing had to stick to a cautious pace in political liberalisation.

(4) PRESIDENT JIANG TO ATTEND RUSSIAN, CENTRAL ASIAN SUMMIT

June 26, 1998, CND-Global (GL98-092)

[CND, 06/25/98] Chinese President JIANG Zemin will visit Kazakhstan to attend a summit with Russia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, AFP reported. Regional security issues will dominate the meeting, where the five countries will sign a treaty to demarcate the border between the former Soviet states and China. The Group of Five first met in Shanghai in 1996.  (Dan WU, YIN De An)

(5) KAZAKH MILITARY CHIEF PRAISES CONTACTS WITH CHINA

June 24, 1998, Newsroom of the BBC World Service

The chief of staff of the Kazakh armed forces, Bakhytzhan Yertayev, has returned from a week-long visit to China saying he's completely satisfied with the results of his meetings.  He said his talks with the Chinese chief of staff Fu Quanyou and defence minister Chi Haotian had laid the basis for a broadening of military contacts and co-operation. The visit -- his first official trip to China -- also included a tour of military units in the Xinjiang Uigur autonomous region, which borders Kazakhstan.

(6) FRANCE READY TO TRANSFER TECHNOLOGY TO CHINA

June 9, 1998, CND-Global

[CND, 06/09/98] France is ready to "play to the fullest the game of technology transfers" with China, AFP reported quoting French junior industry minister Christian Pierret. France would make the latest technology advances available to China in any investment. France offered to set up a local network to build nuclear reactors. The investment costs could be amortized over the long term. GEC Alsthom and Framatome have already built nuclear plants at Daya Bay and Ling Ao. Pierret said if China chooses the French high-speed train for its envisaged high-speed rail link between Beijing and Shanghai, it will offer the new double-decker model. Pierret commented on the GEC Alsthom's coal-fired electricity generator in Sichuan having "good
chances at success" and Citroen's automotive joint venture in Wuhan with financing difficulties resolved. However, French industry sources said some problems exist with a credit guarantee for 850 million francs offered by France to bail out a joint venture between Citroen and China's Dongfeng Motors Corp. Pierret is in Beijing for a week-long visit to help prepare for French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin's visit in September. (Shiji SHEN, YIN De An)

(7) DALAI LAMA OFFERS TO QUIT POLITICS IN EXCHANGE FOR TIBETAN AUTONOMY

June 9, 1998, CND-Global

[CND, 06/10/98] Dalai Lama has offered to withdraw from politics if China would grant Tibet autonomy, AFP reported from Vienna.  The Tibetan spiritual leader offered the deal in an interview with the Austrian newspaper Kurier on the eve of his visit to the country. "For years my country has been the theater of cultural genocide," the Dalai Lama was quoted as saying. He is willing to relinquish his authority to "an interim government charged with organizing elections within two years.", should China give autonomy to Tibet. And the Tibetans in exile would return in droves.  The Dalai Lama also made it clear that no solution to the Tibetan issue is expected of President Clinton's upcoming visit to China. (LUO Zhen yuan, YIN De An)

(8) DALAI LAMA AGAINST TRADE BOYCOTT OF CHINA

June 10, 1998, CND-Global (GL98-084)

[CND, 06/09/98] The Nobel peace laureate and the spiritual leader of Tibet, Dalai Lama said on Sunday that he was against a trade boycott of China, for the purpose of obtaining even more freedom for his people. "To demonise China in such an obvious way would be a mistake" he continued, "and the aim for Tibetans was not outright independence but an autonomous status peacefully negotiated so as to respect Chinese interests".   The 62-year-old Dalai Lama is now on a three-day visit to Osnabruck and Munster in Germany due to the 350th anniversary of the Treaties of Westphalia, that ended the Thirty Years War in 1648.  Being accompanied by the Burmese prime minister-in-exile Sein Win, representing the Burmese Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, the Dalai Lama would visit in Austria on Tuesday.  (CUI Ying, YIN De An)

Prepared by:
Abdulrakhim Aitbayev (rakhim@lochbrandy.mines.edu)

WUNN newsletter index

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The World Uyghur Network News electronic newsletter is produced by the Eastern Turkistan Information Center (ETIC) in cooperation with the Taklamakan Uighur Human Rights Association (USA), and is devoted to the current political, cultural and economic developments in Eastern Turkistan and to the Uyghur people related issues.

Eastern Turkistan (Sherqiy Turkistan in Uyghur) is a name used by the indigenous people of the region for their motherland located in what is at present the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region of the People's Republic China.

The World Uyghur Network News brings information on situation in Eastern Turkistan from the Uyghur and other sources to the attention of the international community.

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EASTERN TURKISTAN INFORMATION CENTER
Director: Abduljelil Karkash
Lindwurmstr 99, 80337 Munich, Germany
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