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The U.S. Has Justified Chinese Persecution of the
Uyghur People
Erkin Dolat
August 27, 2002
The United States government has officially enlisted
the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, an obscure group
even the majority of Uyghurs know nothing about, into
the Foreign Terrorist Organization list. U.S. Deputy
State Secretary Richard L. Armitage on Monday
announced this decision in Beijing saying that the
U.S. government put the East Turkestan Islamic
Movement on its terrorist list several days ago after
“careful study”. In Washington, State Department
spokesman Richard Boucher said that although the U.S.
would freeze the assets of the East Turkestan Islamic
Movement, a decision had not been made on whether to
officially designate this group a terrorist
organization.
On the surface, this move appears to be a small
concession made by the United States to reward the
Chinese government for its support of anti-terror war
and for issuing the new export controls on missile
technology. However, the political implication of this
decision is disastrous to the Uyghur freedom movement
worldwide and to the ever-deteriorating human rights
situation in East Turkestan. This decision made by the
United States will justify China’s claim since
September 11 that “East Turkestan terrorist forces”
are part of international terrorist network, and
legitimize China’s aggressive clampdown on any form of
Uyghur dissent, no matter how nonviolent and peaceful
they may be.
By enlisting the East Turkestan Islamic Movement into
the list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations, the
United States has practically betrayed the Uyghur
freedom movement and opened the floodgates of Chinese
persecution against the Uyghur people. This move to
enlist this so-called terrorist group into the FTO
list is a strategic mistake on the part of the United
States in order to get some short-term benefits out of
China. While the United States seems to have conceded
little to Beijing but China has definitely got the
license to kill the Uyghur freedom movement in the bud.
This results more arrests and executions of the
Uyghurs by the Chinese government in the future
linking with the so-called “East Turkestan Islamic
Movement”.
China, which has been aggressively demonizing and
discrediting the East Turkestan freedom movement since
September 11, 2001, now has a free hand to strike a
harder blow to the Uyghur population in the name of
fighting against “East Turkestan terrorist forces”.
Now China can practically label any Uyghur dissident a
“terrorist” who has links to The East Turkestan
Islamic Movement or other “terrorist” organizations.
Basically, the U.S. has given a green light to
whatever China wants to do with the Uyghur people who
are opposed to the authoritarian Chinese rule in East
Turkestan unless the U.S. directly confronts China
with the Uyghur human rights violation problem.
Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Kong Quan on
Tuesday welcoming the U.S. decision said, “China and
the United States shared extensive common interests in
the field of anti-terrorism. For a long period of
time, ETIM and other East Turkestan organizations had
joined other international terrorist forces in
creating many violent terrorist incidents inside and
outside China, posing grave threats to regional
security and stability”. Kong Quan emphasized at the
end of briefing, “Facts have proven that “East
Turkestan” organizations are part of international
terrorist forces and constitute a scourge of the
international community that all nations should join
efforts to combat”.
While the United States only enlisted the East
Turkestan Islamic Movement under the executive order
issued by President George W. Bush to face economic
controls, but the Chinese government is saying that
all the East Turkestan organizations are “terrorist”
organizations and urging the international community
to combat them. This means all the democratic Uyghur
organizations that promote nonviolence and dialog in
Central Asia, Turkey, Australia, Europe and the U.S.
are “terrorist” organizations that the respective
countries should join efforts to combat them.
Apparently, the interpretation of enlisting the East
Turkestan Islamic Movement is a totally different
thing to both the U.S. and China. China wants the U.S.
decision to serve its political ends, which is to
permanently eradicate the Uyghur opposition to
tyrannical Chinese rule in East Turkestan since 1949.
U.S. Deputy Secretary Richard L. Armitage while in
Beijing emphasized to Chinese officials “the absolute
necessity to respect minority rights” as the country
moves forward with “a very difficult, anti-terrorism,
counterterrorism fight with ETIM.” China will
definitely fight against ETIM “terrorists” but without
any regard to the fundamental human rights of the
Uyghur people who basically have no rights at all
since September 11, 2001. It is politically naïve to
assume on the part of the U.S. that China will somehow
respect the rights of the Uyghur population in its
fight against the Uyghur “terrorists”. The cold fact
is that China has hardly respected the inalienable
rights of Uyghurs and will hardly respect them as long
as the United States or the international community
justifies China’s heavy-handed policy against the
Uyghur people.
The U.S. decision to enlist the East Turkestan Islamic
Movement in its list of foreign terrorist organization
came as a shock to the Uyghur people in East Turkestan
and the Uyghur Diaspora. Because the U.S. had earlier
consistently rejected China’s claim that the East
Turkestan organizations were “terrorist” groups. U.S.
President George Bush, attending APEC summit last year
in Shanghai, said the war on terrorism should not be
used as an excuse to persecute minorities. Francis
Taylor, director for counter-terrorism at U.S. State
Department, said last December in Beijing, "The US
doesn't designate or consider the East Turkestan
organization as a terrorist organization. The
legitimate economic and social issues that confront
the people in Western China are not necessarily
terrorist issues and should be resolved politically
rather than using counter-terrorism methods".
Apparently, current U.S. position on the issue has
shifted dramatically to the opposite pole due to its
national interest and political need. According to The
Wall Street Journal (August 27 edition), China and the
U.S. are trading concessions as part of their common
fight against terrorism. And The Los Angeles Times
says the step pleased Beijing, which is anxious to
portray its crackdown on restive Uighur Muslims in
Xinjiang as part of the global campaign against
terrorism. The Washington Post says the Chinese
government has been pressing Washington for months to
include the group on the terrorist list, an act that
triggers financial sanctions and immigration controls.
According to The Wall Street Journal, diplomats in
Beijing say the group’s ties to terrorists are sketchy.
All of these prove that the U.S. decision to enlist
the East Turkestan Islamic Movement in its FTO list is
more a political trade-off with Beijing than a
political reality.
The New York Times (August 27 edition) reports that
the East Turkestan Islamic Movement was virtually
unknown until last winter, when China asserted that it
was linked to Al-Qaeda. The paper said the group has
played at most a small role in the simmering ethnic
unrest in Xinjiang, where Muslim of the Uighur ethnic
group, few of whom are fundamentalists, chafe at
China’s stringent rule. It concluded that the
certified condemnation might help China describe its
often heavy-handed repression in Xinjiang as a
necessary flank in the global antiterror campaign, not
as an issue of human rights.
This is bad news for the Uyghur people both in East
Turkestan and abroad. This means the Uyghur Issue will
no longer be looked at as a human rights issue but a
terrorism issue. This also means the U.S. will mute
its criticism of China’s violation of Uyghur human
rights in its fight against the “terrorists” of East
Turkestan Islamic Movement. The Uyghur people will pay
the price of betrayal by the United States government.
This is, of course, not the first time that the
Uyghurs have been betrayed by a foreign power for its
own national interest. In 1949, as most Uyghurs still
freshly remember, Soviet Union betrayed the
independent East Turkestan Republic into the hands of
communist China.
The Uyghur people understand, as a long-time victim of
The Great Game, that politics is very dirty,
especially when a great power betrays an individual,
group or even a state for its own national interest.
This time, the Uyghur people have seen how dirty it
can get when the U.S. sacrifice them for getting some
short-term benefit from China. In the past, the
Uyghurs have seen the United States as the beacon of
democracy and bulwark of human rights and freedom. The
Uyghurs have also considered the United States as the
only power on earth that can truly challenge and
pressure China in terms of human rights and religious
freedom. However, the U.S. decision to enlist the East
Turkestan Islamic Movement in its list of FTO has
proved that the opposite is sometimes also true.
The majority of Uyghurs are opposed to terrorism and
violence. They don’t believe that they can justify
their legitimate struggle against China with violence
or armed resistance. That is why they strongly
sympathized with the American people when terrorists
rammed hijacked planes into the World Trade Center
towers in New York City and Pentagon in Washington,
DC. As a matter of fact, the Uyghur people have been a
victim of systematic Chinese state terrorism. As
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch often
point out that the Chinese mistreatment of Uyghurs-the
torture methods, arrests, disappearance, summary
executions-is nowhere to be found in China. Both
organizations accuse China of fully taking advantage
of the U.S. war on terror to legitimize its crackdown
of the Uyghurs. Amnesty says China only executes
Uyghur political prisoners. In China, the label of
terrorist or terrorism is specifically reserved to the
Uyghurs.
The Uyghur struggle against the Chinese rule is as
legitimate as the Tibetan struggle. Both people have
suffered Chinese persecution and both of their
countries occupied by China almost at the same time.
The Uyghurs believe in Islam while the Tibetans
believe in Tibetan Buddhism. This is probably the main
difference of these two groups of distinct and
indigenous peoples who want to separate from China and
form independent states. It is obvious that religion
is quite significant in international politics since
the association of one religion may negatively affect
one’s freedom cause while the association of another
can actually become a blessing. This is the case with
regard to the Uyghurs and Tibetans. Since the Uyghurs
are Muslims and have a separatist cause, they can be
easily demonized as “terrorists” while the Tibetan
Buddhists are being looked at with a different light.
But both groups of people may have to pay the price of
betrayal to some degree.
The U.S. government, by legitimizing Chinese
suppression of the Uyghur people, can’t possibly
prevent legitimizing Chinese suppression of Tibetans,
for Beijing looks at both groups as having the same
separatist tendencies. The green light given to China
to crack down the Uyghurs will be looked at as a
yellow light in Beijing to clamp down the Tibetans.
The Tibetans and the Tibet Cause will more or less
feel the same heat of the U.S. decision to allow China
to suppress the Uyghurs, who like Tibetans, have
greatly suffered under communist Chinese tyranny for
the past five decades.
The U.S. decision to allow China to crackdown the East
Turkestan “terrorists” has left the Uyghurs alone in
the world without a friend to turn to for help and
without an option to deal with Chinese tyranny. This
decision will further alienate them and push them to
desperation. This move may force some nonviolent
Uyghurs to believe that armed struggle is the only way
to resolve the East Turkestan Problem. This is the
danger that many Uyghur organizations see in the West.
As a self-fulfilling prophecy, the U.S. justification
of Chinese persecution of the Uyghur people will
probably radicalize even the moderate Uyghur Muslims
who otherwise will look at America as a light of hope.
Erkin Dolat
Editor-in-Chief of UIA
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