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Pressure to Conform in west
China
Robert Marquand
September 29, 2003 edition
China's 'Go West' effort poses a challenge to the
identity of eight million ethnic Muslim Uighurs.
KASHGAR, CHINA - In the blurry quarter-light of dawn,
a long line of Uighur men streams silently out of
morning prayers at the Idkah Mosque - known as the "Mecca
of Xinjiang." The men walk in twos and threes, wearing
dark clothes and solemn expressions, and head off to
work or homes.
For centuries, the outside of this mosque, a central
symbol of China's most Islamic city, which lies along
the old Silk Road, was a gathering place for ethnic
Muslim Uighurs after prayer - a rich jumble of
Persian-style shops, stalls, adobe homes, and tea
vendors.
No longer. In recent months, the old neighborhood has
been flattened - to be replaced by an open plaza
designed to attract tourists. An artist's conception
is plastered at a bus stop just off the building site;
Uighurs nearby stare blankly at an image of mostly Han
Chinese visitors, some with cellphones and short
skirts, skipping across the ancient venue.
Such changes are systematically under way throughout
the vast province of Xinjiang. An ambitious "Go West"
campaign is bringing new populations and
infrastructure to one of China's least developed
regions. The change is a sharp challenge to the
identity - and, some say, the viability - of a desert
Central Asian people that were a majority in Xinjiang
until the late 1990s.
The eight million Uighurs of Turkic Muslim origin are
facing new policies - such as requiring their children
to learn Chinese in primary schools - and large
funding cuts in majority Uighur colleges. They are
confronting as well the effects of a five-year "strike
hard" campaign to wipe out acts of "separatism"
through round-ups, arrests, and executions. More
executions take place in Xinjiang, an estimated one or
two a day, than in any other part of China, according
to Human Rights Watch. Since Sept. 11, moreover, the
government has tried to conflate, as one expert puts
it, all local separatist movements and Uighur identity
struggles as part of an "Islamic terrorist" movement.
Fall in line - or fall behind?
Idkah's prayer leader, Imam Mohammed Ammin, is about
as moderate an imam as one will find in Kashgar. He
says the new plaza is progress because it will bring
ethnic Uighurs and Han Chinese closer together.
A Uighur bread vendor nearby offers a more typical
local street feeling: "Look what they are doing to our
mosque! What more do I have to say about what is
happening to us?"
In some ways, these two views sum up the stark
question of the Uighur future, as Han Chinese roll
into Xinjiang with money, police, know-how, and
greater numbers: the Uighur people can either join and
participate in the new world inexorably being built
around them - or they will be pushed aside.
At the Idkar Mosque at afternoon prayers, for example,
tourists, including women with their heads uncovered,
walk right into the Muslim rituals, for a look around.
The Uighurs say nothing. But one later said, "We hate
it, but what can we do?"
"The Uighurs are becoming the new Kurds of Central
Asia," says Dru Gladney, a leading Uighur specialist
at the University of Hawaii in Honolulu, a people
without a state who desire, at the least, to preserve
their culture, and to have a voice in their affairs.
Though Uighurs live in China, they do not eat Chinese
food, speak the Chinese language, look Chinese, or
intermarry with Chinese.
Yet pressure to conform to Chinese norms is rising. In
January, a young poet who chanted a verse at a Kashgar
concert hall during a performance was arrested.
Security officials told foreign journalists here the
young man was guilty of "spiritual terrorism."
Officials said the poem "attacked our government
policy" regarding ethnic minorities.
"He wanted to destroy the unity between the Uighur and
Han," says a local party official. "We regard this as
terrorism in the spiritual form. But we want to
educate, not punish him."
One does not have to be in Kashgar long to realize
there is not much actual unity between Uighur and Han.
The antipathy is palpable and deep. Even cursory
exchanges among the Uighurs, who make up 90 percent of
Kashgar, suggest a state of resentment, or a
resignation.
Surface tensions between the groups seem to have
lessened from several years back, however, when the "strike
hard" crackdown, and something called "sentencing
rallies," were more common. (Sentencing rallies
involved large groups of Uighurs accused of capital
crimes entering a sports stadium and being read a
sentence of death, followed by execution outside the
stadium, according to diplomatic sources, and the New
York-based Human Rights in China.)
Little common ground
Reporters on an official visit were not offered Uighur
translators and were kept on a tight schedule. But in
random exchanges on the Kashgar street, there seemed
little understanding between the ethnic peoples.
"We do not share the same heart with the Chinese,"
said one Uighur in Kashgar. "The Uighur and the
Chinese are not alike in any way. We do not trust them,"
said another, who offered that she and her family
listened to Radio Free Asia broadcasts originating in
Washington.
By all accounts, a discussion is now under way among
Uighurs about how and whether to participate in a Han
world. Some Uighur leaders say it is the only
realistic answer - that the moment has passed for
international sympathy for the separate state of East
Turkestan that many Uighurs claim. They say the only
question now is the terms under which participation
should happen. To not participate will only mean
further alienation and economic deprivation that will
set Uighur children further behind.
China may be offering Uighurs a choice to participate
by avoiding "the three evils" of separatism,
fundamentalism, and terrorism. But in a region that is
being systematically repopulated and modernized, there
is bound to be ethnic competition.
As official Li Dezhu said famously at a National State
Council meeting in 2000: "The development of the west
campaign will accelerate the natural selection process"
in Xinjiang.
Unlike the cause of Tibet - well funded, represented
by the moral authority of the Dalai Lama, and given
high media profile by Hollywood actors - the East
Turkestan cause has never attracted attention
internationally.
"Compared to the Tibetans, we get no publicity," says
Alim Seytoff of the Uighur American Association in
Washington. "We are the latecomer in the game. We only
got started in the 1990s."
The one universally respected figure among the Uighur
peoples is Rabiya Kadir, and she sits in a Chinese
jail in Urumchi. Ms. Kadir, described by one diplomat
as a "cross between Mother Teresa and Oprah Winfrey,"
was a delegate to the Chinese People's Congress, a
millionaire businesswoman, and was widely popular
among Uighurs as an example that they, too, could make
it in China.
Some scholars and diplomats feel it would be a wise
and ameliorative move for the Chinese to release Kadir,
whose crime was to possess newspaper clippings that
Chinese authorities said were separatist in nature.
Yet Uighurs like Mr. Seytoff in Washington say Kadir
was arrested and is being held to make a different
point: "If the US police were to arrest Bill Gates for
no reason, and hold him, what message would that send?
It would say that US authorities can arrest anyone,
even a billionaire. When China arrested Rabiya Kadir,
the message to Uighurs is, 'We can do anything to you.'
We understand that very clearly."
Even some Uighurs who want to participate in a new
Chinese Xinjiang are quite firm about wanting their
children to continue to learn Uighur language and
customs. An especially sore spot is the new government
policy to have young children study Chinese in school.
"I'm very concerned, and my husband is upset," says
one Uighur mother of a second-grader, whose family is
involved in local cooperation with the party.
"We will teach our children our language no matter
what it takes. We do not want this new policy," she
adds.
To improve assimilation, efforts are under way to have
Uighur and Han students attend school jointly. At
Middle School No. 1 in Korla, 730 Uighurs mix with
1,800 Han.
The Uighurs are invited to study in Chinese if they
wish. About 75 do.
The school hallways display paintings of Chinese poets,
Albert Einstein, and a Uighur communist hero, Abdul
Halik Regur, who fought the Kuomintang nationalists.
A large instructional poster in a stairwell highlights
"two musts." The first must: "We must fight separatism."
The second: "We must believe in Marxist atheism and
not attend religious activities."
Social-studies classes at Middle School No. 1 do not
contain materials on the intermittent periods prior to
1949 (and often cited by Uighurs outside China) when
the region was called "East Turkestan" and enjoyed
some autonomy.
"A student asking about this period would be
considered a separatist," says one social-studies
teacher, herself a Uighur.
Copyright © 2003 The Christian Science Monitor.
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