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The Story
Rimmed by snow-covered
mountains, Xinjiang is a mostly desert province in
western China that is home to 8 million Sufi Muslims
known as the Uighurs. FRONTLINE/World correspondent
Serene Fang traveled to Xinjiang to see how China
treats its Muslim population. But this trip would also
become a reporter's nightmare after a fateful
encounter with a Uighur man and a repressive
government.
"Coming here changed my life," Fang says.
Desolate Xinjiang is the Chinese equivalent of Siberia
-- it's where the Chinese built penal colonies and
where the country's only nuclear testing site is
located. In the streets of Kashgar, Fang sees people
who look very different from Han Chinese -- the
majority ethnic group in China -- with features more
like those of people in nearby Pakistan or far-off
Turkey. Fang notes that Uighurs practice a relaxed
form of Islam -- the men drink alcohol and the women
wear bright head scarves and rarely don veils. However,
Fang says, Chinese authorities are concerned that
militant Islamic ideas might seep through the open
border with Pakistan.
Since China took firm control of Xinjiang 50 years ago,
immigrants from the overcrowded east have streamed
into the region. Over the years, Uighurs have
protested Chinese control numerous times, only to be
defeated by crackdowns. Fang obtains footage smuggled
out of China that shows Uighurs attacking a Chinese
party headquarters in Hotan in 1995.
The Chinese have called Uighur dissidents Islamic
terrorists. "There were about 20 Uighurs caught in
Afghanistan, fighting alongside the Taliban," Fang
says. "They have been held in Guantánamo for years."
However, the United States is now prepared to release
them, saying they pose no threat to America. But
Secretary of State Powell announced that they would
not be repatriated to China for fear they would be
executed.
Because independent reporting is forbidden in this
region, Fang and her co-producer Monica Lam visit as
tourists and carry one small video camera. Their
Chinese tour guide tells them that originally, the
military had stationed him in Xinjiang -- a "hardship
post" that he slowly grew accustomed to. As he drives
Fang and Lam to a lake near the Pakistan border, their
guide makes the statement that the Uighurs don't eat
pork because their ancestors were pigs.
The next day, Fang hires a Uighur guide who takes her
around the Uighur neighborhoods in Kashgar, which are
poorer and more agricultural than the modern Chinese
areas in the city. Fang says her Uighur guide was
tight-lipped about politics when the camera was
rolling, but made a few comments off camera about how
difficult life is for Uighurs. She adds that another
Uighur man discreetly called her attention to the
photo of a famous Uighur businesswoman, Rebiya Kadeer,
who was imprisoned for eight years for giving
newspapers to a visiting delegation of Americans.
Fang had arranged one interview in advance with a
Uighur man, but the meeting was a difficult one. "He
was terrified. He sat in our hotel room, trembling,
for close to an hour." This man, she adds, seemed to
be the "embodiment of the fear and results [of Chinese
policy toward the Uighurs]." He could not bring
himself to talk on camera.
Determined to meet with a Uighur dissident, Fang
returns to the United States and meets with Alim
Seytoff, a Uighur exile who has decided to speak out.
Together with his brother, Seytoff gained political
asylum in the United States. Seytoff explains that his
father, who believed that the Uighur minority deserved
an independent state, was sentenced to 10 years in a
Chinese prison.
Seytoff says that Uighurs are forced to live according
to Chinese culture and standards -- a situation that
he calls unacceptable. "That's why, as feeble as we
are, we're still struggling against Chinese rule," he
adds.
While still in the United States, Fang receives an
email from the Uighur man in Xinjiang who had been too
frightened to talk to her; the situation had gotten
worse, he wrote, and he had decided to talk to her.
In October 2004, Fang flew back on her own to Xinjiang
to meet with the man.
Fang recounts their conversation: He said the
government would punish him severely if it was
discovered that he talked to her. He didn't advocate
separatism, but said that Uighurs just wanted to speak
freely. He said he didn't know of any Uighur
terrorists. The man brought with him a list of about
20 Uighurs who he'd read in the newspaper had been
imprisoned or executed.
The on-camera interview ended around sunset, and Fang
and the Uighur man left his small hotel room together.
As they stepped outside, two men grabbed them, showed
them police identification and escorted them back to
the Uighur man's hotel room.
"They had him stand against the wall," recalls Fang.
"He was so frightened that he fell to his knees and
passed out. They took him to another room, and when
they brought him back, he was just crying. Crying with
his head in his hands."
Fang says that as the Chinese police interrogated her,
they kept asking her why she was so interested in
terrorists. "Again and again, just conflating the
words 'terrorist,' 'Uighur,' 'separatist.' In their
minds, it was all one thing," she says.
The Chinese police confiscated Fang's videotape of the
interview with the Uighur man.
Fang says that since that October night, she hasn't
been able to learn anything about the man's
whereabouts. She says human rights advocates have told
her that given the record of China's harsh treatment
of Uighurs, she should be happy for him if he gets
just three to five years in prison.
But now, in an effort to bring attention to his case,
she has decided to reveal his identity.
His name is Sitiwaldi (Dilkex) Tilivaldi, and he was
taken away on October 19, 2004, by the Chinese
authorities.
The whole experience has left Fang shaken.
"I subscribe to journalistic ethics that say that the
story is important, and it's important to get the
truth out there," Fang says, shedding tears. "But the
price was very high -- and I didn't have to pay it. So
if I could take it back, I would. I think about his
wife and his children. What are they going to do? So,
I regret."
http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/china401/thestory.html
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