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Chinese Court Jails Uyghur Editor
for Publishing Veiled Dissent
2005.11.10 RFA
WASHINGTON—Chinese authorities have jailed the chief
editor of the Kashgar Literature Journal for
publishing a fable they regard as a veiled indictment
of China’s heavy-handed rule in the northwestern
Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, Radio Free Asia (RFA)
has learned. The author of the story is already
serving a 10-year jail term for inciting separatism.
Korash Huseyin, 35, is chief editor at Kashgar
Literature Journal, according to several sources
inside Xinjiang who spoke to RFA’s Uyghur service on
condition of anonymity. He and his wife have three
children.
A court in the southern Xinjiang city of Kashgar has
sentenced him to three years in jail for publishing
the original short story “Wild Pigeon” by Nurmuhemmet
Yasin, currently serving a 10-year sentence for
inciting Uyghur separatism by writing it.
Fable seen as criticizing China
Both Yasin and Huseyin belong to the Muslim Uyghur
ethnic group that accounts for most of the population
in Xinjiang, a vast territory rich in mineral
resources and of great strategic importance to Beijing
on its northwestern borders.
No further information about the case was immediately
available, and a police official contacted by phone
Thursday declined to comment.
“This kind of matter, we don’t open it to the outside,”
the official said. Asked if police had arrested
Huseyin, the officer replied, “We don’t know” and hung
up the phone.
The Kashgar Literature Journal published “Wild Pigeon”
in late 2004. Apparently reading the story as a tacit
criticism of Chinese rule in the region, Kashgar
police arrested Yasin, on Nov. 29, 2004.
At the time of his arrest, authorities confiscated
Yasin’s personal computer, which contained an
estimated 1,600 poems, commentaries, stories, and one
unfinished novel, according to sources in the region.
Narrator commits suicide
Yasin, born March 6, 1974, is married with two young
sons. His story, titled “Yawa Kepter” in the Uyghur
language, translates literally as “untamed or wild
dove” or “untamed pigeon,” as Uyghur uses the same
word for both species.
The story is the fictional first-person narrative of a
young pigeon—the son of a pigeon king—who is trapped
and caged by humans when he ventures far from home.
In the end, the narrator commits suicide by swallowing
a poisonous strawberry rather than sacrifice his
freedom, just as his own father committed suicide
under similar conditions years earlier.
“The poisons from the strawberry flow through me,” the
unnamed pigeon remarks to himself at the end. “Now,
finally, I can die freely. I feel as if my soul is on
fire—soaring and free.”
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