East Turkista Report

I would like to begin by thanking the organisers of this Summit, particularly Shaykh Abctalqadir as-Sufi, and Amir Abu Bakr Reiger and the Weimar Institute for giving me the opportunity to meet all these muslim brothers from around the world and to report on the situation of the muslims in East Turkistan.

I want to start by speaking about the muslirn Ummah in general because we are all part of this wide Ummah. What the brothers in Kosovo suffer today, twenty-five million Turks of East Turkistan have also suffered through the years up until the present day. Although we live in one world and the Umniah is becoming stronger and stronger, East Turkistan remains like a forgotten corner of this world.

I will inform you briefly about our Information Centre here in Germany and also give you information about the people of East Turkistan. East Turkistan is under the control of China now and if we consider it within the borders of China, it would constitute one fifth of the whole of China. lt is situated in the north west of

China. The Uyghurs are the tribe of the greater Turkish nation and the Uyghur people have a history of more than 2,000 years and they have not moved from their original place, they are still liv-ing where they have always lived.

More than 1000 years ago one of our ancestors, Karakhanid Empror Satuk Bugra Han accepted Islam by his own choice. There was no battle fought, he accepted it freely and we have lived now for more than 1000 years as muslims. 1 do not want to go too far into historical details, 1 just want to point out that the people of East Turkistan have always lived freely and they have always had command of themselves until the recent encounters with the Chinese, when the Communists came to power in China.

In 1933 and in 1944 East Turkistan declared its independence but this was not recognised by Chinese and it was occupied by them, and they have even changed the name of East Turkestan to Xinjiang ( It means the new land) . The independence of East Turkistan was made impossible by Russia and China, with agreements between Stalin and Mao, who did not want independent republics in this region, and with the co-operation of the British, who did not want to have an Islaniic republic there. All these forces came together and prevented East Turkistan from becoming an independent country. Since 1950, the people of East Turkistan have never ceased to fight for their independence and there have been more than one hundred uprisings so far, both political and otherwise.

The people who live in East Turkistan are very strong in their Deen. Ever since they took on Islam, they have been very sincere in it. This is also one of the major reasons why the Chinese oppress them so strongly. You know how powerful the leader Genghis Khan was, but now the Mongols are in a very weak position. Only the Uyghurs and some Tibetans have retained their strength today, and the reason is that they have always dung to their Deen and been sincere in it. Mongols who have now been under Chinese rule for nearly two hundred years have lost almost everything of their being Mongols. They have lost their language and their culture and have become Chinese. However, the Han Chinese of today have historically never been independent, they have either been under the Manchurian Empire, or under Mongul rule.

There is a reason why 1 am returning to these historical facts. The Chinese, without ever having fought, have occupied all the surrounding territories and peoples with their policy of assimilation. If you look closely, you will find sixty different nations living within the borders of China today. In today‘s perception of China, the world recognises the Uyghurs and the Tibetans but all the rest are presented and known simply as Chinese.

In the past fifty years, since approximately 1949, the Chinese have begun their policy of settling their own people in East Turkistan, and the Chinese population - which was previously about three hundred thousand in this region - is today equal to the native population of East Turkistan. This policy is still continuing, and the aim of the Chinese is to have two hundred million Chinese living in East Turkistan in the very near future. The intention of the Chinese is to outnumber the original population of East Turkistan by settling more and more Chinese. Today the numbers are equal. Previously there were twenty-five million living in this area, so in ten years the Chinese population has increased to such an extent that the Uyghurs will soon become the minority. What use will so-called independence or autonomy be to us then? In the case of Kosovo, where their numbers are so high, constituting 90% of the population, it still does not prevent them from being persecuted.

The Uyghur people are very aware of this danger and in the last two years they have accelerated and given more weight to their struggle for liberation, but the Chinese policy is to encircle these areas so that the rest of the world does not get any news and cannot go to see these places. The situation is such that some tinies, in some regions, one village does not know what is happening in die next village.

The people of East Turkestan now rely only on Allah in their struggle. Because of what we have seen in l3osnia, Afghanistan and in other places, we now expect nothing from the West. Also our situation is that we are somehow cut off from the world. Geographically our country is situated in very high mountains, and it is also surrounded by mountains that are so high that even birds have difficulty crossing them. Another reason for us being cut off is that the Chinese always distrupt any broadcasting, so we cannot receive any foreign television or radio channels.

We need to have a TV channel or radio broadcast channel but these things are all very expensive and the number of Uyghurs abroad is not large. Now we are relying on the development of the Internet services and making use of this facility with our people who live and study in the United States who have set up web pages to inform people. They have done this in three languages. Firstly in German because 1 am based here in Germany, and then in English to give access to a wider audience and also in Turkish because it is our language and the language spoken among our people.

Every week we update the news about events in East Turkistan and we have an extensive list of e-mail addresses. We inform the media and news agencies about what is happening in East Turkistan . Our name has become known as a source of reliable news and CNN has put a link to our website in their website. The magazine also frequently receives news from US.

For 50 years our people have been in a situation in which religious education is completely prohibited. As you know, in 1966 there began a ten-year cultural revolution, and during this period not only Islam but also other religions were repressed and religious literature was taken from their hands. Education was forbidden and they even went as far as to violate the Qur‘an by taking it from the people and destroying it.

We find there are about fifty muslim nations in the world today which are independent, and some of them are also very rich, but we have so far not received any substantial help from any of them. 1 am really not content with the lack of support from the muslim countries. To give an example, the only help comes from the old people when they go to the Hajj and they buy books in Arabia and send them home. This is the only source of books for us. We know it is impossible for the other muslims countries to supply arms and it is also very difficult for them to help with money - but what about sending us some books? At least they can help by sending us some books.

1 am really disappointed with the reactions to the cause of East Turkestan. Some years ago 1 left my country — and this was not a desire to escape from there and to have a good life in the West. 1 left to raise the voice for the people of East Turkestan and to facilitate the education of our people in religious terms and also in the sciences. 1 have been invited to Turkey, 1 have been invited to Saudi Arabia and some other places, but what 1 have experienced is that people give promises but they have not fulfilled these promises so far. 1 canie to Germany and started as a worker doing very simple work and then in time built up computer services and now we are producing a magazine published in our own language and script. lt was not easy to obtain the special program for writing in our own script. In addition to the magazine we have published twenty new books.

1 would like to briefly explain what 1 really want. 1 was in Saudi Arabia last Ramadhan. 1 went to the Ministry of Islamic Affairs and 1 went to Rabitat and presented my magazine which contained Qur‘anic education, hadith, and also excerpts and lessons from the main works of famous Islamic scholars. 1 presented this magazine and asked for help and 1 have not received any.

Shaykh Abdalqadir as-Sufi: ,But you must understand that the moment they receive a piece of information they just pass it automatically to the American Intelligence officer in Makkah. Every single document.‘

Look at the christians and what they can do. Five years ago they had already published the bible in our own Uyghur language. An organisation from Hamburg sent some video tapes to our community, in the Kazak language, showing the history of christianity from the beginning until the present day, and in terms of propoganda it was very weil done.

We all thank Allah for being muslims but could not more be done in terms of Islamic da‘wa and Islamic cooperation? 1 am very upset about the position the rest of the muslim countries take. 1 want to give an example. Pakistan is a neighbouring country and they have intimate relations with the Chinese government. 1 do not want to say anything about the muslim population of Pakistan in general, 1 am talking about the government and government policy and 1 want to tell you an incident which has upset me very much. Some 12 or 13 students from , who went to Pakistan to study there, were returned to China on the basis of agreements between the Pakistani and Chinese governments, and on their return to China these students were shot in front of the eyes of the Pakistani people and they simply let this happen. 1 have received statements from the Islam.ic party in Pakistan saying that they are in negotiations with the Chinese about the issue of Kashmir, and therefore they cannot put more weight on the issue of .

The Chinese have been observing what has happened in Afghanistan, and it was clear also in Chechnya, so they are very scared of such a situation in East Turkistan. There are liberation fighters in and they are very weil organised, so the Chinese forces have no control over them. They cannot get hold of them, but what they do is block the way of simple people who just want to go to the mosque and do their ibada, but there are still people who go secretly to have some education in their Deen.

To summarise how we view the whole issue of East Turkestan: either we live as we like or we die fighting. My last word is that we have to be friends with the Friends of Allah and enemies with the enemies of Allah. Unless we have achieved this we will not be satisfied.

Note by Shaykh Abdalqadir as-Sufi:

According to western Relief Agencies, the situation is very serious. In the last two years, 560,000 young people between the ages of 13 and 30 have been arrested for different reasons by the Chinese. Many of them have been sentenced to life imprisonment, and some have been sentenced to dead. 5,000 have died after being tortured. The fact that no action is being taken by theWest to help them is an indication of how important to the Americans is the sustaining of China‘s Most Favoured Nation status, and how mythic is the doctrine of ,Human Rights‘.

People are urged to support the East Turkestan community and to help disseminate this information to all appropriate sources of zakat and sadaqa.

East Turkestan Information Centre
Director: Abduljelil Karkash
Lindwurmstr. 99; 80337 Munich, Germany
www.uygur.com e-mail: etic@~uygur.com
Tel: +4989 5440 4772 Fax: +49 89 5445 6330

Donations to: Uygurisher Verein e. V
Stadtsparkasse Muenchen Germany
Account Number: 907 227 100 Root Number: 701 50000