Produced by the Eastern Turkistan Information Center

6 November 1996

6 November 1996, OMRI Daily Digest

4 November 1996, CND-Global

4 November 1996, Eastern Turkistan Information Center

4 November 1996, REUTER

1 November 1996, THE NEW YORK TIMES

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(1) RUSSIA TO OPEN UNOFFICIAL MISSION IN TAIWAN

6 November 1996, OMRI Daily Digest

A former diplomat, Vladimir Malshev, has been dispatched to Taipei, where he will open a non- governmental Russian mission before the end of the year, ITAR-TASS reported on 5 November. An analogous Taiwanese mission has been operating in Moscow since 1993. The mission's main function is to promote economic ties; Taiwanese-Russian trade reached $1.8 billion in 1995 and totaled $842 million in the first eight months of 1996. Russia accepts mainland China's "one China" policy, and does not recognize Taiwan. The opening of the informal mission was discussed with the Chinese ambassador in Moscow, Li Fenglin, who told ITAR-TASS that Russia has pledged the mission will not have any official political or diplomatic functions. -- Scott Parrish

(2) COMMUNISM WILL VANISH WITHIN THE NEXT FIVE YEARS LECH WALESA PREDICTED

4 November 1996, CND-Global

Communism will vanish within the next five years and be supplanted by liberty and democracy, Lech Walesa, the former president of Poland, predicted. Meeting with President Lee, Welesa said the few countries maintaining communist systems are opposing the world trend and cannot hold out for long.

(3) UYGHUR PROTEST IN MUNICH

4 November 1996, Eastern Turkistan Information Center

On October 28, 1996, the Eastern Turkistani Union in Europe in cooperation with the Society for Threatened Peoples, organized an action of protest against selling in Germany toys made in the People's Republic of China. The demonstration went under slogans "DO NOT BY CHINESE TOYS!", "NO MORE MONEY FOR REPRESSIONS OF THE UYGHURS!" and other.

Almost all Uyghurs living in Germany and representatives of the Society for Threatened Peoples took part in the protest.Many Germans, especially German press and media correspondents, expressed great interests in the action. Several German radio and television companies broadcasted news about the protest.

Eastern Turkistani Union in Europe is an Uyghur organization based in Munich, Germany, which represents all the Uyghurs in Europe.

The Society for Threatened Peoples is a nongovernmental organization which has a consultative status of the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations. Its headquarter is located in Gottingen, Germany. --Abduljelil

(4) TALEBAN REFUSES TO TALK PEACE

4 November 1996, REUTER

The United Nations, the Organization of the Islamic Conference and surrounding nations have been trying to bring Afghanistan's warring factions together for negotiations since the fall of the communist government in 1992, so far with little success.

(5) IN CHECHNYA, RUSSIA'S PRESENCE IS FADING

1 November 1996, THE NEW YORK TIMES

ZUMTSOI, Russia -- Draped in mists and surrounded by the unassailable, snow-covered peaks of the Caucasus, the Chechen elders gathered on a hilltop here to thank God for bringing them victory in their war against Russia.

They prayed on a giant tarpaulin and then ate lamb stewed for hours in vast black caldrons. It was a celebration without joy though, because, as the separatists' president, Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, told the assembled villagers, "war is very hard for our bodies but what is to

come will be much harder for our souls."Allah demands that we be free to live as a holy land, as an Islamic land," he said, as the men nodded their agreement. "We will get nothing from Russia, and we must be glad. They bring death, and ours is the way of God. Now must come the struggle for Allah."

Two months after Chechen separatists defeated the Russian army, this republic remains a part of Russia in name alone. Officials in Moscow discuss the future of the region with great intensity, always saying that Chechnya must never be independent. But for the Chechens, that

kind of talk means nothing any more: The traditional green Chechen flag of the lone wolf flies over every battle-scarred town hall in the shattered republic.

The puppet government installed by Moscow has vanished. Its leader, Doku Zavgayev, lives in Moscow. Pakistan, Jordan, Iran, and Afghanistan -- Muslim countries that have supported Chechnya's war -- have each sent emissaries and cash to help guide the republic. The mayor of Grozny is the nephew of Dzhokar Dudayev, the rebel leader who was killed this year in a bombing raid. The man in charge of distributing credentials to the journalists in the Republic of Ichkeria, as the rebels call their land, helped lead the infamous 1995 raid on city ofBudyonnovsk.

Russian soldiers assigned to joint patrols in Grozny keep to their barracks, ask no questions, and let the rebels do the work. Despite peace agreements, cadres of hardened Chechen fighters rule every city from Grozny, the capital, to this mountain hamlet on the border of

Georgia, 45 miles to the south."Look around you," said Lechi Dudayev, the young mayor. "Does this feel like a part of Russia to you? Or does it seem like something different, a very different country?"

Despite the fact that many ethnic Russians still live here -- so far without any evidence of persecution -- the laws and traditions of Russian life have been discarded almost overnight. Only weeks after the Russians were driven from Grozny, Yandarbiyev published a new set of laws decreeing that Chechnya would be ruled by sharia, or Islamic law.

All has not changed, however. In the vast Grozny market, the gun-dealers are back, working the same corner they occupied in 1994 until Russian bombers drove them to the hills. Kiosks sell boxed sets of graphic videos of the most vicious battles of the war to a public eager to watch their glory repeated as often as possible. There is no liquor for sale in any major town. Public drinking is now punishable by "no more" than 40 lashes, according to the new code, which directly contradicts the laws and constitution of the Russian Federation.

"The government set up by Russia is recognized by the United Nations" said Tim Guildimann, who runs the Grozny assistance office of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. "But reality is different. International law regards the people here as criminals.But can you find Russians running Chechnya? The Chechens are using Islam, not in the way it is used in Afghanistan or Iran. They are believers but not fanatics. Here Islam is a new weapon: a bulwark of Chechen culture against the Russian monolith."

Although rebel leaders here have not enforced sharia as broadly or as strictly as in some Muslim countries, they say they will need Islam -- this new weapon -- to fight the next grim stage of their war this winter. The guns are largely silent on the plains where tens of thousands have died in the last two years. Now ruins and grief remain. No town has escaped destruction. Yandarbiyev said that it would cost $150 billion to reconstruct the republic, riddled as it is with bomb craters from one end to the other.

It is a figure apparently pulled from air. But it may not be as strange as it seems. How much does it cost to build a city of 400,000, which Grozny once was, from scratch? Entire sections of the city are without heat or light. There are only a few public water spouts to serve the population. Dozens of villages and smaller settlements have been demolished beyond hope of repair. No village has running water or plumbing. There is no full-service hospital. Roads are pitted and rutted mudslicks. Forests have become mine fields.

In Orekhovo, a mountain village of 6,000 where just two years ago the homes were shaded by rich elm trees, there is no longer a single house standing. The trees are warped and stunted as if a giant fire had swept across the fertile land.

"I can tell you this," said Salamat Khadjiyev, a once-prosperous Grozny resident whose house and spirit have been crushed by the war, "Russia sure isn't going to pay to fix our country." That is true. Claiming that promises made during the presidential elections this year were

imprudent, Anatoly Chubais, the chief-of-staff to President Boris Yeltsin, has already revoked several decrees that had promised large amounts of money to rebuild Chechnya.

Russia can't pay its teachers salaries. Soldiers and miners are foraging for food. So it is not surprising that Moscow cannot find a rationale for sending huge amounts of money to bolster a hated enemy. The word reparation is never spoken. So the Chechen people, facing a cold winter with diminishing aid, even from relief agencies, have turned to the one place eager to help: the Islamic world.

"We have called on our friends in Iran, in Turkey, in Pakistan, and Jordan," said Salmon Raduyev, one of the more extreme Chechen battle commanders, who led a hostage raid to Dagestan this year and was pinned down in a small border village by thousands of Russian soldiers before he and most of his men escaped. "Our friends won't let us down."

How much money these countries -- and their wealthy private citizens who helped finance the Chechen war -- will contribute is impossible to guess. They would have to produce an Islamic version of the Marshall Plan to rebuild the region, and that is unlikely. They may, however

strengthen the Islamic bond between Chechnya, where most Muslims have not been extreme in their beliefs or actions, and some of the most militantly Islamic countries.

And that is an outcome that has serious implications for Russia, and for the West, which increasingly looks to this region where the European and Asian worlds collide for new sources of oil and gas in a part of the world where stability has never seemed possible.

"This is a dangerous time for Chechnya," said Vakhit Akayev, a Chechen and a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences who is an expert on Islamic law. He pointed out that when the greatest Chechen warrior of the 19th century, Imam Shamyl, attempted to impose a strict brand of Islamic law on the Caucasus, the people rebelled.

"It is not our way to be as dogmatic and unyielding as other countries in interpreting the Koran," he said. "But human nature cannot be defeated. If we now find our only friends are those countries where the most repressive forms of religious law are enforced, it is only natural that those are the countries to which our people will be attracted. That is why now, above all, it makes no sense for liberals in Russia and Westerners to forget about us."

In the town of Shali, which has been a center of radicalism in the Caucasus for 300 years, the Russian House of Culture has been turned into a center for Islamic consciousness-raising. One recent day, a hundred people filled a hall lit by a single dim bulb. Speaker after speaker rose to remind the assembled masses of the privations Russia had brought them.

"This has been our law for 1,000 years," the head of the Sharia Court, Said Adamatov, said at the meeting. "We do not need constitutions to live with honor. People speak to me of the extremes of sharia. Do not speak of extremes in this place. Not to people who have lived through what our people have endured." The listeners, many among them infirm and elderly, were on their feet by this time. "I speak to you only of decency and fairness," he said softly but with fire in his black eyes. "This is Islam. And now this will be Chechnya."

Prepared by:

Abdulrakhim Aitbayev (rakhim@lochbrandy.mines.edu)

WUNN newsletter index

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The World Uyghur Network News electronic newsletter is produced by the Eastern Turkistan Information Center (ETIC) in cooperation with the Taklamakan Uighur Human Rights Association (USA), and is devoted to the current political, cultural and economic developments in Eastern Turkistan and to the Uyghur people related issues.

Eastern Turkistan (Sherqiy Turkistan in Uyghur) is a name used by the indigenous people of the region for their motherland located in what is at present the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region of the People's Republic China.

The World Uyghur Network News brings information on situation in Eastern Turkistan from the Uyghur and other sources to the attention of the international community.

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EASTERN TURKISTAN INFORMATION CENTER

Director: Abduljelil Karkash

Lindwurmstr 99, 80337 Munich, Germany

http://www.uygur.com

Fax: 49-89-54 45 63 30 Phone: 49-89-54 40 47 72

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