Produced by the Eastern Turkistan Information Center

4 February 1999

In this issue:

(1) STRONG QUAKE JOLTS REMOTE NORTHWESTERN CHINA
The Associated Press, Jan. 30, 1999

(2) CHINA HOLDS CENTRAL ASIAN OUTPOST
By CHARLES HUTZLER Associated Press Writer, Jan. 30, 1999

(3) MUSLIM SEPARATIST RECEIVES DEATH SENTENCE IN XINJIANG
Agence France Presse, Jan. 28, 1999

(4) DEMOLITION OF BEIJING MOSLEM MINORITY 'VILLAGE' SPARKS ANGER
Agence France Presse, Jan. 26, 1999

(5) CHINA: INSTABILITY IN THE EAST PAUL GOBLE ON EASTERN TURKESTAN
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Jan. 25, 1999

(6) RIOTERS JAILED AMID CALL TO CRUSH REBE
AGENCIES, Jan. 23, 1999

(7) CHINA SEPARATISTS SINGLED OUT
The Associated Press, Jan. 22, 1999

(8) CHINA JAILS 29 FOR ROLE IN 1997 XINJIANG RIOTS
Reuters, Jan. 22, 1999

(9) OFFICIAL PLEDGES TO SMASH SEPARATIST ACTIVITY IN CHINA
The Associated Press, Jan. 22, 1999

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(1) STRONG QUAKE JOLTS REMOTE NORTHWESTERN CHINA

The Associated Press, Jan. 30, 1999

BEIJING (AP) -- A strong earthquake rattled a remote area in northwestern China's Xinjiang region Saturday, but there were no immediate reports of injuries or damage, the state-run Xinhua News Agency said.

The magnitude 5.6 quake struck at 11:51 a.m. (0351 GMT) in southern Toksun county, about 150 kilometers (95 miles) southeast of the regional capital of Urumqi, the report said.

It said the area, which is mainly desert, is sparsely populated, but damages from the quake were under investigation.

The Xinjiang quake followed one of similar intensity Friday in Inner Mongolia, where a magnitude-5.2 tremor hit grasslands used by nomadic herders on the steppe north of Xilinhot city, 450 kilometers (280 miles) north of Beijing.

Xinhua reported that heavy snowfall hampered damage assessment teams from getting to the worst-hit area. But the seismologist with the Central Seismology Bureau said the quake was not powerful enough to cause casualties in such a sparsely populated area.

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(2) CHINA HOLDS CENTRAL ASIAN OUTPOST

By CHARLES HUTZLER Associated Press Writer, Jan. 30, 1999

YINING, China (AP) - No one wants to talk about the riot. Not the Muslim men trading gossip over tea and mutton kebabs. Not the merchant selling raisins and dates from famed Central Asian oases. Not China's busy Communist Party functionary.

The most serious challenge this decade to Chinese rule over ist predominantly Muslim far west region, the Yining riot runs like an ominous undercurrent through the Xinjiang region.

Nearly two years since the upheaval, the border city remains shaken by fear. Its Han Chinese and Muslim ethnics are sullen. Gunbattles and court-ordered executions persist.

``This is not our place anymore. We're a minority,'' said one merchant, a member of Xinjiang's largest Muslim ethnic group, the Uighurs. ``The Chinese and the Uighurs can never be together.'' Like other Uighurs, he agreed to talk with a reporter only on condition of anonymity.

As Yining goes, so goes the rest of Xinjiang province. Ethnic nationalism, resurgent Islam and a trade in heroin and weapons that has fueled separatist violence have pierced the porous borders of China's strategic buffer land with Central Asia.

With resentment over Chinese migration and perceived income disparities sharpening, the simmering conflict has become the most violent internal threat China faces and could ignite ethnic turmoil in other parts of the country.

China's Communist Party leaders now nervously watch the border, trying to shepherd the prosperity greater trade with Central Asia could bring while weeding out smugglers of contraband and spreaders of subversion.

Border patrols have been stepped up. People who live near the border with Kazakstan complain of stricter controls on their movements. Party officials even plan by the end of next year to find permanent housing for the last of the nomads of the border steppes.

On an inspection tour of Xinjiang last summer, party General Secretary Jiang Zemin urged stability above all. He cited economic links with Central Asia as key. Vowing to carry out Jiang's orders, Xinjiang's top party official has ordered a ``high state of alert'' against
separatists and their foreign supporters.

``They are intensifying collaboration, plotting to open a new test of strength with us in a struggle that is ever sharper and more complex,'' party secretary Wang Lequan told a meeting of regional officials in December.

Yining stands at the crossroads of prosperity and separatism. The city lies on a sprawling oasis that caravans used for centuries to bring Chinese silk bound for Europe across Xinjiang's forbidding deserts. Uighurs and Kazaks declared a short-lived East Turkistan Republic there
in the last years of World War II.

Tensions between the Muslims and the Chinese worsened when the Soviet Union disintegrated and new nations arose in Central Asia. Yining, where the drab high-rises that blight most Chinese cities tower over onion-domed mosques, is only 280 miles from Kazakstan's bustling Almaty city, about one-sixth the distance to Beijing.

On Feb. 5, 1997, calls for independence by Uighurs boiled over in protest. Hundreds took to the streets shouting ``God is great'' and ``Independence for Xinjiang.'' Police and soldiers moved in and two days of beating, shooting and burning ensued.

The protest's genesis and the casualty count in quelling it are disputed. Zhou Yuan, party secretary for the Yili region, of which Yining is the capital, refused during an interview to discuss why the protest erupted. He blamed it on a few organizers who hoodwinked ``several hundred'' people, and he stuck to the official death toll of 10.

Accounts from Uighur exile groups, purportedly from witnesses, said the protests came amid a crackdown on religious gatherings. They said security forces needed water cannons, tear gas and bullets to quell two days of protests and put deaths at more than 100.

A legacy of bad feelings and dread remains. ``If the people and the military unite to a man then who in the world will dare to be our enemy,'' reads one government signboard in Yining.

One Xinjiang official warned foreign reporters from asking about the riot. Uighurs approached on the street refused to talk about it, lending credence to a rumor circulated by exiles that an order of silence was issued to the populace.

``In our culture, we do what the father says. If he says `don't smoke,' we don't smoke. Whatever he says, right or wrong, we do,'' said one Uighur food hawker at a night market in a Muslim neighborhood.

The silence has not ended the violence. Clashes erupted in April, June and July of 1998 when suspected separatists resisted arrest by police, Zhou, the Yili party secretary, said. Among the arrested were people trained by groups abroad and infiltrated back into Xinjiang to ``commit
violent terrorist acts,'' he said.

Although Zhou declined to identify which groups were doing the training and where, he said recruitment was done on the annual Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca.

A Uighur diaspora stretching across Central Asia to Turkey and lobbying groups in Europe and recently Washington have kept independence dreams alive. Western and Chinese academics say Uighur gangs are believed to be smuggling drugs and using the proceeds to buy arms in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

At Horgas, hard on the Kazak border, 55 miles west of Yining, ``weapons and drugs are our major targets,'' said Major He Jingdong, head of a 30-guard border patrol detail.

Nearly 700 people cross the border-marking dry riverbed every day to trade at Horgas' daily market.

The Horgas party secretary, Lu Jianxin, blamed the weapons trade on lax officials in Kazakstan.

The border guard major said his 30 guards hard hard-pressed to deal with smuggling. Although he would not describe the contraband discovered, he said smuggling goes on at all of Xinjiang's 14 border crossings.

Signs for drug treatment programs dot the 420-mile highway from Yining to Urumqi, Xinjiang's capital. About halfway, in Jinghe town, one young Uighur estimated that one in five of his friends uses drugs. Xinjiang has China's second largest AIDS epidemic, primarily transmitted among heroin addicts.

Uighurs in Yining complain that the government has tightened restrictions on passports, allowing only the very young and the very old to travel to Central Asia.

``Our world used to be so big,'' said one young clothes merchant. ``It would be good if we could get out, see the world, get an education and then come back. Now we can't go anywhere.''

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(3) MUSLIM SEPARATIST RECEIVES DEATH SENTENCE IN XINJIANG

Agence France Presse, Jan. 28, 1999

BEIJING. A Muslim separatist has been sentenced to death and another given a suspended death penalty in China's troubled far north region of Xinjiang, Amnesty International said Thursday.

The two men were among 12 Uighurs tried at Korgas court, a small town on the border with Kazakhstan, for manufacturing explosives, the London-based rights groups said.

The court sentenced Abdushukur Nurallah, 33, to death and handed down a death sentence suspended for one year on Perhat Mollahun, 35, after an "unfair secret trial," Amnesty said in a statement.

"It is feared they were tortured to force them to confess to the charges," the statement added, without indicating what sentences were handed down to the other 10 defendants.

A court official refused to make any comment about the death sentences, saying only there was a major public hearing on Jan. 25 in Korgas when 39 people "were sentenced."

An official at the foreign department of the Ili district that covers Korgas also would only confirm that some separatists were recently tried and sentenced.

Amnesty said 29 other Muslim separatists were sentenced in the same region on Jan. 8 by a court in Yining for taking part in anti-Chinese riots in February 1997 which left between 10 to 100 people dead.

Among them one was sentenced to death suspended for a year and another was given life imprisonment. Suspended death sentences are usually commuted to life imprisonment.

At least 12 people were executed in 1997 for their role in the riots in Yining.

Xinjiang has been rocked by unrest following tensions between the majority Uighur population and the minority Han Chinese.

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(4) DEMOLITION OF BEIJING MOSLEM MINORITY 'VILLAGE' SPARKS ANGER

Agence France Presse, Jan. 26, 1999

BEIJING. Beijing city authorities have begun demolishing a street of Moslem minority restaurants, sparking anger and desperation among the 1,000 or more inhabitants of "Xinjiang village."

"The city government has told us to leave because they are demolishing our restaurants by the end of the month," said a woman Tuesday in one eatery specializing in food from Xinjiang, a Moslem region of northwest China where anti-Beijing tensions have been known to erupt into
violence.

"People were crying all over the place," said a man in "Xinjiang village" in Beijing's Ganjiakou district. "We've got until the end of the month, then we have to go -- I don't know where."

The owners, workers and families at the more than 30 Xinjiang restaurants have been ordered to leave their establishments and adjacent homes -- by Jan. 28 for one end of the street and Jan. 30 for the other.

A Beijing city official confirmed the order, issued less than three weeks before the deadline to move and with no compensation proposals attached.

He told AFP the reason was "to repair the road which runs through the village," but was unable to confirm plans to demolish a second "village" nearby.

"We don't know where we'll go or what will happen," said a restaurateur who preferred to identify himself as Mehmet. "Many of us sold our homes in Xinjiang to pour money into our restaurants because the government was encouraging business. Now we've got nothing."

"Even animals are better treated than we are," lamented a man in his 60s, who said he had put 300,000 yuan (36,000 dollars) into his 60-seat restaurant in recent years.

"I don't know what happened to the government's policy of helping the minorities. We could end up as beggars."

Since late patriarch Deng Xiaoping launched his program of economic reforms 20 years ago, Beijing has acted as a magnet to China's ethnic minorities, who have flocked to sell their food, artifacts and traditional performances to a city increasingly on the lookout for something new.

The two main Xinjiang villages, at Ganjiakou and Weigongcun in the west of the city, began as a handful of shacks selling hand-made noodles with lamb and Moslem-style naan bread 10 years ago.

Each restaurant supports a family of at least three or four people, together with 10-to-30 staff. Many owners have several children at school in Beijing, paying up to 15,000 yuan ($1,800) for each because they are from out of town.

Thousands of small businesses and restaurants across the city operate in legal gray areas, between planning departments struggling to tidy up the city and local officials happy to take taxes and fees from local traders.

"We knew there was a risk," Mehmet said. "But we didn't think there would be no provision made for us at all."

Beijing residents complain of the traffic congestion and mess caused by the villages, which have become popular tourist attractions, but admit people from other regions and provinces are among the first to be moved in such clean-up programs.

Xinjiang has some 17 million people and Uighurs make up 48 percent of the population, but the proportion has continued to fall in the face of waves of Han Chinese immigrants who now comprise 38 percent of the population.

The Chinese authorities have been unable to stifle a separatist movement which has been fighting for several years despite harsh crackdowns.

The separatists receive little help from outside China's borders, with the exception of largely moral support from Uighur communities overseas.

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(5) CHINA: INSTABILITY IN THE EAST PAUL GOBLE ON EASTERN TURKESTAN

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Jan. 25, 1999

Prague. A Chinese crackdown against separatism in its predominantly Muslim Xinjiang region is likely to affect Beijing's relations not only with the adjoining countries of Central Asia but with other states as well.

On the one hand, this latest Chinese move seems certain to undercut
Beijing's ties with Central Asian states by highlighting Chinese
antagonism to Muslims within its own borders.

On the other, this move appears likely to lead the Chinese to adopt a more sympathetic view of Russia and Moscow's efforts to revive and strengthen the Commonwealth of Independent States as a means to limit the influence of Central Asian countries on Xinjiang.

And taken together, these two shifts are thus likely to change the geopolitical dynamics of inner Asia, possibly affecting oil pipeline routes and political alliances of concern to governments much further away.

Xinjiang Communist Party chief Wang Lequan announced the latest crackdown in a January 16 speech. He said that his region is now "the constant target of separatists both inside and outside the country."

He added that the "crimes" of the separatists must be "severely and swiftly punished with greater force and vigorous measures." And in conclusion, he noted that "You must absolutely never give them even half a chance."

As if to punctuate his words, Chinese officials said Friday that a Xinjiang court had jailed 29 Muslim separatists. They said they were convicted for ethnic rioting, stealing money to support separatism, and attacking Muslims who had cooperated with Chinese authorities.

According to these reports, 27 of these were ethnic Uighurs and two were ethnic Kazakhs. All were between the ages of 20 and 30. And the reports noted that many of those sentenced had taken part in the February 1997 Yili riots that claimed at least nine lives.

These Chinese reports are interesting for both what they say and what they do not.

In the past, Beijing generally downplayed separatist sentiment in Xinjiang and has given little information about it. The fact that the Chinese are saying more suggests that the movement may be growing stronger and that Beijing is more worried about it.

But equally interesting is that these reports do not suggest that Xinjiang has been quiet since 1997. They do not argue that the separatists are isolated domestically and internationally. And they do not suggest that separatists are unsophisticated rural people.

Instead, the Chinese point out that the separatists are behaving in a sophisticated fashion, penetrating firms to get money for their activities and enjoying the support of their coethnics abroad.

While the Chinese have made this last point before, their willingness to reiterate it at a time when China is working hard to cultivate ist relations with Muslim states in Central Asia is extremely noteworthy.

During the past several years, Beijing and its diplomats have worked hard to extract promises from the governments of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan not to allow Uyghurs and other ethnic groups with close ties to communities in Xinjiang to operate on their territories.

Now both by cracking down on Muslim separatists in Xinjiang and even more by suggesting that such groups enjoy support from abroad, China is presenting a clear challenge to the governments of these countries, a challenge they will find difficult to meet.

If the governments in Astana and Bishkek clamp down on Uyghur groups on their territory to please the Chinese, that will only offend their own national constituencies given Beijing's recent increasingly anti-Islamic attitudes. But if these two governments do not do so, that will almost guarantee a confrontation between the two of them on one side and the Chinese on the other.

And either of these outcomes -- a decline in the authority of these governments in the eyes of the population or heightened tensions with China -- will have at least three broader consequences as well.


First, it will likely presage a Chinese rapprochement with Moscow in order to gain Moscow's help in reining in the Central Asian states.

Second, it will almost certainly complicate plans to find a pipeline route to the outside world for that region's immense petroleum reserves.

And third, the Chinese challenge and the Central Asian response may further erode Chinese influence in Islamic countries more generally, a trend that could reduce Beijing's role in Pakistan and elsewhere. In this way, a Chinese pledge to crack down against separatism and a Muslim trial in the distant Xinjiang region are likely to reverberate far beyond their point of origin.

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(6) RIOTERS JAILED AMID CALL TO CRUSH REBE

AGENCIES, Jan. 23, 1999

A court in Xinjiang has jailed 29 peop some for their roles in the 1997 riots the Muslim region that left nine dead more than 200 injured.

One person was sentenced to death, suspended for one year, while another jailed for life, a court official said yesterday.

The defendants, all residents of Yinin county, were convicted of a range of crimes, including subversion, theft, assault and inciting people to take to streets.

The sentences were meted out by the Yi People's Intermediate Court on January the official said.

She said the defendants, most of whom Uygurs, could appeal to the People's H Court.

The region's top Communist Party offic has called on colleagues to crush separatist activity, warning it threat the stability of the predominantly Mus region.

Wang Lequan told a recent gathering of regional prosecutors that stamping out terrorism should be given top priority

"Xinjiang is special in that it is the constant target of separatists both in and outside the country," the Xinjiang Daily quoted Mr Wang as saying.

"Such crimes must be severely and swif punished with greater force and vigoro measures. You must absolutely never gi them even half a chance."

Mr Wang urged the prosecutors to do mo to curb rising rates of corruption, th robbery and other crimes that were sha social stability.

Officials sent to Xinjiang to investig growing losses at its top 500 state-ru companies had found corruption was a primary cause for their unprofitabilit he said.

Political assassinations and bombings prompted a three-year crackdown on separatist groups in Xinjiang, but tensions between Chinese and Muslims persisted.

Anti-Chinese riots erupted in Yining o February 5, 1997. Three weeks later, n people were killed and dozens hurt whe series of homemade bombs exploded in Xinjiang's capital, Urumqi.

Twenty people were executed from April July 1997 for their roles in the Yinin riots and Urumqi bombings.

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(7) CHINA SEPARATISTS SINGLED OUT

The Associated Press, Jan. 22, 1999

BEIJING (AP) - Separatist activity threatens the stability of China's predominantly Muslim northwestern region of Xinjiang and must be crushed, the region's top Communist Party official reportedly has said.

Stamping out terrorist activity should be given top priority, Xinjiang Communist Party chief Wang Lequan told a recent gathering of regional prosecutors, the Xinjiang Daily newspaper reported.

``Xinjiang is special in that it is the constant target of separatists both inside and outside the country,'' the newspaper quoted Wang as saying in a Jan. 16 speech. ``Such crimes must be severely and swiftly punished with greater force and vigorous measures.''

Wang also urged the prosecutors to do more to curb rising rates of corruption, theft, robbery and other crimes that were shaking social stability, said the report, published Sunday but not seen until Friday in Beijing.

Officials dispatched to Xinjiang to investigate growing losses at ist top 500 state-run companies found that corruption was a primary cause for their unprofitability, Wang said.

Political assassinations and bombings prompted a three-year crackdown on separatist groups in Xinjiang, but tensions between Chinese and Muslim minorities persist.

The region was ruled by Chinese emperors for 200 years as a buffer state between China and the Muslim nations of Central Asia. Uighurs, the region's largest ethnic group, briefly ran an independent state before Communist forces retook the region in 1949.

Separatist sentiment, never fully quelled, has been fanned by the newly independent Central Asian nations created in the wake of the Soviet Union's collapse.

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(8) CHINA JAILS 29 FOR ROLE IN 1997 XINJIANG RIOTS

Reuters, Jan. 22, 1999

BEIJING. A Chinese court has jailed 29 people, some for their roles in the 1997 riots in the northwestern Moslem region of Xinjiang that left nine dead and more than 200 injured.

One person was condemned to death but execution was suspended for one year, while another was sentenced to life in prison, a court official said on Friday.

The defendants, all of whom were residents of Yining county, were convicted of a range of crimes, including subversion, larceny, assault and inciting people to take to the streets, the official said.

The sentences were meted out by the Yili Area People's Intermediate Court on Jan. 8, the official said.

The defendants, most of whom were Uighurs, can appeal to the People's High Court, the official said. She declined to provide further details.

Xinjiang, home to Turkish-speaking Uighurs who make up about 47 percent of the region's population of 17 million people, has been rocked by rioting, bombings and assassinations in recent years.

Nine people died and more than 200 were injured when anti-Chinese riots erupted on Feb. 5, 1997. Three weeks later, nine others were killed and dozens wounded when a series of home-made bombs exploded in Xinjiang's capital Urumqi.

China executed 20 people between April and July 1997 for their roles in the Yining riots and Urumqi bombings.

Uighur militants have agitated for an independent East Turkestan in Xinjiang, which borders Afghanistan, Pakistan and three former Soviet
Central Asian republics.

Stability has been the watchword for Beijing as it enters a year full of politically sensitive anniversaries.

The dates include the 40th anniversary of an abortive uprising in Tibet in March, the 10th anniversary of the June 4 Tiananmen Square massacre of pro-democracy protesters and the Oct. 1 anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic.

The People's Daily said President Jiang Zemin has ordered senior officials to "pay particular attention to social order and political stability" in 1999.

China's Public Security Minister Jia Chunwang has ordered police to step up vigilance against terrorism and crack down on crimes involving weapons, drugs and robbery.

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(9) OFFICIAL PLEDGES TO SMASH SEPARATIST ACTIVITY IN CHINA

The Associated Press, Jan. 22, 1999

BEIJING (AP) Separatist activity threatens the stability of China's predominantly Muslim northwestern region of Xinjiang and must be crushed, the region's top Communist Party official reportedly has said.

Stamping out terrorist activity should be given top priority, Xinjiang Communist Party chief Wang Lequan told a recent gathering of regional prosecutors, the Xinjiang Daily newspaper reported.

"Xinjiang is special in that it is the constant target of separatists both inside and outside the country,'' the newspaper quoted Wang as saying in a Jan. 16 speech. "Such crimes must be severely and swiftly punished with greater force and vigorous measures.''

Wang also urged the prosecutors to do more to curb rising rates of corruption, theft, robbery and other crimes that were shaking social stability, said the report, published Sunday but not seen until Friday in Beijing.

Officials dispatched to Xinjiang to investigate growing losses at ist top 500 state-run companies found that corruption was a primary cause for their unprofitability, Wang said.

Political assassinations and bombings prompted a three-year crackdown on separatist groups in Xinjiang, but tensions between Chinese and Muslim minorities persist.

The region was ruled by Chinese emperors for 200 years as a buffer state between China and the Muslim nations of Central Asia. Uighurs, the region's largest ethnic group, briefly ran an independent state before Communist forces retook the region in 1949.

Separatist sentiment, never fully quelled, has been fanned by the newly independent Central Asian nations created in the wake of the Soviet Union's collapse.

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Editors: Abdulrakhim Aitbayev rakhim@lochbrandy.mines.edu
Alim Seytoff aseytoff@southern.edu.
We welcome your comments and suggestions.
For the back issues of the WUNN newsletter visit the WUNN web site at
http://www.uygur.com/en/wunn/
For more information on East Turkistan visit
http://www.uygur.com

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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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