(1) SECRETS OF CHERCHEN MAN
Special to ABCNEWS.com, Feb., 1999, by Elizabeth Barber

(2) AMNESTY: THREE DEPORTED UIGHURS FACE EXECUTION IN XINJIANG
Reuters, Feb. 16, 1999

(3) 150 ARRESTED AFTER ETHNIC UIGHURS CLASH WITH POLICE
Reuters, Agence France Presse, Feb. 17, 1999

(4) POLICEMAN KILLED IN SHOOT-OUT
Reuters, Feb. 12, 1999

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(1) SECRETS OF CHERCHEN MAN

Special to ABCNEWS.com, Feb., 1999, by Elizabeth Barber

His face is at rest, eyes closed and sunken, lips slightly parted; his hands lie in his lap, while his knees and head are tilted up like a man who has just drifted off to sleep in his hammock. Visitors tend to tiptoe and lower their voices.

A two-inch beard covers his face. Here and there white hairs glint among the yellow-brown, betraying his age somewhere past 50. He would have been an imposing figure in life, for he once stood six feet six inches tall. So writes Elizabeth Barber of the one known as Cherchen Man.

Clad in finely woven woolens, he almost looks as if he could rise out of bed and begin another day in what must have been a difficult life. Cherchen Man has been dead for about 3,000 years.

Though his lips no longer move, he speaks volumes about the first settlers in a bleak desert along Chinas fabled Silk Road. Until a few years ago, he was the last man scholars would have xpected to find there.

UNCOVERING AN UNEXPECTED PAST

Cherchen Man, along with dozens of other perfectly preserved mummies found in Turkestan, in western China, has stood archaeology on ist ears.

Although the mummies have been known to exist for decades, no one paid them much attention until 1987 when Victor Mair, professor of Chinese studies at the University of Pennsylvania, came across them while leading a group of tourists through an obscure museum in the town of Urumchi (also spelled Urumqi).

Mair was stunned, and not just because their clothing was perfectly preserved. The mummies, he believed, were Caucasian, with high-bridged noses, deep, round eye sockets, and fair hair.

How had they come to be there, so long before any Westerners were thought to have crossed the Ural Mountains into Asia? The implications are profound, suggesting that Westerners may have influenced Chinese culture, which had been thought to arise independently of the West.

Cherchen Man was found in a tomb with three women and a baby. How had they died? Why did they settle in a desert so severe that many have died traveling from one oasis to the next? Were they really from the West?

UNRAVELING THREADS

Mair assembled a team of experts to see what the mummies could tell us. Among them was Elizabeth Barber, professor of archaeology and linguistics at Occidental College in Los Angeles.

For Barber, author of a recently released book, The Mummies of rmchi, it was an opportunity she had been preparing for ever since she learned to weave at her mothers knee. Barber and Irene Good, another team member, are among the worlds leading experts on prehistoric textiles.

The stacks of clothing buried with the mummies were unlike anything seen before. It just blew me away, Barber says.

For 13 years, Barber had rummaged through Europe from England to Iran, examining the oldest textiles she could find. Outside of Egypt, that consisted of just thumbnail-size fragments.

Even those tiny samples yielded clues about the laborious chore of creating clothing. She learned what kinds of looms they used to weave which patterns, and what raw materials they used.

So when she arrived in Urumchi, she came with a wealth of understanding, but nothing had prepared her for what she saw.

It was like handling 19th century fabric, she says. The mummies had been buried in a salt basin, and the salt kept the material dry.

CLOTHING WAS NON-NATIVE WOOL

The first thing that struck me was that it was all sheeps wool, and that really surprised me. I had expected most of it to be plant fiber, she says.

Sheep arent indigenous to that part of the world, so those early travelers must have brought sheep with them from the west. The fabric patterns must have been woven on looms similar to those used to create the scraps she found in eastern Europe.

That, along with other clues grains of wheat were found in some tombs, and wheat is not indigenous to the region was clear evidence that Cherchen Man was a product of Europe. So, too, were less well-preserved mummies of others found throughout the area, some of whom had died 1,000 years earlier.

Why had they gone to that area, which even today is so desolate that few live there? How had they died?

A Late Addition to a Sealed Tomb Unlike other tombs in the area, Cherchen Mans final resting place was not designed to be reopened, Barber says. He was buried with the three women, one of whom is presumed to be his wife, and the tomb was sealed.

A few weeks later, the babys body, also well preserved, was placed above the main burial chamber. The baby, about 3 months old, was wrapped in a bright red shroud. Alongside was a sheep udder fashioned into a nursing bottle.

It is clear that they (other members of the community) tried to keep the baby alive after the mother and father had died, Barber says, so this wasnt a case of killing the entire family so all could accompany the man into the next life.

None of the mummies show any sign of violence. They apparently died, Barber surmises, from an epidemic. Still unknown, however, is why they were there in the first place.

CIVILIZATION IN CHERCHEN MANS DAY

When the earliest of these Central Asian corpses, nestled into the sands of Tarim Basin, about 2000 B.C. or a little after, the pyramids of Egypt had already stood for half a millennium, but the best-known pharaohs, Ramesses II and King Tut were rather more than five hundred years into the future.

Next door in Mesopotamia, the Sumerians first inventors of the art of writing were already dying out and Hammurabi was soon to set up his famous law code; the Greeks and Romans had not yet even arrived in Greece and Italy from the northeast.

On the other hand, Ice Man, the Late Stone Age body found in 1991 by hikers in the Alps, had died well over a thousand years before.

Europe and the Near East were living in the Bronze Age, a period characterized by the use of soft metals. To the east the Chinese had not yet learned to use metal but were already busy domesticating the precious silkworm that would one day lend its name to the famous caravan route of Inner Asia, the Silk Road, along whose stretches the mummies have been found.

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(2) AMNESTY: THREE DEPORTED UIGHURS FACE EXECUTION IN XINJIANG

Reuters, Feb. 16, 1999

BEIJING. Three ethnic Uighur men recently deported to China from Kazakhstan face torture and possible execution for political activities, Amnesty International said in a statement on Tuesday.

The three men -- Hemit Memet, Kasim Mahpir and Ilyas Zordun – were reported by Kazakhstan Television as having been forcibly sent back to China several months after they were arrested hile trying to seek political asylum in the central Asian country.

"It is feared that they may be tortured and may face the death penalty for their political activities," the London-based human rights group said.

The three men were wanted for involvement in separatist activities in Xinjiang, which Amnesty said was the only region in China known to have executed political prisoners in recent years.

Chinese officials were not available for comment on the report.

China last month launched a campaign against religious violence and crime in Xinjiang, home to Turkish-speaking Uighurs, some of whom have been struggling for decades to establish an ndependent East Turkestan in the remote region.

Xinjiang borders Kazakhstan and two other former Soviet central Asian republics as well as Afghanistan and Pakistan.

China has stepped up economic ties with the former Soviet states and pressed those countries not to support separatist moves by Uighurs.

Amnesty said Kazakhstan's deportation of the three Uighurs violated ist international treaty commitments not to return people to countries where they might face serious human rights violations.

Last month China executed at least three Uighurs for their roles in a series of deadly anti-Chinese riots and bombings in 1997 that killed dozens and injured hundreds.

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(3) 150 ARRESTED AFTER ETHNIC UIGHURS CLASH WITH POLICE

Reuters, Agence France Presse, Feb. 17, 1999

HONG KONG, Beijing. Some 150 young ethnic Uighurs were arrested and at least five wounded after a group of 300 clashed with police in the western China province of Xinjiang on Feb. 12, a Hong Kong-based rights group said on Wednesday.

The trouble began when a group of about 30 Uighur youths shouted pro-independence slogans after a round of drinking on the evening of Feb. 12 in the provincial capital of Urumqi, said the Information Center of Human Rights and Democratic Movement in China.

When the police moved in, the crowd swelled to around 300, sparking the clash, arrests and injuries, it said.

Police in the capital, Urumqi, refused to confirm or deny the report of the clashes, saying only: "It is a secret."

Hospital officials in the city said they had no knowledge of the incident.

Xinjiang is home to Turkish-speaking Uighurs, many of whom have been struggling for decades to establish an independent East Turkestan in the Chinese-ruled territory.

Tension between ethnic Uighurs and the Chinese state has escalated over the past year as police intensified their war on crime and separatism in the province, arresting hundreds of suspected uerrillas, religious activists and ethnic separatists.

Several violent clashes in past months have led to crackdowns often including the handing down of the death penalty.

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(4) POLICEMAN KILLED IN SHOOT-OUT

Reuters, Feb. 12, 1999

BEIJING. A policeman was killed and a suspected robber and murderer wounded in a shoot-out in the restive northwestern region of Xinjiang, the China Youth Daily said on Friday.

The shooting occurred on Wednesday evening after a gang suspected of car theft and murder resisted arrest when officers surrounded their hideout in the Xinjiang regional capital of Urumqi, the newspaper said.

Police had earlier arrested several suspected gang members and collared the remaining members after the shoot-out, it said.

Officers had been chasing the gang since the beginning of this month when a man was murdered and his car stolen along with 240,000 yuan ($28,985).

The case was still under investigation, it said.

Xinjiang is home to Turkish-speaking Uighurs, many of whom have been struggling for decades to establish an independent East Turkestan in the Chinese-ruled territory.

Over the past year, police have intensified their war on crime and separatism in the province, arresting hundreds of suspected guerrillas, religious activists and ethnic separatists.

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The views and opinions expressed in the newsletter do not necessarily represent those of the East Turkistan Information Center. Credits must be given to all sources cited.

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 East Turkistan Information Center (ETIC), and it is devoted to the current political, cultural and economic developments in East Turkistan/Uyghurstan and to the Uyghur people related issues.

Sharki (East) Turkistan or Uyghuristan are the names used by the indigenous people of the region, the Uyghurs, 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
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