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The Forgotten Muslims of
Xinjiang
Ahmad Faruqui
August 08, 2002
Continued oppression will merely raise the odds that
Xinjiang will go the way of the Central Asian states,
and attain independence in the not too-distant future
As the US prepares to take on Iraq, while the West
Bank and Gaza continue to burn, it is easy to forget
the plight of the Uighur Muslims of Xinjiang. Islam is
inextricably linked to their culture and identity.
Unfortunately, recent events have increased Beijing’s
resolve to destroy this very identity. Religious
schools are banned. Many mosques have been closed and
the building of new mosques is restricted. Imams,
indoctrinated in communism, deliver the Friday sermons.
Private religious services cannot be held without the
permission of the Communist Party. The police have
raided peaceful but “unauthorised” religious
gatherings. Those found to be leading the gatherings
have been sentenced to long-term imprisonment.
Government employees risk being fired if they go to
mosques.
Xinjiang, located beyond the natural boundary of
China, the Great Wall, is an integral part of the
history of Central Asia. For centuries it was called
East Turkistan. The Uighurs, who are ethnically Turkic,
have lived in the region for more than four millennia.
Located along the famous Silk Road, Uighurs played an
important role in cultural and mercantile exchanges
between the East and West.
Islam came to the region in 934, and soon thereafter
Kashgar became one of the major learning centers of
Islam. As the centuries rolled by, Xinjiang fell under
the control of the Manchu emperors of China. During
the 1860s, Muslim uprisings erupted across western
China. In 1865, a Kokandi officer named Yakub Beg
seized Kashgar and proclaimed an independent
Turkestan. He also made diplomatic contacts with
Britain and Russia. A few yeas later, the Manchus
returned, Beg committed suicide, and Kashgar was
absorbed into a new province called Xinjiang meaning
“New Territory” in 1884. Uighur culture went into a
steep decline.
After the Chinese Nationalists overthrew the Manchu
Empire in 1911, Xinjiang fell under the rule of the
Kuomintang. The freedom-loving Uighurs staged numerous
uprisings against the Kuomintang and twice, in 1933
and 1944, succeeded in setting up an independent
republic. In the 1940s, a Kazakh named Osman led a
rebellion of Uighurs, and established an independent
republic of Eastern Turkestan in southwestern Xinjiang.
The Kuomintang government convinced the Muslims to
abandon their republic in exchange for real “autonomy.”
A Muslim league opposed to Chinese rule was formed. In
August 1949, a number of their leaders died in a
mysterious plane crash while en route to Beijing to
meet with Chairman Mao. Muslim opposition to Chinese
rule persisted on an intermittent basis until Osman
was captured and executed by the communists in early
1951.
Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region is China’s largest
province, accounting for 16 percent of the landmass.
Even though it is home to only 1.6 percent of the
population, Xinjiang has tremendous strategic
significance for China. Nuclear tests have been
conducted at the Lop Nor range. The northwestern
province borders eight nations, and contains a large
portion of the nation’s mineral resources including 38
percent of the coal reserves and 25 percent of the
petroleum and natural gas reserves. Construction has
begun on a new 4,200-kilometer pipeline for
transporting natural gas from Xinjiang’s Tarim Basin
to Shanghai on the Pacific coast. To be completed by
the year 2005, the $5.6 billion pipeline will be the
second largest project in Chinese history after the
Three Gorges dam.
Despite the mineral wealth of Xinjiang, more than 90%
of local Muslims live below the poverty line. China is
pouring money into the province, but the investment
has mostly benefited the Han Chinese population. At
the time of the Communist revolution in 1949, Xinjiang
was home to five million people, of which only six
percent were Han Chinese. Now, it has a population of
19 million, of which only 42 percent are Uighurs.
Beijing has resorted to a policy of ethnic flooding,
similar to what was employed in Tibet. In most cities,
the ratio between the Uighur and Han populations has
gone from being 9:1 to being 1:9.
Uighur kids are no longer taught their history and
traditions in school. Places and monuments
representing the Uighur heritage have been destroyed.
In most of the big cities there is nothing left to
indicate any presence of the Uighur culture.
In a report released in 1999, Amnesty International
recorded 210 death sentences and 190 executions in
Xinjiang since January 1997, mostly of Uighurs
convicted for subversion or terrorism after unfair and
often summary trials. (This report can be accessed at
http://www.amnesty.org/ailib/aipub/1999/ASA/31701899.htm)
Amnesty concluded that the Uighurs, who have long been
experiencing economic marginalisation, social
disadvantage and curbs on political and religious
freedoms, “are also the victims of state violence,
from torture to arbitrary and summary execution.” The
report, based on interviews with former prisoners,
relatives of prisoners, and on official Chinese
documents and media reports, said the government had
violated its own laws in its self-declared mission to
crush separatism.
The US-led global war against terrorism has given
Beijing an opportunity to brand Uighurs who are asking
for human rights as “terrorists” and to arrest them in
large numbers. Trials are swiftly concluded within
days, often resulting in the death sentence being
meted out on the same day that it is handed down.
According to a recent article in the Financial Times,
the Uighurs are now “afraid to talk, not just to
foreigners but even to each other.”
More sensitive to the concerns of Muslim countries
than some of the rightwing politicians in Washington,
the astute gerontocracy in Beijing has been careful to
not associate the terrorists with Islam. Writing in a
Saudi magazine in June, Foreign Minister Tang said
that selfish politicians who wanted to further their
own agenda were carrying out terrorist acts in
Xinjiang. Beijing has effectively pre-empted Muslim
countries, which rely on China for political, economic
and military assistance, from speaking out against its
repression of their fellow Muslims in Xinjiang.
The OIC countries should send a delegation to Beijing
to draw attention to the plight of the Uighurs. They
should demand that Muslims be given the right to
practice their religion as they choose fit, in
addition to being granted all the other civil rights
that have been given to the Han Chinese. Perhaps the
new crop of Chinese leaders will realise that the
previous generation of leaders erred in thinking that
they can suppress the genuine aspirations of the
Uighurs by submerging them in a climate of fear.
Continued oppression will merely raise the odds that
Xinjiang will go the way of the Central Asian states,
and attain independence in the not too-distant future.
Dr Faruqui is a fellow of the American Institute of
International Studies, based in the San Francisco Bay
Area. He is the author of “Rethinking the National
Security of Pakistan,” Ashgate Publishing, forthcoming
2002
Daily Times (c) 2002
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