China Stifles Xinjiang

By sentencing 20 people to rigorous imprisonment ranging from 18 months to 15 years in August 2012 on grounds of advocating violence and perpetrating separatism in the far north-western Xinjiang region, the Chinese government has yet again issued a stern warning against any activity of dissent, thus slapping further restrictions on religious practices. According to the Xinjiang Daily, a state-controlled local newspaper, the judicial courts in Aksu, Kashgar and Urumqi heard five separate cases and concluded that the guilty had organised and participated in terrorist group activities including making illegal explosives.

The official mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party, People's Daily stated that "the forces published books and videos containing violence to incite ethnic hatred and provoke a so-called holy war against the nation... Among these radicals, four people illegally made bombs and trained others to prepare for a terrorist attack under the name of protecting them from Han nationalities." What appears strange is that no further details of any related incidents of bombings or other acts involving violence related to the trial were provided.

A statement released by the exiled World Uyghur Congress stated that the terrorist charges and verdicts on the "accused" were politically motivated. Xinjiang, the largest Chinese administrative division spanning over 1.66 million square km, makes for almost one-sixth of China's landmass and is home to a large population of Turkic-speaking Muslim ethnic groups, of which the Uighurs are the largest followed by the Kazakhs, Hui, Kyrgyz, and the Mongols. Ruled by China's Han ethnic majority, Beijing is known to have clamped down on dissent and curbed religious and cultural freedom in Xinjiang by means of putting into effect promotion of the Party's policies on ethnic unity. With a significant chunk of the populace in Xinjiang adhering to Islam, the region has witnessed widespread ethnic rioting in Urumqi in 2009 and in Hotan and Kashgar in 2011, leaving scores of people dead. In a bid to tighten its grip on the restive region, China has reportedly installed nearly 40,000 surveillance cameras in the capital city of Urumqi.

The Uighurs in Xinjiang have been struggling for socio-cultural survival in face of the massive influx of the government-supported Han Chinese migration. There is harsh repression of any form of dissent, however peaceful and law-abiding that it may have been. According to a latest report released by the Amnesty International in July 2012, "Beijing continues to intimidate families seeking information on missing relatives who have revealed human rights abuses during and after the July 2009 protests." The director of Amnesty International for the Asia-Pacific further stated that "the general trend toward repression that we see all over China is particularly pronounced" in Xinjiang. Moreover, it has been reported that dozens of Uighur families have come out publicly with stories of family members disappearing since July 2009.

Xinjiang remains very critical to the economic and strategic ambitions of China, being the largest gas-producing region which also possesses abundant oil and mineral reserves. As many as 122 minerals have been discovered in the province, several of them being the largest reserves nationwide. Besides, Xinjiang is China's gateway to Central Asia, given that it shares 5,600 km of frontier with Mongolia in the northeast, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan in the west, and Afghanistan, Pakistan and India in the southwest. The exploitation of mineral resources and the opening up of the region for cotton production brought an influx of the ethnic Han Chinese to the region, thus dramatically altering the province's demography and ethnic balance and resultantly reducing the Uighurs to a minority. The resentment of and resistance to government-sponsored migration of the Han Chinese population, restrictions on the religious and cultural practices of the Uighurs, and loss of land have intermittently caused violence to erupt in the region.

There needs to be a distinct sense of caution that the issue of terrorism should not be misconstrued with the contentious issues of human rights violations, ethnic cleansing and suppression of the right to religious and cultural freedom. The fight against terror must never be an excuse to persecute minorities. On the contrary, the ethnic minorities need to be assured that their rights would be safeguarded at all costs by the state apparatus, or else the Muslim Uighurs would continue its chafe against Beijing's rule.

Dr. Monika Chansoria is a Visiting Senior Scholar at the Cooperative Monitoring Center (CMC), Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, USA; and also a Senior Fellow at CLAWS.

 Courtesy: The Sunday Guardian, 12 August 2012

 http://www.sunday-guardian.com/analysis/china-stifles-xinjiang