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Xinjiang Crisis in China: Communism versus Islam ? -I
What happened in China's Xinjiang?
- By Dr. Abdul Ruff Colachal
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I - Xinjiang's worst ethnic violence in decades
A semi-communist, semi-capitalist and semi-anti-Islamic but a full UNSC veto power, China, like other colonial powers like Israel and India, pretends the state has no serious problems with those minority nations under its brute control and seeking sovereignty from the Asia's strongest military power Beijing. Like Tibet and Taiwan, a Muslim nation Xinjiang (meaning New Frontier/new territory), occupied finally in 1949 by the then Chinese regime and since being controlled with repressive measures, has been struggling for regaining the lost independence from an adamant power which is being courted even by the USA for extra cash. Tension between the Uighur and Han Chinese communities, therefore, has been steadily building over the past three decades, and Communist authorities in Beijing haven't been doing much to defuse simmering Uighur anger. Tensions have once again bubbled to the surface in Xinjiang, much to the dismay of China's leaders who are anxious to maintain stability in the oil-rich region which borders Afghanistan and Pakistan and is home to about 8 million Uighurs, a Muslim Turkic-speaking people. China refuses sovereignty back to Uighurs.
China claims to be a communist republic that is supposed to offer equal status and opportunities for all citizens promoting their over all prosperity and enrichment, but minority Muslims are, like in "secular" India, are less privileged and more tortured. Culture threat remains one of the most critical issues for the Muslims there. However, China also takes refugee under the profitable slogan of "terrorism". The "Communist paradise" modern China purports to be does not feel like a Utopian wonderland to most people there. The neglected Chinese Muslims in the region are nothing close to terrorists as the Chinese love to portray them. The recent release of Uyghurs from Guantanamo is a testament to that. If the poorest people of Xinjiang were Christian instead of Muslims, one wonders if the western world would look more closely at the upheaval in the region.
China retains sovereignty over Xinjiang. Under pressure from a fellow UNSC veto member, The USA listed the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, which advocates for a separate state in Xinjiang, as a terrorist organization in 2002. Incidents of ethnic violence involving deaths of about 200 plus people, rocked Urumqi, the capital city of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in China on the 5th of July, when rioters belonging to the predominantly Sunni Islamic Uyghur ethnic minority was attacked by the state and members of the Han Chinese community in the city. The immediate trigger for the incidents in Urumqi was the violent targeting of Uyghur migrants by Han workers in a toy factory in the southern China province of Guangdong on June 26th. Miffed by what some Uyghurs felt as Chinese government inaction in bringing the guilty Han workers to justice, protests were staged in Urumqi, which further transformed into a bloody ethnic riot with Uyghurs attacking the migrant Han Chinese population. While Xinjiang has been rocked by sporadic incidents of violence and other riots for quite some time, the incidents of July 5th were of such an alarming order that the Chinese President Hu Jintao had to shorten his visit to the G8 summit in Rome to return back to his country.
On July 5 evening, a demonstration by Uighur students following the riot in Urumqi, in Xinjiang- capital of northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in south China, after days of rising tensions between Muslim Uighurs and majority Han Chinese.The Uighurs were protesting a lackluster investigation of the factory brawl in far-away, coastal Guangdong Province gave way to a protest against the city's Han residents, very quickly followed by brutal killings carried out by the Han with state support.. In China protests have been known to be suppressed with deadly force and, in the end, 195 plus people died and more than 1,000 were injured. The Uighurs insist that the toll was far higher. More importantly, as of July 7, authorities had also picked up over 1,400 Uygur people into custody in connection with the unrest, owing to execute those responsible for fomenting mayhem. None has been publicly charged. The spark for the social explosion in Xinjiang was used to kill and arrest defenseless Muslims.
Beijing holds that Mrs Kadeer was behind a recent outbreak of deadly ethnic unrest and massacre in Xinjiang province. But Mrs Kadeer, leader of the exile group the World Uighur Congress, has denied any involvement. Mrs Kadeer, who now lives in the US, was imprisoned in China for six years until 2005 on charges of endangering national security. Beijing has accused her of organizing the violent unrest in Xinjiang, in western China, earlier this month. Chinese ambassador Cui Tiankai called her a criminal. "How would the people of Japan feel if a violent crime occurs in Japan and its mastermind is invited by a third country?" He hinted that the visit could harm relations between China and Japan.
(To continue"¦>)
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Dr. Abdul Ruff Colachal
Specialist on State Terrorism
Independent Researcher in International Affairs, The only Indian to have gone through entire India, a fraud and terror nation in South Asia.
Xinjiang Crisis in China: Communism versus Islam ? -2
What happened in China's Xinjiang?
- By Dr. Abdul Ruff Colachal
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II- Chinese Repressive Grip
As per official China version, the brawl broke out amid suspicion that a Uighur worker had sexually assaulted a Han Chinese woman, on June 26. With a view to securing cheap international support, China has invoked the "terrorism" plank. Chinese authorities were flooding Urumqi with security forces, some of whom rode into the city center in trucks emblazoned with slogans such as "We must defeat the terrorists." But who and where are the terrorists? On July 9, Beijing began forcefully reasserting its authority after four days of Uighur rioting in Xinjiang's provincial capital, Urumqi, and other population centers.
Under pressure from a fellow UNSC member China, the USA and the UN have labeled East Turkestan Islamic Movement a terrorist group, but doubts have been raised as to whether the movement exists at all. In order to retain sovereignty of the oil rich region China spreads a lot rumors and says the Muslim community poses a significant terror threat, and points to a January raid on a group that Xinjiang's Communist Party boss described as a 'terrorist gang' as well as a foiled plot to attack a jet from the region bound for Beijing. Uighurs also lack a figurehead such as the Dalai Lama to press their cause abroad, or an obvious catalyst for protest, such as the March 10 anniversary of the uprising against Chinese rule in Tibet that sparked the marches there.
Beijing does not want to lose its grip on oil-rich Xinjiang. The vast territory borders Russia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, has abundant oil reserves and is China's largest natural gas-producing region. In a measure of continued nervousness and lack of information in Urumqi, the city government was forced to deny rumors sweeping the Han population that Uighurs were kidnapping Han to exchange them for detained Uighurs.
The Chinese government has encouraged Han migration to Xinjiang. As a result, the though they are the largest ethnic group in Xinjiang, China's Uighurs are a minority in capital city Urumqi. Unrest is common feature in the region where the Chinese exploit the resources meant for the locals of the region. Recently a group of about 200 Uighurs was women protesting the arrests of their husbands in the massive crackdown on members of the Muslim minority by Chinese authorities since the violence was sparked in the Xinjiang provincial capital.
Uighurs are concentrated in Xinjiang but complain their rights and culture are being overridden by an influx of Han migrants from outside the region. In recent years, security forces in Xinjiang have systematically conflated peaceful dissent with violent activities, and manipulated the threat of terrorism to justify systemic human rights violations and curbs on religious and cultural expression. Many Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking Muslim group, resent rule by the Han Chinese, and Chinese security forces have tried to keep oil-rich Xinjiang under tight control since the 1990s, when cities there were struck by waves of protests, riots and bombings. News media reports of ethnic tensions in the region with resultant conflicts between the Uyghur plurality and Chinese authorities have raised worldwide awareness about Uyghur people and Xinjiang. Since 1996 the Chinese authorities have carried out a harsh crackdown of the East Turkestan independence movement, which it labels as "separatists" and "religious extremists".
The Uighur World Congress condemning the act called it, 'the brutal crackdown by China ' in Xinjiang, where Muslim Uighur make up about half the population of the remote region. In a statement to news agencies, the Congress said, "We are alarmed that more casualties will happen and therefore appeal to the European Union and her chairman country Sweden to send observers to the area in order to stop the brutal crackdown. Local Uighurs and Chinese Han settlers in Xinjiang always have been engaged in conflicts with the Chinese authorities supporting the Han Chinese against local Muslims. Several vehicles and shops were also smashed or set ablaze during the violence that the provincial government said was masterminded by the "separatist" World Uyghur Congress.
(To continue"¦>)
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Dr. Abdul Ruff Colachal
Specialist on State Terrorism
Independent Researcher in International Affairs, The only Indian to have gone through entire India, a fraud and terror nation in South Asia.
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