Xinjiang Crisis in China: Communism versus Islam?(Part-3)

     - By Dr. Abdul Ruff Colachal

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What happened in China's Xinjiang? (Part-3)

- By Dr. Abdul Ruff Colachal

[Asia in AD 800, showing the Uyghur Khanate and its neighbors]

III- Neglect and Repression of Xinjiang Muslims

1.

Like GSTs led by the NATO, Israel and India, China also kills Muslims regularly indoors. Independence advocates view Chinese rule in Xinjiang, and policies like the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps as Chinese imperialism. in 1962, 60,000 Uyghur and Kazak refugees fled northern Xinjiang into the Soviet Union to escape the Great Chinese Famine and political purges of the Great Leap. In the run-up to the Summer Olympics in Beijing , during which world attention was drawn by pro-Tibet protests along the Olympic torch relay, Uyghur separatist groups staged protests in several countries. A police roundup of suspected freedom separatists during the muslim holy month Ramadan resulted in large demonstrations that turned violent in February 1997 in an episode known as the Ghulja/Yining Incident (or Gulja Massacre).  

The danger of a Han chauvinist and nationalist reprisal and consequent repression of Xinjiang remains, but thus far the Chinese governments both at the national and at the local levels have tried to restore normalcy by appealing for calm while engaging in bringing those engaged in murder and violence to justice.  The Han Chinese forms the majority of China's 1.3 billion population. Almost all the others were Uighurs, a Muslim people native to Xinjiang and culturally tied to Central Asia and Turkey. China's Constitution and its instituted 1984 Regional Ethnic Autonomy Law provide for ethnic minorities the right to protect preserve and promote their cultures.

Communist China's main concern is to make Han Chinese self-reliant while keeping Muslims under stress, strain, repression, riots and intermittent bloodbaths. Simultaneously, as per the policy of the state, there was also an influx of ethnic Han Chinese to partake in the economic benefits of the growth process in all regions, including Xinjiang. What has been resulted is the garnering of a large share of the employment opportunities by the Han migrants. This combined with measures such as teaching of Mandarin in schools in Xinjiang has not gone down well with the local Uyghur speaking people. Thus despite certain concessions to minorities such as the relaxation of the One-Child policy or other social measures, resentment against Han in-migration, corruption among the ruling elite, lopsided development and employment opportunities plus perceptions of cultural suppression has seen Uyghurs increasingly getting antipathetic to the Chinese government. This resentment also resonates with the perceptions of rising inequality and government corruption elsewhere in China.

China never condemned NATO illegal invasions and genocides in Islamic world. However, the official reaction of the Chinese government on Xinjiang July massacre was to blame, apart from Mrs. Kadeer, external forces for these incidents, pointing fingers at a Uyghur separatist leader (of the World Uyghur Congress) based in the USA. But just as in the Tibetan set of events last year, the riots in Urumqi must be attributed to resentment among the minority ethnic groups of China's population and umbrage against some of its government's policies. One such policy is the "Western development" initiative launched in the later half of the 1990s which involved the large scale capital investment in utilization and extraction of natural resources in an endeavor to economically develop the western regions of China.

Just as the Indian Hindus argue against its oppressed Muslim population, the Chinese government often says the Uighurs should be grateful for the roads, railways, schools, hospitals and oil fields it has been building in Xinjiang, a region known for scorching deserts and snowy mountain ranges. The debate about China's dealings with its 56 ethnic minorities is gathering pace despite official frowns. Two polarized views have emerged. The first is about defending the right to development of the majority Han Chinese, who make up 91 percent of the country's population. The other traces the roots of ethnic resentment among Tibetans and Uyghurs.. Beijing's imposed economic modernization of their homeland, observers say, has led to the social marginalization of these ethnic groups. While Beijing did not grant its minorities the right to self-determination, as the former Soviet Union did, it did offer several social privileges, like exemption from China's "one-child" policy, educational privileges.

2.

Islam in China dates to a mission in 651, eighteen years after Prophet Muhammad's death. Muslims came to China for trade, dominating the import/export industry during the Song Dynasty. They became influential in government circles, including Zheng He, Lan Yu and Yeheidie'erding, was one of the people who helped to construct the Yuan Dynasty's capital, Khanbaliq. Nanjing became an important center of Islamic study. The Qing Dynasty waged war and genocide against Muslims in the Dungan revolt and Panthay rebellion.

The autonomous region of the PRC was established on 1 October 1955, replacing the province. The PRC's first nuclear test was carried out at Lop Nur, Xinjiang, on 16 October 1964.The numbers of ethnic Han Chinese settlers in Xinjiang has risen from less than half a million in 1953 to 7.5 million by 2000. Domestic diplomacy of China some how muted the freedom urge of the Muslims. Despite much talk of separatism in Xinjiang, the situation in Xinjiang was largely quiet from 2000 through mid-2006. ETIM stands for the East Turkestan Independence Movement, the Xinjian pro independence part, or the East Turkestan Islamic Movement and the movement has a naitona flag of their own.

Xinjiang-Uyghur, is an autonomous region (Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region) of the People's Republic of China and also claimed by China. It is a large, sparsely populated area, spanning over 1.6 million km² (comparable in size to Iran), which takes up about one sixth of the country's territory. Xinjiang borders the Tibet Autonomous Region and Kashmir India's Leh District to the south and Qinghai and Gansu provinces to the southeast, Mongolia to the east, Russia to the north, and Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India to the west. It administers most of Aksai Chin, a territory formally part of Kashmir's Ladakh region over which India has claimed sovereignty since 1962 as a  routne matter.

"Xinjiang" or "Ice Jecen" in Manchu, literally means "New Frontier" a name given during the Manchu Qing Dynasty in China . It is home to a number of different ethnic groups, many of them Turkic, the largest of which is the Uyghur people. Older English-language reference works often refer to the area as Chinese Turkestan, Sinkiang, East Turkestan, or Uyghuristan. More specifically, at times, the term East Turkestan only referred to the Xinjiang area south of the Tian Shan mountains, North of the Tian Shan was called Dzungaria (Zungaria). Traversed by the Northern Silk Road, Western Regions or Xinjiang is the Chinese name for the Tarim and Dzungaria regions of what is now northwest China. At the beginning of the Han Dynasty (206 BC "“ AD 220), the region was subservient to the Xiongnu, a powerful nomadic people based in modern Mongolia. In the Kashgar region on 12 November 1933, the short-lived self-proclaimed East Turkistan Republic (ETR) was declared,  Xinjiang was eventually brought in 1934 under the control of northeast Chinese warlord Sheng Shicai, who ruled Xinjiang for the next decade with close support from the Soviet Union, many of whose ethnic and security policies Sheng instituted in Xinjiang. Sheng invited a group of Chinese Communists to Xinjiang, including Mao Zedong's brother Mao Zemin, but in 1943, fearing a conspiracy, Sheng executed them all, including Mao Zemin. The Second East Turkistan Republic came to an end when the People's Liberation Army (PLA) entered Xinjiang in 1949. Also, five ETR leaders, who would negotiate the final status of East Turkistan with the Chinese, died in an air crash in 1949 in Kazakhstan airspace. Was it a consipiracy by China and Russia ? How? Have they not been killed by the young communist regime?

  3.

The Xinjiang July massacre has now spilled far beyond the borders of China's resource-rich western autonomous region. Last week, this issue created ripples in Melbourne, which is hosting Australia's largest film festival. The Melbourne film festival organizers have turned it into a political drama by inviting Rebiya Kadeer, Several Chinese film makers decided to boycott the festival in a gesture of protest against the inclusion of a documentary in the festival about Rebiya Kadeer, an exiled Uyghur leader accused by Beijing of instigating the unrest from abroad.

Behind all Chinese moves there is obviously an element of anti-Islamism and, therefore, the "democratic" USA and West, too much "concerned" about humanity, did not do enough to punish the Beijing authorities for massacres! UN and UNSC are doing business, reminding of Libyan Ghaddafi's description that they are indeed terrorist organizations. They failed to arrive to defend and liberate the suffering Uyghurs. The USA needs the Chinese/Asian cash, while China needs US certificate on human rights record. Is communist color is red?

China maintains discreet silence over the NATO terror invasions in Islamic world. The Chinese communist regime in Beijing is trying to prove, yet again, that communism is the longest and the most tortuous route to capitalism. The lucky communist parties and some of their extra lucky members have amassed huge reservoir of wealth and they might even confess that communism is all about individual and party wealth. It is irony of communist destiny, then, while the US led west tries to destroy communist and socialist regimes, China is actively engaged in subsidizing capitalist economy by providing socialist resources to off-beat US recessions. Why? Is it for converting the West into a block of communist nations, as Russian tried and failed before? How? But why do they kill innocent Muslims seeking sovereignty back from a non-Islamic, rather anti-Islamic China leaning towards capitalism and neo-imperialism?  Why?  

  (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.