Tom Singleton speaks to Enver Tohti, founder of The Uighur Cultural Association, ahead of a programme of talks in association with Amnesty International in Wales.
In Finsbury Park, North London, there is an exiled Muslim political activist who the British press, especially the "red-top" tabloids, have fallen over themselves to bring to our attention. Sat opposite me, in a tired looking kebab shop on Seven Sisters Road, just round the corner from Finsbury Park bus station, Enver Tohti is not the man in question. It is one of the many sad ironies of Enver Tohti's campaign to raise awareness of his people that, whilst Abu Hamza's opinions have made him the target of so much press attention, even far more enlightened observers of international affairs than tabloid journalists usually know nothing of the cause Tohti represents.
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Yet, Tohti speaks for a people who have been repressed for over 50 years. He describes his home land as a colony, as under occupation. His are a people whose personal, religious, cultural and political liberties have been suppressed by arbitrary arrests, detainments and executions for many generations. He tells of economic exploitation - vast amounts of oil are soon to flow out of his country via a new pipeline, as many other natural resources have before; and everyday discrimination - how the best jobs in his country simply are not open to native people like himself.
In 1998, he helped a Channel Four documentary tell of the high and increasing rates of cancer amongst his people, and how this coincided with a massive programme of nuclear tests conducted in the deserts of his homeland (the largest series of nuclear tests ever carried out on a populated area). It was exposing this cover-up that led to his exile.
Enver Tohti is from the vast Xinjiang region of China. He is a Uighur. He regards
the Chinese as the oppressors of his people. Even if no-one else is aware of
the gravity of the situation he and millions of others face, Tohti certainly
is. He tells me of the strange deaths of dissidents and their relatives: "with
the eyes of the world on China, I could not be executed," he says, continuing
matter-of-factly: "The Chinese are too media sensitive. But I would die
another way. Perhaps in a car crash, like my friend's mother. There are many
car crashes in Xinjiang."
The situation in Xinjiang is not completely ignored. Sometimes it will feature fleetingly in the international news pages of the broadsheets; hunt around the less visited corners of newspaper websites and you will find the odd mention. The news editors' apathy, of course, reflects the public's indifference- most people simply are not interested in, or don't know about, what has happened and continues to happen in what China calls its New Territories. It is in order to capture the public's interest- and stir its conscience- that Enver Tohti and Minolis Prinoitikis, an American freelance journalist, have set up The Uighur Cultural Association.
Between the two of them, they start to detail the situation in the area also known as East Turkestan. First, Enver states, it must be understood that the Muslim, Turkic people of Xinjiang resent what they see as Han Chinese occupation. "A big majority of Uighur people want independence", Tohti tells me. "Even if things were the other way round"- by which he means, if the Han Chinese were the second class citizens and the Uighurs had all the wealth and influence - "we would still feel invaded."
This occupation, Prinoitikis adds, has had dire consequences for the Uighur people. He starts into a quick-fire list of human rights abuses: "There is no religious liberty - Mosques are destroyed, clerics arrested. There are widespread arrests and detentions for political reasons. Prison conditions are abysmal, so are prisoner statistics. The Uighur language is banned in universities, traditional village political structures are banned, the making of traditional music has been forced underground." He pauses. "Its cultural eradication", finishes Tohti.
Another irony of Tohti's campaign is that people are hardly unaware of human rights abuses in China. Bordering Xinjiang is Tibet. Why has Tibet caught the attention of people far more than Xinjiang, I ask. Why don't the Beastie Boys sing for the Uighurs? "There are significant differences between the situation in Xinjiang and the situation in Tibet", Enver suggests, continuing: "for one, Tibet's leadership was able to escape, more or less in tact to India. And India has helped them ever since".
For a time Xinjiang did have an ally. With Stalin's help, the political class of Xinjiang were active for a time after World War Two and the formation of the Peoples' Republic of China. China bought off this support with concessions in Mongolia. Then in 1949 Xinjiang's leading politicians died en masse in a plane crash whilst returning from a conference in Beijing (coincidentally, Mao's one time brother-in-arms Lin Biao met the same fate in 1971). The Uighurs had no Taiwan - opposition to Communist rule was easily strangled: "we have no leadership- and no access to world leadership", says Tohti.
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But I can't help but think racism plays a part. What about the fact Uighurs are Muslism, I ask? Enver groans a little: "perhaps", he concedes. I can hardly blame Tohti for avoiding the issue. "People have lots of romantic ideas about Tibet", intervenes Prinoitikis, "and they don't about Xinjiang." This is something, Prinoitikis claims, that is not lost on Tibet campaigners: "they are very cynical about it", he shrugs: "they have no doubt that many of their donors give according to their own romantic ideas rather than through really knowing or caring about the situation in Tibet. And they're disdainful of them for that."
Whether anti-Muslim feeling plays a part in British ignorance of the Uighurs is open to question. What is not in doubt is that Tony Blair's seemingly unshakable resolve to invest considerable amounts of blood, money and prestige in a conflict in Iraq predicated on human rights grounds (now at least), is not matched by any substantial desire to take on Beijing for its dismal human rights record. Indeed, as both men are keen to point out, the current western foreign policy climate has made things worse, not better, for the people of Xinjiang, for it has allowed the Chinese government to co-opt the language of counter-terrorism to justify an even more swingeing crack-down on the faintest murmuring of Uighur dissent.
Prinoitikis explains: "Previous crackdowns had to be explained away by anti-corruption drives or supposed threats to national security. Things changed after September 11th. A couple of hundred Uighurs were found amongst the Taliban. Uighur protesters then found themselves on the international terrorist list". Beijing, in other words, has less reason than ever to fear repercussions for holding the Uighurs in contempt. Additionally, Hu Jintao's selection for the top job will give Uighurs inside and outside Xinjiang little cause for optimism - his reputation as a man who administered Tibet with a firm hand from a Beijing office is well known.
So how does Tohti feel about the future? And how does he hope to change the situation? Surprisingly, he is reasonably upbeat: "the Foreign Office has taken an interest", he says. He has had meetings with Foreign Office officials and has been assured that the government knows about what is happening. What he and the people of Xinjiang need now is attention - "I want to make people aware of Xinjiang", Tohti says simply. From attention comes pressure. Tohti sketches the scenario: "if we can put pressure on the British government then we can on the Chinese government too…"
Enver Tohti is confident he will see his family again. "One day soon", he says, "China will come crashing down." He makes this surprising assertion in the same calm way he described the deaths of dissidents or his expulsion from China. "China seems stronger from the outside than the inside," he explains. Many might disagree with Tohti's political analysis. It is, after all, the perception of China's power, actual and future, that makes western governments hesitant to make much of China's human rights record. But few, surely, would argue that Tohti and the Uighurs of Xinjiang merit more attention than they currently receive.
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Tohti, more than anyone, is unlikely to get his hopes too high that things will change too soon. Václav Havel, once in similar position to Tohti, has observed that: "even a purely moral act that has no hope of any immediate and visible political effect can gradually and indirectly, over time, gain in political significance." Tohti, it seems, having set up a medical practice and a home in London, is prepared for just such a waiting game.
For the rest of us, at least as useful as taking to the streets to protest against war with Iraq would be to take the time to listen to Tohti, and give him and his cause the attention- and the political significance- both are long overdue. Leaving Tohti, I realise did little more than skate over incidents like the 1997 Gulja massacre- enquired only briefly about sky-rocketing rates of leukaemia and malignant lymphoma that has been the fall out of Beijing's massive nuclear testing programme in the Gobi desert. It brings home just how much Tohti has to talk about.
For anyone with an interest in human rights or intervention on moral grounds, not least Tony Blair, here, surely, is a cause worth rallying behind.
>> Read Tom's other article: 'Account
of visit to Xinjiang'
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