>> This piece was written by Tom Singleton, a member of Amnesty International Newport. He spent a year in China and this is an account of his visit to the Uighur's Xinjiang province.
China is a vast country of 9.5 m square kilometres and 1.3 billion people- one
fifth of the world’s population. This super-large area of land and number of
people contains considerable diversity: diversity of climate- from the tropical
southwest to the sub-Siberian northeast; diversity of topography- from the lifeless
expanses of the Gobi desert to the lush paddy fields of ‘rice-bowl’ provinces
like Anhui; diversity of cuisine- from the rancid yak milk butter of Tibet to
the fish-lip soup of Canton. The people of China are also diverse. Though the
Han predominate, within China’s borders there are also significant numbers of
others: in the grasslands of the north are Mongols, in industrialised and inhospitable
northeast (what used to be Manchuria) there are many who claim Russian heritage,
in the sub-tropical south west (provinces like Yunnan, Guangxi) are people like
the Naxi and the the Dai, who look more like the citizens of Burma than those
of Beijing. These peoples have, to varying degrees, preserved and continued
to practice their own distinctive culture.As the above suggests, these people tend to be found at the extremes of China- border regions or inhospitable parts. In the same way, their particular needs and rights are on the periphery of The Chinese Communist Party’s interest. It has little time for allowing regional diversity, even less autonomy- except where it can be used to lure the tourist dollar.
Mention a distinctive ethnic group found on China’s extreme that is on the receiving end of government hostility and most people would probably think of the Tibetans. And with good reason- though many Chinese will claim that theirs is a civilising mission, groups inside and outside of Tibet have pointed out that this is a civilisation that many Tibetans neither asked for nor want. Moreover, it is a civilising mission- like so many civilising missions in history- that has resulted in human rights abuses: arbitrary detainment, “re-education”, intimidation, beatings, executions. Amnesty International has long covered these disturbing incidents, of which the story of Nuns currently detained at Drapchi Prison is only the latest.
It is for the good that Tibet has become a cause célèbre but it is important that human rights abuses in China do not become synonymous with Tibet alone. Many other cases are worthy of the attention of those concerned with protecting fundamental human liberties: the situation in the northeastern province of Xinjiang is one such case.
Xinjiang, China's second biggest province in terms of landmass (after Tibet), is a world away from the rest of China. It is isolated from the economic powerhouse of Shanghai by a distance of more than 3000 km; Urumqi- capital of Xinjiang- is closer to Islamabad than it is to Beijing. The postcard image of China, of paddy fields and straw hats, does not exist in Xinjiang. The region starts as desert in the south and finishes as the alpine grasslands of the Steppe in the north. It produces grapes and dates. Its far more than geography and topography, though: in terms of people, culture and religion it looks west or south to central Asia and the Middle East more than it looks east to the Chinese capital. The people of Xinjiang- called Uighurs- are Muslims who speak a Turkic language completely different to Mandarin (though increasing numbers now speak Chinese also, as it is the official language). The sheer distance from Beijing to Xinjiang means a considerable difference in time zones. In this, as in many other things, the government is unbending- Xinjiang lives by Beijing time and so, in summer, gets to see sunrise at 10 am as a result. Food is central to Chinese culture, and at the heart of this food culture is rice- hence, in Mandarin, the word for rice and food is the same: fan. Xinjiang is too dry to grow rice in any quantity- heavy breads are their substitute- a potent symbol of fundamental cultural difference
Xinjiang
(literally “New Territories”) was incorporated into the People’s Republic of
China in 1951. The Chinese declared it to be liberation but the Uighurs could
reasonably claim it was more like colonisation. The Han soldiers, settlers and
officials who began to pour into the region thereafter were only the latest
in a long line of invaders from the east- from the Tang dynasty of the seventh
century to the Qing dynasty of the twentieth, via the Mongols along the way.
There is an equally long history of Muslim unwillingness to accept foreign rule.
From the earliest days of the PRC down to the present day, The Beijing government
has been as reluctant to tolerate even the faintest mumblings of separatist
intent as all the emperors and warlords who came before them.It is this reluctance to countenance the possibility of a breakaway Xinjiang that is it the root of human rights abuses. Those suspected of promoting separatism have been detained and tried in secret (or- worse still- at “public sentence meetings”), sentenced to undetermined periods in jail, tortured and even executed. To reinforce Beijing’s control of the province and its people, there has also been strangling of Uyghur religious and cultural life: mosques as well as Internet Cafes have been closed; religious festivals (for example Ramadan) and secular books alike are banned; the call to prayer does not ring out in Urumqi. The culture of fear towards officialdom that is everywhere in China is especially marked in Xinjiang.
The “War on Terror” declared after September 11th has made the situation in Xinjiang even worse. So-called “separatists” have now also been cast as terrorists, giving the Chinese government a pretext for intensifying its campaign of oppression. That means more detainments, more show-trials, more executions and more “re-education”. Fundamental human rights- freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, freedom to practice religion- have all been further eroded. The pretext of joining in a global crusade against terror looks unlikely to diminish in its potency in the near future. The need, therefore, to campaign for the rights of the Uighurs of Xinjiang- and protest the abuses of them committed by the Chinese government- has never been more pressing.