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Uighur riots sparked by fears that separatist dream is dying.
Riots of July 5, between Uighurs and Han in Urumqi, capital of Xinjiang in northwestern China, are the most serious in decades. In this region of 20 million people, where the main community is Muslim and Turkish-speaking, the causes of violence are deep …
One of the later news that has convulsed the world last week -though not as much as the death of Michael Jackson- has been the strong police repression in Chinese Xinjiang (known as Chinese Turkestan), where several Uighur riots took place. Actually treatment given to them by Chinese authorities in their own homeland as well as in the rest of China, where they often migrate for job purposes is clearly discriminating.
This situation must be put in context. 55 minorities coexist in China and they represent approximately 110 million (2005), on a total of 1.315 million citizens of the People’s Republic. Han are the ethnic majority, equivalent to 91 percent.
Among these 55 ethnic minorities, Uighurs are the largest both demographic and territorial. There are about ten million native Uighurs, 5.5 Tibetans, and 6 million Mongolians. With the particularity that these three ethnic groups represent about 50 percent of the territory of China, and with a low population density, the vast reserves of oil, gas, coal, and large quantities of other raw materials.
Among the 55 ethnic minorities, the Hui and Manchu use to write Chinese characters, while the remaining 53 have their own writings. Since 1950, the Government of Beijing has organized a panel of experts to ‘help’ the creation and improvement of written expression.
In political life, the use of spoken languages is theoretically guaranteed, and when important official meetings take place too. Simultaneous interpretation of the seven major languages are supposedly provided; state laws and transcendent official documents should also be published in these seven languages.
(15 July update)
Meanwhile…
Uighurs who dare to protest the discrimination and abuse are arrested. The protests are brutally suppressed. In Yining in 1997, Chinese police forces responded violently to street riots causing many deaths. After 9/11 attacks persecution intensified. Some Uighur leaders were accused of having links with Al Qaeda and were imprisoned. Repression against any Uighur group suspected of terrorism, separatism and religious extremism is relentless, systematic and ongoing.
All this is happening for decades. What did say politicians or religious leaders from the Islamic world? Not much.
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Three themes outlined below have played important roles in the modernization of the unity of the People’s Republic :
1) A geographical factor. The Pacific Ocean is the East border of the People’s Republic, the desert is at north, while the limits to the west and south are high mountain ranges. In such circumstances, the regional economies tend to converge among themselves.
2) A long history of unification. China is a unified country for almost three millennia, when the Qin dynasty. And in the last 800 years, in contrast to the European trend where the ancient great empires divided into nations, China showed a trend towards consolidation, stronger than ever, over the last Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties. Be noted that the Yuan and Qing dynasties were established by the Mongols and Manchus, respectively, two outsider peoples that strongly promoted, however, the unification of China.
3) The Han core stability. Their ancestors were called Han Hua, peripherals and other peoples were known as Yi. Hua meant men civilized country’s central and Yi wild men of the periphery. An idea that lasted from generation to generation, making strong distinctions between Hua and Yi, where Hua were not an ethnic affiliation, but cultural. So, Hua population grew to become the largest and core binder compared to Yi. And since the Han dynasty (202 a. C./220 AD), peripheral peoples have called Han those who were living in the central country, abandoning the former used Hua. For over two millennia, the Han have continued to absorb the peripheral outlying populations to reach a rate of 91 per cent of the total population of China today.
In the three most important territorial nationalities mentioned above, there are more or less broad trends towards greater autonomy or even independence. In the case of the Mongols, these features are less intense for their long history of relationship with the Chinese themselves, to the point where there was a powerful Mongol dynasty.
Tibetans, as we know well, have a strong personality, currently represented overseas through the Dalai Lama. And although the progress of Tibet is clear, and the Han are still a minority, demonstrations during the past year there have shown that Tibetans look to keep their ancestral culture on their own standing without impositions from outside.
The Uighurs are less known in the rest of the world than the Mongols or Tibetans. They are far more different than other Chinese citizens for their religious Muslim. Furthermore, the treatment they have received raises many doubts about the supposed equality of every citizen under the Chinese law. Therefore, the outbreak of violence in Xinjiang should help the authorities in Beijing to refrain from punish Uighurs but rather to study the problems in view of satisfaying a mutual cooperation. Additionally, China is an hyper power now and cannot afford to go shooting their own people, creating a feeling of malaise that could turn against the Government of Beijing itself, despite their good intentions and actions in many international areas. It goes without saying that if many peripheral populations of the People’s Republic want more freedom, they are not alone. There are many millions of Han who fight for democracy too…
