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Edition: February 2010
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The Plight of the
Uighurs
By: Yaseen Malick
The
Uighurs who have a rich history of over 8000 years are the original
inhabitants of East Turkistan or commonly referred to as the 'Xinjiang
Uighur Autonomous Region'' in China.
The Uighurs are a member of a Turkic Central Asian people who are
linguistically and culturally distinct to the Han Chinese.
East Turkistan had been illegally occupied in 1949 and since then the
Uighurs have been suffering greatly under the repressive Chinese Communist
Government. They still form the majority in that area constituting 20
million people, however a rapid influx of illegal Han Chinese immigrants are
diluting the population of the indigenous peoples and causing resentment.
Brief History
The Uighurs are an ethnically Turkic Muslim people who have lived in what is
now known as the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (XUAR) for over 8,000
years. Known as Eastern Turkestan for hundreds of years, Xinjiang is located
along the famous “Silk Road”, beyond the Great Wall, the natural boundary of
China.
Islam entered the region in the middle of the tenth century and has
flourished among the Uighurs ever since. The Uighurs ruled an independent
kingdom, with a mixed Muslim and Buddhist population, that stood until 1759,
when the Manchu Chinese invaded and destroyed it; their domination lasted
until 1864. During this period, the Uighurs revolted 42 times against Manchu
rule, trying to regain their independence.
In the revolt of 1864, the Uighurs were successful in expelling the Manchu
from East Turkestan, and founded the independent Kashgaria kingdom under the
leadership of Yakub Beg. This kingdom was recognized by the Ottoman Empire,
Tsarist Russia and Britain.
However, twelve years later, in 1876, a large Manchu force, with the aid of
the British, once again attacked and conquered East Turkestan. After this
invasion, East Turkestan was renamed “Xinjiang”, which means “New
Territory”, and it was annexed by the Manchu Empire on November 18, 1884.
What followed were several rebellions by various Uighur movements which
succeeded in setting up an independent Eastern Turkestan Republic in both
1933 and 1944. With the rise of the Communist Party in China in 1949,
however, the most brutal chapter in the history of the Uighurs in East
Turkistan commenced.
After occupying the province in the 1950s, the Communist regime began a
programme of settlement of Han Chinese in Xinjiang in a process of
colonisation to secure, control and exploit the region; since then there has
been an enormous influx of Han immigrants into Xinjiang. Today, the Han
population has risen from just over 6 percent of the region’s population in
1949 to about 40 percent now.
Systematic Persecution of the Uighurs
Currently, East Turkistan is the only province of China to have a Muslim
majority; it and occupied Tibet are the only administrative regions of China
in which the ethnic Chinese still constitute a minority. It is China’s
largest ‘annexed’ province, accounting for 16 percent of its landmass with
only 1.6 percent of its population.
East Turkistan has tremendous strategic significance for China: nuclear
tests have been conducted at the Lop Nor Range; a large portion of China’s
mineral resources are found there, including 38 percent of its coal reserves
and 25 percent of its petroleum and natural gas reserves. Despite this
wealth, more than 90 percent of Muslims live below the poverty line. Money
has poured in, but has mostly benefited the Han Chinese.
The Uighurs find themselves in a very similar situation to that of the
people of Tibet. Like the Tibetans, Uighurs have endured decades of
discrimination and oppression under Chinese rule. A religious and ethnic
minority, they are routinely denied basic civil, religious and political
rights. For them, China has been in occupation of their land, known to them
as East Turkestan, for several centuries.
Actions that are strictly forbidden for Uighurs include celebrating Islamic
festivals, studying religious texts or dressing in Islamic garb at state
institutions, including schools. The Chinese government vets who can be an
imam, what version of the Qur’an is acceptable, where religious gatherings
may be held, and what may be said at such gatherings. Recently introduced
regulations forbid local government employees and young men under the age of
eightern from praying in the mosque, ban teachers from wearing beards and
students from bringing the Qur’an to university.
In June, a court in the
region sentenced five Muslim imams to seven years’ imprisonment for
illegally organising Hajj pilgrimages to Makkah. The imams were also charged
with illegally providing copies of the Qur’an at a recent sentencing rally
in Xayar County, near Aksu City.
Uighurs are - almost without exception - the only ethnic group in China to
be routinely executed for political offences.
Since September 2001, China
has used the US-led “war on terror” as an excuse to oppress Uighurs with
impunity, persecuting many who have peacefully protested their treatment.
Uighurs have been jailed for reading newspapers sympathetic to the cause of
independence. Others have been detained merely for listening to Radio Free
Asia, an English-language station funded by the US. Even the most peaceful
Uighur activists, if they practise Islam in a way that the authorities deem
inappropriate, risk arrest and torture. China regularly dubs Uighur
historians, poets and writers “intellectual terrorists” and sends them to
jail.
In June 2003 Abdulghani Memetemin, a teacher and journalist, was sentenced
to nine years in jail for “providing state secrets for an organisation
outside the country”. What he had actually done was help the East Turkestan
Information Centre, an NGO based in Germany and run by exiled Uighurs, with
its work by sending it news reports and transcripts of speeches by Chinese
officials. In 2005 Nurmemet Yasin, a young intellectual, was sentenced to a
decade in prison for writing an allegory comparing the Uighurs’ predicament
with that of a pigeon in a cage.
Amnesty International has documented that, since 2001, “tens of thousands of
people are reported to have been detained for investigation in the region,
and hundreds, possibly thousands, have been charged or sentenced under the
Criminal Law; many Uighurs are believed to have been sentenced to death and
executed for alleged “separatist” or “terrorist” offences.” AI has further
reported that once imprisoned, detainees are subjected to types of torture
from cigarette-burns on the skin to submersion in water or raw sewage.
Prisoners have had toenails extracted by pliers, been attacked by dogs and
burned with electric batons, even cattle prods.
One terrifying account is the story of a prisoner who had horse hair
inserted into the tip of his penis. Throughout this brutality, the victim
was forced to wear a metal helmet on his head because a previous inmate had
been so traumatised by his treatment in the prison that he had beaten his
own head against a radiator in an attempt to take his life.
In a 2005 report, Human Rights Watch accused China of “opportunistically
using the post-11 September environment to make the outrageous claim that
individuals disseminating peaceful religious and cultural messages in
Xinjiang are terrorists who have simply changed tactics”. The report stated
that the systematic repression of religion in Xinjiang, including the
vetting of imams, the closure of mosques and the execution and detention of
thousands of people every year, was continuing as “a matter of considered
state policy”.
Uyghurs face political, cultural, social, religious persecution and
discrimination at the hands of the Chinese authorities. Uyghurs who choose
to practice their faith can only use a state-approved version of the Koran;
men who work in the state sector cannot wear beards and women cannot wear
headscarves. The Chinese state strictly controls the management of all
mosques, stifling religious traditions that have formed a crucial part of
the Uyghur identity for centuries.
The culture of the Uyghur people is being
obliterated by the central Chinese government because they were
deemed separatists and now, after the September 11 attacks to the USA, also
as terrorists.
Facing many of the same problems Tibetans have due to their
religious views such as religious restrictions, forced abortions,
imprisonment and execution, the Uyghurs' (also spelled as Uygur, Uigur,
Uighur) plight isn't as visible to westerners as the Buddhist's situation.
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