Urumchi: scratching below the media surface

Now that the interest of the media in the unrest which has taken place in Urumchi since July 5, 2009, has moved elsewhere, the reading public across the world will take away with them an image of the Uyghur people largely influenced by reporting constructed in the haste of meeting deadlines. However, the sum of who the Uyghur people are should not be assembled from the parts these media snapshots afford.

As the political crisis still unfolds in East Turkestan, a region also known as “Xinjiang” by the Chinese government, much of the reporting has characterized the unrest as an ethnic clash between Han Chinese and Uyghurs with its roots in an incident at a toy factory in Guangdong province. While these two events are certainly connected, this discourse belies a far deeper cause for the unrest, which has been largely ignored and would set a far more appropriate context for the seeds of Uyghur discontent.

As it has been documented, on July 5, 2009, protestors in Urumchi, the regional capital of East Turkestan, expressed their unhappiness with the Chinese government’s handling of racially-motivated mob killings and beatings of Uyghurs by Han Chinese at a toy factory in Shaoguan, Guangdong province. The protest turned violent and a number of innocent lives, Uyghur and Han Chinese, were lost. On July 6-7, 2009, some Han Chinese residents of Urumchi took to the streets and engaged in violent actions against Uyghurs.

While many news reports have stated that the origins of the recent unrest in East Turkestan stem from the ethnically charged Shaoguan incident of June 26, 2009; the truth, however, lies far beyond June, 2009. Uyghur discontentment with the Chinese government has been simmering ever since the People’s Liberation Army entered East Turkestan sixty years ago.

From the purges of East Turkestan nationalists in the Anti-Rightist Campaign of the late fifties, to the starvation, exile and cultural destruction of the Great Leap Forward (1958–1962) and the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), Uyghurs, along with millions of other victims, were persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). However, Uyghurs were also subjected to special campaigns specifically directed at them so as to dilute their distinct identity. In the early sixties, the CCP administration instigated a forced resettlement policy with the aims of dispersing concentrations of Uyghurs and of isolating Uyghurs from their communities.

The reason for China’s interest in the region is simple – real estate. East Turkestan sits on valuable natural resources, namely oil, and is strategically important due to its proximity to East, South and Central Asia. The Chinese government’s thirst for energy to drive its economy and its growing dominance in global affairs has made the Uyghur presence in East Turkestan an inconvenience. In order to resolve this, the Chinese government is undertaking methodical long and short term measures to ensure that East Turkestan comes firmly into the Chinese fold. The message these measures spell out is clear. Uyghurs must assimilate or face extinction. Even Wang Lequan, the “Xinjiang” Communist Party Secretary, who is charged with the welfare of the Uyghur people in East Turkestan has called the subjugation of the Uyghur people a “life and death” struggle.

The repression of Uyghurs sanctioned by the Chinese state includes the forced transfer of young Uyghur women to sweat shops in eastern China, the demolition of Uyghur cultural heritage in Kashgar, a monolingual language planning policy, discriminatory hiring practices, torture, execution on political charges, and curbs on freedom of religion, among a long list of other human rights violations.

Stating these human rights abuses is not a justification for the violent actions of a minority of Uyghurs in Urumchi on July 5, 2009. It should also not cast the Uyghur people as the perpetual victims of Chinese repression for this does not define them as a people either. The Uyghurs are a people with a proud and distinct heritage who have contributed to the world great thinkers, artists, linguists and scholars. The message that the world should take away about the Uyghurs as a people from recent events is that there is more to them than often meets the media eye.

China tightens screws on Uyghurs

The Old City of Kashgar in China's Xinjiang region is facing demolition despite the dislocation it will cause to thousands of Uyghurs and the loss of a unique architectural heritage. Officials state the demolition is a necessary step for modernization, but Uyghurs believe it is another step in their assimilation into China. It is another sore case of forced modernization upon marginalized people.

Buried in the sands of the vast Taklamakan Desert are the ruins of several Silk Road cities, where an ancient civilization became the center of Central Asian culture and learning. These lost cities could soon be joined by the Old City of Kashgar should the Chinese authorities succeed in their plan to bulldoze and bury it in rubble. With the demolition of Kashgar Old City, the Chinese government will destroy one of the few remaining cradles of Uyghur culture and a testament to centuries of Uyghur history. Unlike the fabled cities of the Silk Road, Kashgar Old City faces its destruction not to the forces of nature, but to the politics of assimilation.

Uyghurs are an ethnically and culturally Turkic people distinct from the Han Chinese, who constitute 92% of the total population of the People’s Republic of China. The Uyghur homeland of East Turkestan, an area which the Chinese authorities call Xinjiang, is located in the northwest of the current borders of China. In October 1949, the People’s Liberation Army established military control over East Turkestan, which has lasted to the present day. The region is resource rich and geopolitically strategic as it sits between Central, South and East Asia. The Chinese government’s thirst for energy to drive its economy and its growing dominance in global affairs has therefore directed its attention to the region and to the inconvenience of the Uyghur people who live in the area. The message from Beijing is clear; the region must be firmly brought into the Chinese fold.

Kashgar Old City is as important to the Uyghurs as Jerusalem is to Christians, Jews and Muslims. It is a physical embodiment of the Uyghur identity, signifying its past, present and future. This is the city of great Uyghur scholars such as Yusuf Has Hajib and Mahmud al-Kashgari, where contemporary Uyghurs earn their living, go to school and worship, and where city planners from the West learn how to build the next generation of integrated communities. In addition, Kashgar’s bazaars and unique architecture draws admiring visitors from around the world seeking to experience the diversity of life with which this planet is so blessed.

However, none of this means much to the Chinese authorities determined to put an end to an organic community which has evolved over the centuries. The 220,000 Uyghurs who presently live in the Old City are scheduled to be moved out within five years to uniform apartment blocks reportedly eight kilometers outside of the city. Unsurprisingly, there was no participatory process for Old City residents during the decision-making process. David Gosset’s assertion in his August 19, 2009 article, Xinjiang serves as pan-Asian pivot, that Wang Xiaodong, “a recognized specialist in Islamic architecture”, is leading the redevelopment merely illustrates that Uyghur input is minimal. The official reason given for uprooting nearly a quarter of a million Uyghurs from their homes and places of business is that the buildings in the Old City have been deemed vulnerable to collapse should an earthquake strike; however, this apparent benevolence seems out of character with a regime which has spent a significant amount of money and energy on assimilating Uyghurs.

The Chinese government’s reasoning for this mass-transfer of Uyghurs has received short shrift from many quarters, most notably from Han Chinese people themselves. Wu Dianting, a professor at Beijing Normal University’s School of Geography, as well as Wu Lili, the managing director of the Beijing Cultural Heritage Protection Center, have both gone on record as stating that the resettlement of Old City Uyghurs is not only “cruel” because of the destruction of the Uyghur lifestyle, but also unnecessary. Professor Wu believes that the money used to destroy Uyghur homes, over U.S. $440 million, could be better served by reinforcing and repairing existing housing. While David Gosset argues that the necessity to “upgrade Kashgar's old district” entails a wholesale demolition of the homes of Uyghur families, Professor Wu believes that the raising of domestic living standards can be done to existing structures. Indeed, the new apartment blocks to which Kashgar Old City residents are being moved have been shown to be already crumbling by Australian Broadcasting Corporation journalist Stephen McDonell in a recent report.

Now the demolition joins a long list of Chinese government initiatives which have been designed with the aim of assimilating Uyghurs into China. Prior to the demolition, there has been a concerted effort to eradicate the distinct Uyghur identity so as to firmly place the region into the People’s Republic. The mass in-migration of Han Chinese into East Turkestan and the forced transfer of Uyghur women to the sweat shops of eastern China indicate a policy of grossly unequal population exchange. In addition, Chinese authorities have mandated a monolingual language planning policy in the education system which will eliminate the use of Uyghur in the public sector. Recently, Nur Bekri, Chairman of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, went so far as to suggest that speaking Uyghur makes one a terrorist suspect. Curbs on religious freedom, such as the prohibition of Uyghurs under the age of 18 from attending mosques, further distance Uyghur children from their culture. All of these policies are overt and well-documented. What the Chinese authorities would not like to see documented is the intimidation that accompanies such policies of assimilation.

This intimidation of Uyghurs is predictably a feature of the Kashgar Old City demolition. Faced with endless propaganda, including television programs and signs throughout the Old City exhorting them to leave, Old City residents report a palpable fear in the air among those remaining due to a heavy police presence. Those who wish to stay face a lack of any institutional mechanism with which to express their grievances, and fear that if they voice any complaints, they may be subject to severe punishment from authorities.

While the loss of Kashgar Old City is another blow to Uyghurs struggling to maintain their cultural identity in the face of intense Chinese pressure to assimilate, it is also a terrible loss to world heritage, which makes the demolition an international issue. The disappearance of unique architecture, the dispersal of a distinct community and the assimilation of a people are all concerns for those who value diversity in the modern world.

Original article appeared in the Asia Times on September 4, 2009. This article is citied here.

Two recent articles on rights-based approaches to development

Two articles that look at the role of RBAs. The first explores RBAs in the context of the UN system. The article argues that the UN structurally is not prepared for RBAs as human rights and development discourses have evolved separately. Nonetheless, UNDP has taken up RBAs, albeit slowly. This is a marked contrast to bilateral agencies such as USAID, which sees human rights in development as highly politicized and contrary to national interest. The second article is a cautious look at RBAs and how rights advocacy may not figure in the agendas of states. While the article raises valid concerns, an argument could be made in which states must pass through a stage before rights concerns can be addressed. States in this case go through a period of adjustment to the value of economic, social and cultural rights advocacy from the grassroots. The two articles are:

The Millennium Development Goals and the human rights based approach: reflecting on structural chasms with the United Nations system

Do Rights Promote Development?