By George Blair, International Affairs Writer
Double Standards
On September 11th, 2002, one year after the attacks on The World Trade Center and The Pentagon by Islamic Fundamentalists, the United Nations Security Council issued a communiqué stating that it had listed the Eastern Turkestan Independence Movement (ETIM), a Uighur separatist organization, as a terrorist organization. A month before, former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage held a press conference where he stated that the ETIM has had ‘logistical training and close links to Al-Qaeda’ and would summarily have all of its financial assets within the U.S. frozen by the Treasury Department. China lauded this action as an end to the “double standard” practiced by the United States in not designating the ETIM as a terrorist organization while linking other groups to Al Qaeda terrorist entities. The U.S. categorization of the ETIM under the moniker of ‘terrorist organization’ was a strategic concession made in order to receive Chinese support for impending U.S. resolutions against Iraq, which ultimately culminated in the invasion of 2003. [1]
Before 2002, the “double standard” held by the United States regarding China’s internal resistance movement was based on the status of the Uighur ethnic minority within the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (XUAR). Before, America supported the right of the persecuted Uighur majority to determine how they should govern themselves; after 2002, they labeled them terrorists. Subsequently, China engaged in a disproportionately violent crackdown on the Uighurs, further suppressing them socially, economically, and politically. In the context of the ‘Global War On Terror,’Sino-Soviet relations, and the stated intention of the current administration to foster and proliferate democracy around the world, it is important to more closely examine China and the war of terror it has been conducting against the Uighur people over the past 50 years.
Death by Immigration
The Uighur are a displaced Turkic-Muslim people that predominantly populate the Xinjiang province of northwestern China. A small minority of the Uighur, 400,000, populates southeastern Kyrgyzstan, but the majority, 8,000,000, reside in the Xinjiang province of China. [2] Descendants of a nomadic Mongolian agricultural tribe, ethnic Uighurs have maintained their separate language, culture, and societal traditions in the Tarim basin for over 1,000 years. Han Chinese control of the Xinjiang region formally began in 1884 with the annexation of Xinjiang by the Qing Dynasty. [3] In the middle of the 20th century the Soviet Union backed a Uighur controlled government in Xinjiang called the East Turkestan Republic (ETR). [4] In 1949 after the Chinese Civil War and the accession of Mao Zedong and the Communist Party, Josef Stalin, attempting to avoid any Sino-Soviet conflict over nationalist Muslims in what the Chinese considered to be their sphere of influence, attempted negotiations for a Chinese takeover of the region. [5] In late 1949, the Chinese removed the nationalist Uighur leaders from power, dissolved the ETR, and established complete dominion over the region.
China’s initial exertion of influence over the Uighur was not meant simply to dominate the people, nor was it a simple land grab. Strategically, the paramount goal of China was to exploit Xinjiang’s resources to the exclusion of the Uighur people. Xinjiang has the largest oil, coal and natural gas reserves in the country, accounting for 30 percent, 40 percent, and 35 percent, respectively, of the nation's total resource output. [6] It also produces a large share of China's cotton, wool, sugar beets, grapes and tomatoes. [7]
Shortly after the hostile takeover of 1949, the People’s Republic began to implement a regime of forced migration that coerced and imported Han Chinese into the Xinjiang region. The short-term implementation of the Han migration project resulted in the Han making up 10% of the population within the Xinjiang region. [8] In 2002, when the last census data of the region was published, that figure increased to 50%, leaving the Uighurs as a relative minority. Today, the Chinese government has not implemented any policy to check the steady flow of Han immigrants, further marginalizing the native Uighur people.
Economic Marginalization…
Economically, the People’s Republic has used a policy of economic discrimination against the Uighur people. This caused the Uighur dominated sectors of the economy in the region to see little to no economic progress, while the Han dominated sectors, such as natural resource extraction, capital investment, and entrepreneurship, have seen double digit gains in productivity and growth over the past few years (11.3% in 2004). [9] This has resulted in a distinct power relationship within the region that many Chinese and Uighur scholars have described as a form of modern colonialism. The locals frequently observe that the Han Chinese have the region's best jobs and dominate the government, the Communist Party, and the military in the region as well. The Han also usually live in newer neighborhoods and go to informally segregated schools. [10] In its defense Beijing has cited that it has implemented a policy in Xinjiang and elsewhere where minority businesses and enterprises receive special treatment, but this policy is little enforced and is rendered ineffective by the refusal of the Chinese government to educate the native people in their native Uighur language. [11] The unemployment rate of young Uighurs stands at over 40% and, at this stage in the Uighur-Han economic relationship will not be ameliorated at any time in the near future. [12]
In Xinjiang today, it is impossible to start a business, receive an education, or achieve any form of upward mobility if you speak the Uighur language, giving the Han Chinese a distinct advantage over the native people. The Chinese claim that the outlaw of the use of the Uighur language in China is a means of pressuring the people to learn Mandarin Chinese. This linguistic imperialism, which Beijing has forced upon the Uighur people, has the ultimate goal of eliminating the language and traditions the Uighurs have held for thousands of years. In May of 2002 in the southern Xinjiang city of Kashgar, Chinese officials held a book-burning rally where they incinerated nearly 10,000 volumes that they claimed contained separatist ideology or threatened regional stability. A Uighur man, who was witness to the event, stated, "We think these books are related to Uighur history and culture. They are not illegal books. They most likely came from libraries and bookstores." [13]
In a 2002 report, Japanese correspondent Eiichi Shiozawa of the Japanese Economic Newswire visited the Xinjiang capital of Urumchi and met with two ‘prominent’ businessmen, one Han Chinese, the other, Uighur. Radil, the Uighur entrepreneur, is president of a series of grocery stores in the region that has sales of around $3.8 million dollars a year. Upon visiting his main distribution warehouse and production plant, the reporter stated “ the stores and the products on their shelves are crude and old-fashioned looking, like relics from China's former years when it had a centrally planned economy.” [14]
When visiting the furniture company of the far more successful Han businessman, the reporter observed, “Over at the factory of furniture manufacturer Meike International, however, it is a different scene all together. The high-quality products made for export roll off a modern and efficient production line.” [15] The reporter then asserted that it appears that economic preferential treatment of the Uighurs is little more than lip-service, and that if this is the example of progress for the Uighurs that Beijing is attempting to display, it fails utterly and only underscores the stark contrast between the economic status of the Uighurs and the Han in the Chinese governed region.
…and Its Discontents
ETIM, The Uighur separatist organization, has been waging the most prolific guerrilla campaign against the Chinese Government in recent years. In an article written in the July/August issue of Foreign Affairs, Assistant Professor Chien-Peng Chung of The Defence and Strategic Studies Institute in Singapore cited that between 1990 and 2001 ETIM had committed around 200 attacks in Xinjiang province killing and injuring more than 600 people. [16]
The Chinese State, reciprocating such violence, has also been using draconian methods of violence against the Uighurs. State mandated executions of Uighur human rights activists, separatists, and religious as well as ethnic leaders have become a commonplace occurrence under the governance of Beijing. Aside from the myriad ways that the Chinese have used colonialist techniques to subvert the economic development of the Uighur people and exert control over the region, after September 11th, 2002, it has implemented even harsher policies of violence. These policies are targeted at destroying the Sufi form of Uighur Islam in the name of the global war on terror. According to a 2002 Human Rights Watch Report, these policies have directly resulted in the deaths of hundreds of innocent Uighurs and the unlawful detention of thousands who have no relation to the ETIM or Al Qaeda.
A War of Terror
From the premises provided within this paper, an observer can come to the logical conclusion that, at the very least by social and economic metrics, China has been waging a prolonged war of terror against the Uighur people since the transfer of Xinjiang to Chinese Communist control in 1949. In response to the war waged against them by Beijing, some Uighurs have formed resistance movements aimed at ending this unprovoked war and liberating the Uighur people. The East Turkestan Islamic Movement is one of many groups that have been engaged in violent dialogue with the Chinese state. Though it appears that the organization has had links to Al Qaeda in the past, it is also evident that the organization is not determined to help Al Qaeda in its extremist mission and has made contact with them only as a means to train its members in methods of fighting against the Chinese in Xinjiang.
It is incumbent upon the United States as a democracy and as the only superpower in the world to recognize the difference between two types of violence: one, violence as a means to destroy freedom and erode enlightenment ideology and, two, violence as a means to attain freedom and autonomy. The war Islamists have been waging against the West over the past thirty years is a war against the values of freedom, equality, and inalienable rights, which the fundamentalists view as a vital threat to their backward ideology and way of life. The war that the ETIM and other resistance organizations have been waging against the Chinese government is a war meant to attain human rights, freedom, and a Uighurstan homeland that rightfully belong to a people. Within the United States and abroad many have taken up the Uighur cause and have called for the U.S. government to put pressure on China. The World Uighur Congress, The National Review, The Weekly Standard, and Human Rights Watch have consistently disseminated awareness about the Uighur people and their right to religious, social, and economic autonomy.
The U.S. government should once again pick up this clarion call and support the Uighur independence movement. That does not necessarily mean the U.S. should endorse the methods that ETIM uses, but it should not lump the organization with the likes of Al-Qaeda, LTTE, and Hezbollah. In the end, it is in the interest of the United States as a purveyor of freedom and self-determination to apply pressure on the Chinese to end their war of terror against the Uighur people.
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[1] Chien-peng Chung, China’s, “War on Terror,” Foreign Affairs 81 Number 4 (2002): 8-12.
[2] Waiting for Uighurstan, dir. Sean R. Roberts, Perf. Ibrahim Makshimov, Et. Al. Videocassette. The Center for Visual Anthropology: University of Southern California, 1995.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Cindy Sui, Uighurs See China's Economic Push as 'Great Western Rip-Off' Five Years Later 3 April 2005.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Brad Adams, Mickey Spiegel, and Joe Saunders, Devastating Blows: Religious Repression of Uighurs in Xinjiang (Human Rights Watch, 2002).
[9] Eiichi Shiozawa, “China Intent On Keeping Uighurs in national Fold,” Japan Economic Newswire 27 June 2002.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Cindy Sui, “China Orders End to Instruction in Uighur At Top Xinjiang University,” Agence France Presse 28 May 2002.
[12] Shiozawa.
[13] "Uyghur Service." World Uighur Network News. Radio Free Asia. 5 June 2002. <http://www.uygur.org/wunn02/2002_06_05a.htm>.
[14] Shiozawa.
[15] Shiozawa.
[16] Chien-peng Chung, China’s, “War on Terror,” Foreign Affairs 81 Number 4 (2002): 8-12.