China Intensifies Minority Oppression

By Henry Srebrnik, [Saint John, NB] Telegraph-Journal

The Uyghur minority in China, numbering about 11.3 million people, mostly in Xinjiang, have faced increased repression in recent years.

A Muslim Turkic people, their language is related to Turkish, and they regard themselves as culturally and ethnically close to neighbouring Central Asian countries that were once part of the Soviet Union but have been sovereign states since 1991.

The region’s economy has largely revolved around agriculture and trade, with towns such as Kashgar thriving as hubs along the famous Silk Road.

But while the Russians lost their Asian republics, Beijing is determined to hold on to the Uyghur homeland in what many Uyghur nationalists call East Turkestan.

The first historical reference to Uyghurs occurred in the sixth century, when they were described as a nomadic people. During the eighth century they established a kingdom in Mongolia, but in the following century they were driven south by invaders into present-day Gansu and Xinjiang in China. 

There they founded a Buddhist kingdom, referred to as “Uyghuristan”, but Islam made gradual inroads from the eleventh century onwards. 

The region was contested by various Turkic groups, Mongols and the Chinese until the Qing Dynasty brought the whole area under Chinese control in 1884. 

In a sense, the Russian Revolution of 1917 helped shape a modern Uyghur sense of nationhood. Uyghurs living in Soviet territory began to shape the idea of a Uyghur nation. The Uyghurs twice declared an independent state of “East Turkestan” in the 1930s and 1940s, with Soviet support.

The Nationalist Chinese government also started to use “Uyghur” in official discourse in the mid-1930s.  Post-1949 Maoist China retained the practice.

The discriminatory nature of Chinese government policy in Xinjiang since the Communists took control has served to strengthen Uyghur identity, which nowadays is often defined in opposition to Han Chinese.

The Chinese strategy is to demographically overwhelm the Uyghurs; Xinjiang’s population of 23.6 million is now 40.4 per cent Han Chinese, just 5.5 per cent less than that of the native Uyghurs. 

Most of the new towns and cities springing up across Xinjiang are overwhelmingly populated by Han Chinese attracted by work in new factories. In fact even Urumqi, the capital, may now be majority Han.

The Han Chinese are said to be given the best jobs and the majority do well economically, something that has fuelled resentment among Uyghurs. 

There are ongoing campaigns against aspects of Uyghur identity that involve religious observance.

Protests in March 2008 in the cities of Urumqi and Hotan spread to Kashgar and elsewhere through the summer, coinciding with the Olympic Games in Beijing. More inter-ethnic rioting erupted in 2009, leading to over 200 deaths. 

Restrictions on Islam are pervasive. Signs across Xinjiang forbid long beards and full veils, and surveillance cameras are everywhere.

In February Human Rights Watch reported that Chinese authorities were sweeping up citizens’ personal information to police the population. Thousands of people have been sent to detention and political indoctrination centres.

The U.S. State Department’s annual Human Rights Reports, released this month, also indicated that official repression worsened in 2017.

For China, Xinjiang is too strategically important to allow an independence movement to get off the ground. It has oil and s part of the new “one belt, one road” project China is developing as a route for exports to central Asia and Europe.