CONTINUING UNREST IN XINJIANG
An Update
Inner Mongolia,
Tibet and Xinjiang (means New Territory) form China’s outer rim in which non-Han
ethnic groups constituted by the Mongolians, the Tibetans and the Uighurs used to be in a
preponderant majority, but this has been slowly eroded under a policy of assimilating the
non-Han minorities with the Han majority. Beijing calls this the policy of
“hanhua”, meaning “making them Chinese”.
The Mongolians, the
Tibetans and the Uighurs denounce it as a policy of Han colonisation , which
threatens to reduce the non-Hans to a minority in their traditional homelands. The extent
of the alleged Han colonisation of Xinjiang would be evident from the fact that the Han
Chinese today constitute 38 per cent of the population in the province (total population
of the province 16 million) and 80 per cent in Urumqi, its capital, as against 15 per cent
and 20 per cent respectively in 1950.
Keeping in view the
strategic importance of the province in which China’s Lop Nor nuclear testing site is
located and which is believed to have important, but as yet untapped oil reserves, Beijing
has combined its policy of forced assimilation of the Uighurs with greater attention to
the economic development of the province and its trade links with the neighbouring Central
Asian Republics (CARs).
In 1996, a sum of
US $ 1.5 billion was earmarked for infrastructure development. A railway line linking
Urumqi with Almaty in Kazakhstan, whose construction had started in 1956, was completed
and opened to traffic in June 1992. A two-track railway line connecting Urumqi with the
rest of China is under construction. In 1996, for which data are available, the total
value of foreign investment proposals approved in the province came to about US $ 120
million. Most of it came from the overseas Chinese.
However, the
benefit of this economic development has mainly gone to the Han settlers, thereby
aggravating the feelings of alienation of the Uighurs. Amongst other aggravating factors
are:
* The rigorous enforcement of the local directive permitting
only two children per family in the urban areas and three in the rural areas.
* Prohibition of religious books not published and printed by
the state.
* Ban on Government servants attending prayers in
mosques.
* Ban on receipt of funds from abroad for religious
purposes.
Even after 50 years
of Marxism-Leninism and 20 years of Dengism, the State has not been able to stamp out the
influence of religion and religious leaders. The greater the lure of religion, the greater
was the suppression of religious practices by the State. This was so not only in the
non-Han minority provinces, but also in the rest of the country. Faced with growing
resentment due to this policy, the state is now allowing religious practices, but under
carefully controlled conditions through preachers recruited and paid by the state.
Denied legitimate
means of expressing dissent and giving vent to their anger against the state, the non-Han
minorities of the outer rim have been increasingly using religious gatherings for letting
out steam.
It is the
ill-advised attempt of the authorities to regulate the observance of the Muslim holy
fasting period of Ramadan, which has been causing serious incidents of violence during
this period every year since February 1997. There were serious riots at Yining, near the
Kazakh border, from February 4 to 6,1997. According to the official version of the riots,
9 persons were killed, but, according to the Uighur political exiles, 100 Uighurs and 25
Han Chinese were killed and 31 other Uighurs were allegedly executed by the People’s
Liberation Army (PLA) for participating in the disturbances.
Public trials and
executions of other participants are still continuing and the authorities, despite such
strong action, have not been able restore peace in the province as would be evident from
the following incidents since February 6, 1997:
- Four persons were killed and many others injured when three
bombs planted in buses simultaneously exploded at Urumqi on February, 25,1997. The
bombings coincided with the memorial service for Deng Xiaoping.
- Eight persons were injured in a bus explosion in Beijing
on March,8,1997. In a message to Taiwan’s official Central News Agency, the
Turkey-based Organisation for Turkestan Freedom claimed responsibility for the explosion.
- Two Uighur youths were killed at Yining when PLA troops
fired on a group of about 1,000 youths, who demonstrated against the public execution of
three Uighurs on April 26,1997,for their participation in the February riots. They also
tried to forcibly free 27 others who were being taken to jail after being sentenced to
imprisonment.
- The PLA publicly executed at Urumqi on May 29,1997,
Mahmut Abdurrahman, Jilil Bilali and six other Uighurs after having them tried for their
alleged involvement in the bomb explosions of February 25,1997.
- In the last week of June,1997, the Chinese authorities
demolished a number of unauthorised mosques and arrested 40 persons in Xinjiang for
illegally conducting religious classes in these mosques.
- Nine more Uighurs were publicly executed at Yining on July,
21,1997, for participating in the February riots.
- Eleven more Uighurs were publicly executed at Yili on
January, 20,1998, after having been convicted of murdering government servants and setting
fire to cars.
- Uighur separatists in northwestern Xinjiang allegedly killed
eight Chinese police officers in the second week of August 1998, in reprisal for the
earlier executions of Uighur youths.
-15 Uighurs, including a woman, were publicly executed in the first
week of December 1998,after being found guilty of causing public disturbances. The woman
and her brother were accused of robbing a bank in September 1998.
- 29 Uighurs were sentenced to various terms of imprisonment
on January 8,1999,for their participation in the riots of February 1997.
- One Uighur nationalist was sentenced to death at Korgas, on
the Kazakh border, in the last week of January 1999, for manufacturing explosives.
- Yibulayin Simayi and Abdurreyimu Aisha were executed at Yili
on January, 28,1999.Simayi was accused of participating in the February 1997 riots and
Aisha was accused of buying a large number of alarm clocks for use in bombs. Eight others
were executed at the same place on January 29, 1999, for participating in the riots of
February 1997.
- There were violent clashes between about 300 Uighur
nationalists and the local police when the latter tried to prevent a procession by the
Uighurs at Urumqi on February, 16,1999.
These incidents indicate that ethnic
marginalisation and religious suppression, combined with the example of the accession to
independence of the CARs, have thus again rekindled the desire of the Uighur Muslims for
an independent state to be called either Uighurstan or East Turkestan in which the 10
million Uighurs of Xinjiang and about half a million of their community presently
scattered in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan can live.
In fact, between
1944 and 1950, the Uighurs had managed to proclaim an independent East Turkestan with the
capital at Yining, but this was overthrown by the PLA in 1950. Some of the nationalists,
who had participated in this short-lived revolt, crossed over into the now
Pakistan-occupied Gilgit and Baltistan area of Jammu & Kashmir from where they
proceeded to Saudi Arabia and Turkey and sought shelter there.
In an attempt to
nurse the separatist feelings of these Uighurs, the Central Intelligence Agency of the US
recruited some of them and used them as Uighur language translators for its Radio Liberty
then based in Munich. Some of the Uighur nationalist leaders presently active against
Beijing are either these former CIA translators or their offspring.
Two important
developments of the 1980s helped the separatist movement. The first was the Afghan war
during which the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) of Pakistan and the Hizbe Islami, the Afghan
Mujahideen group of Gulbuddin Heckmatyar, recruited Sunni Muslims from Xinjiang, without
Beijing raising any objection, for fighting against the Soviet troops. After the war,
these elements returned to Xinjiang and joined the nationalist movement against Beijing
and the Han settlers.
The second was the
coming into being of the Unrepresented Nations And Peoples’ Organisation (UNPO), a
non-governmental organisation based in The Hague, which took up the causes of the people
of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Tibet and Xinjiang. After the Baltic States achieved
independence in 1991, it has been focussing its attention on Tibet, Xinjiang and
India’s North-East.
In 1992, Erkin
Alptekin, an Uighur, whose father had crossed over into Kashmir after the PLA crushed the
1944-50 revolt and who had worked for Radio Liberty in the 1980s,was elected to the UNPO
Executive Committee and later became its head. Under his influence, the UNPO’s
interest in Xinjiang intensified.
After a lull of
nearly four decades, the Uighur nationalist movement revived again in 1989 and between
1989 and 1993, there were sporadic incidents of violence in Xinjiang, which were
ruthlessly suppressed by the PLA.
After another lull
in1994-95, the violence has again intensified since February 1997. This has been
exacerbated by the arrival in Xinjiang for resettlement in the rural areas of about
100,000 Han farmers from central China displaced by the Three Gorges dam.
Since 1995, a
number of Uighur separatist organisations have come to the fore amongst the Uighur
diaspora such as the following:
- The Eastern Turkestan Union based in Europe and led by
Erkin Alptekin.
- The Eastern Turkestan National Freedom Centre based in
Washington D.C.and led by Anwar Yusuf.
- The Organisation for the Liberation of
Uighurstan based in Almaty and led by Ashir Vakhidi, a Kazakh Uighur, who had reportedly
served as a Colonel in the erstwhile USSR army.
- The Revolutionary Front of Eastern Turkestan, based in
Kazakhstan and headed by Modan Mukhlisi, whose father was also associated with the 1944-50
revolt.
- The Society of Patriots for East Turkestan, also based in
Kazakhstan, and led by Batur Arshidinov.
- The Organisation for Turkestan Freedom based in
Turkey.
It would not be correct to
project these organisations as fundamentalist groups. These are essentially nationalist
organisations, which want to end the Han colonisation of the Uighur homeland and create an
independent state for themselves. Since the Chinese authorities do not allow them any
means of self-expression through the media, books, pamphlets, elected bodies etc, they
have been using religion and religious gatherings and occasions for asserting their
rights.
Though the
organisations of the Uighurs of Kazakhstan project their aim as supporting the human
rights of the Uighurs of Xinjiang and deny any secret objective of forming part of an
independent East Turkestan, their activities from Kazakh territory have been of concern
not only to the Chinese, but also to the Kazakh authorities. The latter apprehend that
this could damage Kazakhstan's relations with China.
Another fear is
that this could disturb law and order in Kazakhstan itself. After the PLA used force to
suppress a violent demonstration at Khulje in February last year, many of the participants
fled into Kazakhstan and took shelter with the Uighur families there. The Kazakh
authorities have been facing difficulties in detecting and expelling such persons.
Under an agreement
signed in 1995 by President Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan and President Jiang Zemin
of China, Kazakhstan security agencies have been co-operating with their Chinese
counterparts by monitoring the activities of the Uighurs of Kazakhstan and sharing
intelligence with Beijing. However, their transborder co-operation has had little effect
in restraining the activities of the nationalists of Xinjiang and the assistance received
by them from the community in Kazakhstan.
As a mark of the
serious concern felt by Beijing over the situation in Xinjiang, Qiao Shi, the then
Chairman of China’s National People’s Congress and No.3 in the party set-up (he
has since been eased out from both these positions), visited Xinjiang in April 1997.
In a statement
issued at Urumqi, he said: “We must firmly oppose national separatism and religious
extremist forces and safeguard the dignity of laws and the fundamental interests of people
of various ethnic groups. Xinjiang is a region inhabited by 47 different ethnic groups.
The local authorities must take effective measures to strengthen unity among people of
various ethnic groups. We must always bear in mind that the Han people cannot live without
the ethnic minorities.”
President Jiang
Zemin visited Xinjiang in July 1998. He said in a statement: “ A stable society and
politics are a condition for social and economic progress. The unity of the ethnic groups
can be only achieved by firmly opposing national split and safeguarding the country’s
unification.”
He described the
Communist Party’s religious policies as the best in China’s history and claimed
that China’s 56 ethnic groups were equal members of one big family.
His visit to
Xinjiang was preceded in March 1998, by a revamping of China’s Ministry of Public
Security, which is its internal intelligence set-up. Jia Chunwang, who had headed the
Ministry of State Security, the external intelligence set-up, with great distinction for
more than a decade and, in that capacity, had co-ordinated with dazzling success
China’s clandestine operations in the US for the procurement of nuclear and other
sensitive technologies, was appointed as Minister for Public Security, replacing Tao Siju.
Xu Yongyue took over the stewardship of the external intelligence set-up as Minister for
State Security. Jia accompanied Jiang on his visit to Xinjiang.
Earlier, in the
first week of February 1998, the “Xinjiang Legal Daily” had reported that 1,000
paramilitary police personnel had been sent to Yining following a deterioration of the
situation there. It gave for the first time the following details of the situation in
Xinjiang.
* The security forces were waging “a difficult and
intense war” against the splittists.
* Last year, hundreds of splittist terrorists were
detained and a terrorist training camp and an underground regional supply network were
smashed.
* Police had arrested more than 80 people near the city of
Kashgar alone in connection with 15 bomb explosions over a five-month period.
* Some of those arrested had been recruited by foreign
terrorist groups and trained during their pilgrimage to Mecca.
* There is also evidence of trade in heroin and weapons over
Xinjiang’s borders with Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, Afghanistan and three CARs.
The paper said:
“The Central Committee of the Communist Party is paying special attention to social
stability in Xinjiang and particularly in Yili county and has taken an important decision
to station troops in Yining city.”
THE PAKISTANI AND AFGHAN ROLE
On March 9,1995,
Pakistan, China, Kazakhstan and Kyrghystan had signed at Islamabad a transit trade
agreement. Under another agreement signed by Pakistan and China, it was decided to upgrade
the Karakoram highway to facilitate this trade. Subsequently, Beijing started going slow
on this project.
Writing in the
“Herald” (December 1995), a monthly journal of the “Dawn” group, Ahmad
Rashid, the well-known Pakistani columnist and expert on Afghanistan and Central Asia,
attributed the loss of Chinese interest in this project to Beijing’s anxiety to
restrict contacts between the Uighur nationalist elements and the Islamic parties of
Pakistan.
He wrote:
“Beijing’s reluctance stems from the fact that the proposed road would run
across Xinjiang and the Chinese fear that the route would increase the traffic in
fundamentalism…After an abortive Islamist uprising in the town of Baren in 1992 in
which 22 people were killed, China closed its road links with Pakistan for several
months.”
He added: “In
the second week of November 1995, Ibrahim Rouzi, Director of Xinjiang’s Religious
Affairs Bureau, ordered a Government probe into the mushrooming of unauthorised
mosques and Quranic schools in the region which, he said, were often opened with funds
received from abroad.”
Rashid quoted Rouzi
as saying as follows: “We must firmly oppose religious activities which run counter
to the socialist system, divide the motherland and incite fanaticism by disseminating
speeches in mosques about a religious war.”
Rashid also
reported that six Uighurs from Xinjiang, who were undergoing training at the Islamabad
Islamic University, attended a convention of the JI at Lahore in December 1995.
Quoting a Chinese
diplomat in Islamabad, the Urdu language daily “Nawai Waqt” of Pakistan reported
on June 4,1996, as follows: “China has deported hundreds of Pakistanis, who had
illegally entered Xinjiang for hunting eagles. These Pakistanis did not possess any valid
travel documents to enter the Chinese territory. He also disclosed that dozens of people,
allegedly involved in smuggling of drugs, were arrested by Chinese guards and one has been
sentenced to death. Several Pakistani drug smugglers are still languishing in Chinese
jails.”
The paper added:
“He said that following the arrest of about 450 Pakistanis in October 1995 in
Xinjiang for illegal activities, Beijing has decided not to issue visas to any individual
tourist. However, tourist groups are not being denied visas if they are sponsored by
Pakistani or Chinese tourism companies. Moreover, no trader or industrialist of Pakistan
will be refused a visa. Asked whether the arrested Pakistanis were indulging in unhealthy
political activities in Xinjiang, he declined to comment.”
On May 5,1997, the
Pakistani authorities handed over to the Xinjiang authorities 12 Uighurs, wanted in
connection with bomb explosions in Xinjiang. They had entered the Gilgit area and got
enrolled in the local madrasas (religious schools).
In August 1997, the
Xinjiang authorities announced a plan to lay a security fencing along the border with
Pakistan to prevent the infiltration of terrorists and drug smugglers. In May 1998, a
delegation of Chinese officials visited Pakistan for discussions on strengthening
trans-border security.
A Chinese
delegation led by Zhang Zhou, a senior official of the Xinjiang provincial administration,
visited Gilgit from October 29 to 31, 1998, and held talks with Abdul Latif Khan, the
Chief Secretary of the Northern Areas (Gilgit and Baltistan), on measures to stop
terrorist, drug-smuggling and other criminal activities across the border.
Abdul Rasul, a
Pakistani citizen of Xinjiang origin who had fled from Xinjiang to Pakistan in 1967, now
heads in Pakistan an organisation called the Asian Muslims’ Human Rights Bureau and
canvasses support for the cause of the Uighurs.
In an interview to
the “Nation” of Islamabad (November7, 1998), he claimed as follows:
- Uighurs from Xinjiang are undergoing religious
education in the madrasas of Pakistan and Egypt.
- Many Uighurs are participating in the jihad in Kashmir with
the Hizbul Mujahideen, in the Lebanon with the Hizbollah and in Afghanistan with the
Taliban.
- After launching the Asian Muslims’ Human Rights Bureau
at Islamabad on October 2,1998, he had met Osama Bin Laden in the Khost area of
Afghanistan. Bin Laden had promised to assist the Muslims of China.
- He had also met at Teheran Ali Muza, a senior office-bearer
of the Hizbollah of the Lebanon, and senior leaders of the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Addressing a press
conference at Islamabad on November 23,1998, he accused the Chinese authorities of
stopping all pilgrimage to Mecca by an order issued on October 24,1998. He further alleged
that the Xinjiang authorities had ordered that only persons above 18 years of age could
attend prayers in mosques. He claimed that there were about 4,000 Uighur nationalists in
their independence movement.
Following the
arrest of 16 Pakistan-trained Uighurs in Xinjiang, the Chinese authorities protested
to the Pakistan Interior Ministry on January 6,1999, over this. The Chinese complained
that the arrested persons admitted during their interrogation that they had been trained
in guerilla warfare in training camps at Jalalabad in Afghanistan and at Landi Kotal, in
the Khyber Agency of Pakistan. The Pakistani authorities denied the existence of any
training camps for Uighur separatists in Pakistani territory.
On December
25,1998, a Chinese tourist was attacked and robbed in Islamabad. On December 30,1998, Geo
Yiming, a Chinese national living in Islamabad, and his wife were killed while they were
changing the tyre of their car. While the police have not yet been able to establish the
motive for these crimes, there has been speculation connecting them to the situation in
Xinjiang.
In a surprise move,
a five-member Chinese delegation led by Sun Guoxian, head of the Asia desk in the Chinese
Foreign Office, visited Kabul in the last week of January, 1999, for talks with officials
of the Foreign Ministry of the Taliban Government. Since China has not established
diplomatic relations with the Taliban administration, this visit has been interpreted by
many as indication of a Chinese anxiety to befriend the Taliban in order to dissuade it
from helping the Uighurs.
While this is
possible, it is also likely that the Chinese action was a quid pro quo gesture in return
for the Taliban’s action in October-November last year in allowing two teams of
Chinese ballistic missile experts to examine the places in Afghanistan struck by US Cruise
missiles in August last year and take collected samples of the debris to China for further
examination. The Taliban was also reported to have given to the Chinese missile experts
one of the Cruise missiles, which had not exploded.
B.RAMAN
14.3.99
(The writer is Additional Secretary (Retd), Cabinet
Secretariat, Govt. of India, and presently Director, Institute For Topical
Studies,Chennai.E-mailaddress:corde@vsnl.com)
