SPEAKING
FREELY Uzbekistan: Implications for China,
Xinjiang By Stephen Sullivan
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online
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The
recent "terrorist" bombings in Uzbekistan have raised
questions about the ramifications for China,
particularly the Beijing government's likely response as
it has major concerns over the Uighur people of Xinjiang
- where fears of Islamist dissent and unrest persist.
China's response to the bombings so far has been
muted, limited to brief condemnations of violence and
terrorism. In December, China issued its own wanted list
of alleged Xinjiang "terrorists". Troop reinforcements
and further crackdowns on Uighur activists were not
immediately detected.
The Uighur ethnic group of
northwestern China's Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region
are a Turkic Muslim people numbering some 8 million to 9
million (the total population of the huge, resource-rich
region is 19.25 million, including another 8 million to
9 million Han Chinese.) Of all of China's 56 ethnic
groups, the Uighurs are the most dissimilar to the
majority Han Chinese and, along with the Tibetans, have
caused the Han the most "heartache" since the communist
takeover of China in 1949.
A Caucasian people,
the Uighurs speak a Turkic language that is most similar
to that spoken by the Uzbeks. Both being Muslim, they
share commonality along religious and cultural lines.
Uzbekistan too is home to many Uighurs who moved there
in several waves since the 19th century.
Xinjiang, however, does not border Uzbekistan;
it borders Afghanistan (a tiny frontier), Kazakhstan and
Krygyzstan. It is adjacent to Tibet.
The Uighur
people, though they have maintained contacts with the
Chinese for more than 2,000 years, consider the Han
Chinese presence in Xinjiang, or Eastern Turkistan as
they prefer to call it, an occupation of their ancestral
homeland.
East Turkistan established briefly
in 1944 During the 200-odd years that the Chinese
have held sovereignty over Xinjiang, the Uighurs have on
several occasions attempted to gain autonomy, the latest
achieving limited success in 1944, when the short-lived
Republic of East Turkistan was established.
Since the advent of the communists and the
consequent massive influx of Han Chinese into Xinjiang
to take advantage of its economic potential, the Uighurs
have grown increasingly marginalized and, for a period
in the 1990s, they became quite restive under Han rule.
The collapse of the Soviet Union and the
independence from Moscow of the Central Asian republics
gave rise to a degree of hope among the Uighurs that the
dominos of self-rule would fall their way as well.
Fearing just that possibility and potential major unrest
in Xinjiang, the Chinese government began in the 1990s a
policy of heavy repression of Uighur rights,
specifically the rights of religious freedom and freedom
of association.
A minor demonstration by Uighurs
in the Xinjiang town of Yining (Gulja) in 1997 turned
ugly and resulted in nine deaths at the scene and
subsequently some 240 executions, along with thousands
of detentions and custodial sentences. It was at this
time that the central government vowed to crack down on
what it termed the "three evils": religious extremism,
separatism and terrorism.
Since the September
11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States, the
Chinese government has attempted to link what it terms
Uighur "terrorist" organizations with the group now
known as the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), the
militant Islamic group thought by many to be responsible
for the recent string of bombings in Uzbekistan.
China alleges Taliban, al-Qaeda
links China's permanent mission to the United
Nations released a statement in November 2001 linking a
little-known Uighur "organization", the "East Turkistan
Islamic Movement" (ETIM), with the Taliban in
Afghanistan, the IMU, and Osama bin Laden.
The
statement claimed that members of ETIM had trained with
the Taliban, al-Qaeda and the IMU at bases in
Afghanistan and were personally directed by bin Laden to
carry out terrorist operations in Tajikistan,
Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Xinjiang.
To this end, the Chinese claim, the Uighur ETIM
assisted the IMU in the armed "insurgence" and
"invasion" of southern regions of Uzbekistan and
Krygyzstan in November 1999 and August 2000.
These allegations, however, have never been
fully proved and some international commentators believe
they were put out to divert world sympathy from the
Uighurs. Yegevney Kozhokin, then director of the Russian
Institute of Strategic Studies, echoed this view in a
2001 assessment of Islamic extremism in Central Asia, as
did the US State Department when it supported China's
efforts to list the ETIM as an international terrorist
organization with the United Nations in 2002. Both,
however, could only cite information supplied by China
as the basis for their beliefs with no independent
substantiation.
Despite this alleged linkage and
- were it true - the violence in Uzbekistan should not
have any direct effect on China, though that is not to
say that Beijing might not attempt to make some capital
out of it, strengthening its hand with regard to
autonomy activists in Xinjiang.
Most Uighurs
don't want a separate state The Uighurs for all
intents and purposes no longer have the ability or
desire to strive, as a people, for separation from
China. There is no evidence of any organized resistance
in Xinjiang today, if there ever truly was any. They
certainly have not and would not as a people be involved
in any activity orchestrated by "Islamic extremist"
organizations. The Uighurs are from the Hanafi school of
Islam, a branch both moderate and liberal in outlook
compared with their Arab "brothers", or the more
Arab-orientated Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan.
They also are a very westward-looking people,
unlike some Muslims, and they see the West as being most
supportive of their plight in Xinjiang, unlike their
Turkic Islamic "brothers" in Central Asia, who virtually
have set the Xinjiang Uighurs adrift as they strive for
economic concessions from China.
If the Chinese
were to attempt to capitalize on the Uzbek bombings, we
could expect to see condemnations of the Uighurs in the
official Xinhua news agency, the People's Daily and
official media, possibly followed by a round of
detentions and further crackdowns on Uighur religious
activities and freedom of association and movement.
If the Chinese were to see the events in
Uzbekistan as being a real threat, then there would be
evidence of some sort of "military exercises" in
Xinjiang to warn both the Uighurs and any militant
Islamic group that Beijing cannot be intimidated. Such
military activity has been used to that effect before,
both in Xinjiang and against Taiwan (in military
exercises in the Taiwan Strait).
No immediate
security response to Uzbek bombings As of early
April, there is certainly no evidence that the Chinese
are taking the Uzbekistan events as any potential threat
to the state or their people. Apart from the expected
diplomatic responses of regret and so on, there has been
no sign of activity or concern coming out of China.
It would be highly unlikely that given
everything that has been said on the human-rights issue
this year, and the current session of the UN Human
Rights Commission in Geneva, that China would take major
overt action to exploit the Uzbekistan bombings to
tighten its grip on Xinjiang.
Stephen
Sullivan, an Australian business consultant, runs
two websites and a discussion forum on the Uighurs and
Turkic peoples of Central Asia. He is the author of the
Internet article "China's bin Laden: The terrorist they
forgot". His main website iswww.uygurworld.com, about Uighur
history, culture and politics. He can be reached atstevesullivan@uygurworld.com.
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online
feature that allows guest writers to have their say.
Please click hereif you
are interested in contributing.
