SPEAKING
FREELY SCO exercise
'aimed at suppressing Uighurs' By Alim Seytoff
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times
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The Shanghai
Cooperation Organization (SCO) has launched its
largest military exercises to date in Russia's
Chelyabinsk region and East Turkestan (also known
as the Xinjiang Uyghur autonomous region of
China). These exercises, code-named Peace Mission
2007 and based on developments in Andijan,
Uzbekistan, in 2005 when Uzbek President Islam Karimov
violently suppressed an
uprising, involved more than 6,500 soldiers and
fighter jets from member states.
Although
the stated purposes of these exercises are to
improve cooperation among member states primarily
in the fight against terrorism, the real objective
is to intimidate the Uighur population in East
Turkestan and to warn the democratic forces in
Central Asia not to challenge the authoritarian
regimes.
In 1996, China, Russia and three
newly independent Central Asian states,
Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, created the
Shanghai Five to resolve border issues left over
after the collapse of the Soviet Union. With the
addition of Uzbekistan in 2001, the Shanghai Five
became known as the Shanghai Cooperation
Organization and has focused primarily on China's
security obsessions of "terrorism, separatism and
extremism". The SCO has allowed China to use
political, diplomatic and economic influence to
suppress Uighur opposition in East Turkestan and
Central Asia.
China's policies in Central
Asia are an outward projection of its fears
regarding internal security, because its strategic
and energy objectives are based on stability in
East Turkestan. Since the founding of Kazakhstan,
Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, Chinese leaders have
feared that these states, whose people are
culturally and linguistically related to Uighurs,
would sympathize with the Uighur situation and
support their cause. The Chinese government views
the more than 1 million Uighurs living in those
countries as a threat, worrying that this
population might aid Uighurs in East Turkestan to
resist Chinese control of what they consider their
traditional homeland.
However, after the
founding of the SCO, using military and economic
assistance, China has been largely successful in
persuading Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan
to suppress the Uighur populations in their
respective countries, to deport Uighur political
activists and refugees fleeing Chinese persecution
back to China, and to maintain official silence
about the human-rights violations in East
Turkestan. The increased military and economic
cooperation between China and neighboring states
has resulted in the repatriation and execution of
Uighur activists who fled to those countries to
escape Chinese persecution.
At present,
SCO member and observer states not only tolerate
China's repression of Uighurs in East Turkestan
but also help China track down Uighur political
activists and extradite them back to China to face
unproved political and criminal charges. Uighur
activists trying to escape the harsh repression in
East Turkestan have no choice but to flee to
neighboring countries, mostly China's political
allies, where Beijing exerts its influence to have
them forcibly returned, where they face serious
human-rights violations, including torture, unfair
trials and execution.
The extradition of
Huseyin Celil, a Uighur-Canadian, from Uzbekistan
to China in June 2006 is one of the most powerful
examples of the deportation of Uighurs from
Central Asian states in violation of international
law. In March 2006, Celil, a charismatic Uighur
imam and activist, went on a vacation with his
wife to visit her parents in Uzbekistan after
being granted Canadian citizenship. That June,
Uzbek authorities detained Celil, reportedly at
the request of the Chinese government, and later
secretly extradited him to China to face charges
of "terrorism".
This April, Chinese
authorities sentenced Celil to life imprisonment
on "terrorism" charges, denying his Canadian
citizenship, prompting the highest-level Canadian
protest. Celil's Canadian lawyer Chris Mcleod
believes that the Chinese government, by punishing
Celil, wished to send a warning to Uighur
human-rights activists in exile that they will not
be able "to hide behind a Canadian passport or a
charter of rights, whatever other document in
other countries you may have". In all cases
related to the extradition of Uighur activists to
China, the SCO states upheld bilateral agreements
over international law.
Today, the SCO is
evolving into an anti-Uighur, anti-democratic and
even anti-West military alliance of authoritarian
states. Both China and Russia are increasingly
opposed to US military presence in Central Asia.
Therefore, Peace Mission 2007 is intended to turn
the SCO into a military and political alliance to
repress Uighur people's legitimate democratic and
human-rights demands, to warn the local democratic
forces never to dream of having any kind of "color
revolutions" aimed at overthrowing the
authoritarian states, and to counter a growing
influence of the United States in the region.
Alim Seytoff is general
secretary of the Uyghur American Association,
Washington, DC.
(Copyright 2007 Alim
Seytoff.)
Speaking Freely is an Asia
Times Online feature that allows guest writers to
have their say. Please click hereif you are interested in
contributing.
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