Muslims in China
Tarred with bin Laden's brush
Mar 28th 2002 | KASHGAR, KHOTAN AND URUMQI
>From The Economist print edition
September 11th gave China a handy excuse to repress its discontented Muslim minority in Xinjiang. Not that it really needed one
THE dust-blown towns and villages on the southern edge of the Taklamakan desert form the front line of what China calls its own campaign against international terrorism. These ancient Silk Road oases, says its propaganda machine, harbour Muslim extremists intent on overthrowing Chinese rule with the backing of Osama bin Laden's terrorist network. That, at any rate, is the official version. Far more plausible, though, is that China is invoking Mr bin Laden's name to justify tight control over its Turkic-speaking Muslims, especially the Uighurs who dominate this part of the Xinjiang "autonomous" region in China's far west. In one town, a Uighur worker at a mosque waits for the prayer hall to empty before regaling foreign visitors with his grievances. "We want to build our own country, but there's no way. If we try, we are immediately arrested and executed," he says. Such sentiments are echoed by many Uighurs, whose Islamic culture has far more in common with that of the formerly Soviet Central Asian republics than with the rest of China. Some say that Chinese officials have clamped down even harder since the September 11th terrorist attacks in America, targeting religious activities in particular. In a report published last week, the human-rights group Amnesty International gave details of what it said was an intensifying campaign against suspected government opponents in Xinjiang. It quoted Uighur exiles as saying that some 3,000 people were detained in the crackdown between mid-September and the end of last year. Some have been sentenced to death and executed after summary trials. This does not necessarily indicate that China has greatly widened its net since September 11th. By Amnesty's calculation, tens of thousands of Uighurs have been rounded up in the last decade, and as early as April last year, China launched a nationwide "strike hard" campaign against serious crime, which in Xinjiang also targeted the "three evils" of separatism, terrorism and religious extremism. Well before September 11th, the authorities were closing down unauthorised mosques and forcing imams to go to political-indoctrination classes. Mr bin Laden provides no more than a convenient excuse-and a belated one at that-for a continuing campaign of repression in Xinjiang. On the surface, Kashgar and Khotan-the two best-known hotbeds of Uighur nationalism in southern Xinjiang-still appear relaxed. Apart from slogans condemning separatism draped over the entrances of many schools and other government-run institutions, there is little public evidence of the clampdown. Your correspondent drove the 300-odd miles between Kashgar and Khotan without being stopped for any identity check and saw no special security measures in either town or places in between.
The authorities' low profile is in fact rather curious given China's claim in January that it had arrested more than 100 "terrorists" who had "sneaked into Xinjiang" after receiving training in Afghanistan and elsewhere. A government report said such terrorists had been conducting bombings in department stores, markets and other public places, as well as murdering officials and Uighur imams appointed by the Chinese government. China says terrorists fighting for an independent "East Turkestan"-the name of two short-lived independent Uighur republics, set up in 1933 and 1944-have carried out more than 200 attacks in Xinjiang since 1990.Yet the most recent explosion blamed on terrorists in the region occurred in 1998. Western diplomats dispute China's claims of complicity in such violence by overseas terrorist groups. Although several hundred Uighurs joined the Taliban in Afghanistan, "there is no evidence of any link between the Uighurs and al-Qaeda," says a diplomat familiar with the region. China's portrayal of Uighur separatism as a part of a global terror problem is being seized upon by officials in some parts of Xinjiang to harass the Muslim population. In a village near Kashgar, a Uighur peasant says that he now dares not complain about excessive taxes imposed by the local authorities for fear of being labelled a separatist. A Uighur taxi driver in Khotan says his superiors have begun using the separatist brush to tar anyone who complains about working conditions. In the Khotan region, the authorities worry about the popularity of the conservative Wahhabi brand of Islam to which al-Qaeda subscribes. "You can't say in public that you support the Wahhabi. Officials think it is anti-government," says a resident who describes himself as a Wahhabi supporter. But in most parts of Xinjiang, and even in Khotan, Islam is as much if not more a badge of cultural identity than it is a religious conviction. A western diplomat describes the Wahhabism of Khotan as "a protest theology" and says that many "Wahhabis" have little idea what that really means. Most Muslims in Xinjiang practise the mystical-and far more liberal-Sufi form of Islam, which Wahhabis oppose. Some women who wear veils also wear mini-skirts. The puritanism of the Taliban movement would have little market here. One of the very few examples of Uighur interest in pan-Islamic causes was the uncovering by police last June of two cells of Hizb-ut Tahrir, a group seeking to establish an Islamic caliphate in Central Asia. Many Uighurs, like Muslims elsewhere, are opposed to the military campaign in Afghanistan. Yet they are also grateful for what they see as American sympathy for the Uighurs' plight. Asked who Uighurs regard as the leader of their cause, a 25-year-old trader in the provincial capital, Urumqi, said "the only leader we have is Radio Free Asia", which is funded by Congress. In its annual human-rights report on China published this month, the American State Department said many Uighurs had been detained for listening to the station, which the Chinese try to jam. Some Uighurs say their region is even more tightly controlled by China than neighbouring Tibet. Such resentment shows no sign of abating as China pumps more money into the region as part of a strategy adopted in 1999 of encouraging investment in less developed western parts of the country. The perception of many Uighurs is that ethnic Han immigrants, who form some 40% of the region's 18m people (up from a mere 6% in 1949) are profiting most from the money. Should Hans and Uighurs become even more polarised, this could spawn exactly the kind of extremism that China most fears.
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