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If Only the Uighurs Were Buddhist and China Was Israel
NEW YORK - Pity the Uighurs -- the wrong kind of minority, the wrong kind of Muslims, fighting the wrong kind of enemy.
For years, Uighurs -- a Turkic people who are largely Muslim -- complained of economic, cultural and religious discrimination under the harsh fist of Beijing. The latter made sure the Uighurs were outnumbered in the western Xinjiang province by Han Chinese migrants.
In the worst ethnic unrest in China in years, Uighurs took to the streets of the provincial capital Urumqi on Sunday, apparently after a protest at government handling of a June clash between Han Chinese and Uighur factory workers in southern China, where two Uighurs died.
At least 156 people died in weekend riots.
The Chinese government quickly blamed exiled separatists and Muslim militant groups, arrested dozens and tried to curb information by stifling the internet. On Tuesday, Han Chinese armed with iron bars and machetes went looking for revenge on Uighurs.
Following the news that did make it out of Xinjiang, I thought if only the Uighurs were Buddhists like the Tibetans with whom the Uighurs share almost mirror grievances against Beijing.
If they were Buddhists, Bjork, Sting, Bono and all those other one-named saviors of the world's poor and oppressed would have held "Free Xinjiang" concerts already. But the West continues to largely ignore the Uighurs. Maybe they're not as cuddly as the Tibetans or their leader the Dalai Lama.
Perhaps the U.S. State Department would issue stronger words in their defense if only the Uighurs weren't the wrong kind of minority in a country that produces half the goods we use and which currently lends the wobbly global economy enough money to keep it just this side of total collapse.
The Uighurs aren't Buddhists but are instead Muslims and us Muslims don't get much love these days. You'd think the U.S. at least would be paying a bit more attention to Uighurs after locking up four of their brethren at the prison camp at Guantanamo without charge for seven years. They were released earlier this year to Bermuda.
If the West seems deaf to Uighur complaints, then where are their fellow Muslims? Surely this is a chance for Muslims across the world to march in protest at the stranglehold the godless Communist Chinese keep over the Uighurs?
Think again.
The Egyptian blogger Wael Abbas put it bluntly on the micro-blogging site, Twitter -- where thousands follow him -- when he asked why no one was paying attention to the Uighur "intifada," the Arabic word for uprising that is usually associated with Palestinians fighting back against Israeli occupation.
That's precisely the problem -- the Uighurs are no Palestinians and the Chinese are not Israel. Many Muslims -- Arab Muslims especially -- pay attention only when the U.S. and Israel are behaving badly. Palestine followed by Iraq always take precedence leaving little room for other Muslim grievances.
Look at Darfur, where the suffering goes ignored because those who are creating the misery are neither Americans nor Israelis but instead fellow Arab Muslim Sudanese.
China is coincidentally one of Sudan's biggest trade partners and sells Khartoum plenty of weapons which Darfuris complain are used against them. So it's unlikely Sudanese President Omar Bashir, who declared himself the guardian of Islam in 2007 by putting on trial a British teacher for insulting Muslims when she named a class teddy bear "Mohammed", will condemn Chinese oppression of Uighurs.
Perhaps Israel can save the day and invade Xinjiang.
Xinjiang and its Muslim inhabitants are almost complete unknowns in the Arab world, much to China's relief, I'm sure. During a visit in 1995 to attend the United Nations conference on women in Beijing, I tried to visit Xinjiang. But not a single airline office would sell a ticket to a "radical lesbians," as conference attendees were seen. No "restive regions" for us.
Further afield from the Arab world, Shaaz Mahboob, a British Muslim friend of Pakistani descent, wondered on Facebook "Where are the Pakistani emotions which rage whenever there is an issue to do with Muslims anywhere on this planet (thank God there aren't Muslims being persecuted on the Moon or Mars -- yet!)?"
He asked Imran Khan, the former Pakistani cricket superstar, and other Pakistanis who have supported militant groups why "they would not even support the militant Uighur groups who have allegedly initiated this chain of violence?
"They remain mysteriously silent over the plight of Chinese fellow Muslim. Or is it that the "friendship" with China takes precedence over helping fellow Muslims this time?"
As I said -- wrong enemy.
The Chinese government quickly boosted security to crush Sunday's Uighur uprising and arrested dozens of men, leaving many women to demonstrate on Tuesday, waving their the identity cards of male relatives they say were arbitrarily detained.
Those women just might be the Uighurs' best hope of getting the world's attention. Or at least one of them and no, I don't mean Rebiya Kadeer, the exiled Uighur businesswoman and activist whom Beijing blames for orchestrating the violence from her home in the U.S.
Reuters' photographer David Gray took a picture of a lone Uighur woman in a headscarf leaning on a crutch and facing off with two Chinese security vehicles behind which stood dozens of security personnel.
It was reminiscent both of the picture of the lone Chinese student facing off with the tanks in Tiananmen Square in 1989 and of the ubiquitous images of Iranian women from that country's recent demonstrations,
So now they have an iconic image, here's hoping the Uighurs start to register on our radar.
Follow Mona Eltahawy on Twitter: www.twitter.com/monaeltahawy
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Imagine if the picture were shown on the TV in the West. I am sure there would be plenty of noise even though TV networks typically are not owned by governments and do not represent governments’ point of views. Thinking back and forth, I have been struggling to understand this double standard. Recently it finally dawned upon me that the Danish cartoon was not about the Prophet himself, rather it was about his followers of today. After all, bomb was not invented yet during his times. I am a little ashamed that it took me so long to get this. Now I begin to understand that the picture of the one-eye blind Prophet is not about him either. Unlike the Danish cartoons, the Chinese depiction may have a certain truth to it-- the Prophet is indeed one-eye blind. And it is no surprise that China is the first one to notice.
Muhammad Tarim
Dec 29, 2008
I am an Uighur Muslim from Chinese occupied East Turkistan. I wrote the following article last December and tried to get some responces from Muslim communities in vain. Let me try to post clips of it now.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
The Blind Eye of the Prophet
Since early December a movie clip from a popular TV show produced and broadcasted by China’s biggest and most watched TV network, China Central TV, which is owned by the government, has been passing around on the internet and causing quite a stir among Muslims in China. The movie clip contained at the following link features a picture of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) in which he was depicted as one eye blind.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dyUEZmVFQE
Growing up in China, I was not taught Islamic history or anything remotely Islamic at schools. In fact, Islam is banned in all schools and at work places unless your work for yourself or are a farmer. Everything I learned about religion came from my parents. Therefore, I did not know if this picture was based on historical fact. But, I knew, however, that drawing and showing his picture is a taboo in Islam. Therefore, even if the picture reflected the historical fact, it is offensive by itself.
I was also offended by the picture like my fellow Uyghurs. Unfortunately, opinions of my people do not count in China, but opinions of the outside Muslim world might. They have been very silent.
The one thing which China did right this time over all of this is to to the western reporters in the day after the riot.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/malcolmmoore/100002509/urumqi-riots-signal-dark-days-ahead/
"Turning over the riots in my mind, I concede I was wrong in my last post to suggest that Rebiya Kadeer would rise in stature as a result of the riots. When I wrote the post, I had limited information and I jumped to the conclusion that the 156 victims of Sunday’s violence were Uighur.
In fact, it appears that the majority of the victims were Han Chinese, brutally killed by gangs of Uighurs roaming through the back streets of Urumqi. There are some horrific pictures circulating of rows of bloodied bodies and cyclists lying in puddles of blood with their heads bashed in.
"I apologise for running ahead of the facts, but the idea that Chinese troops had been unable to prevent the Uighurs from murdering Han Chinese honestly never occurred to me.
Now that the sequence of events is clearer, I have a lot of praise for the Chinese security operation in the city. According to Peter Foster, who is on the scene, they managed to prevent escalating situations getting out of hand several times yesterday with calm and judicious policing."
Now, for those who still claim that hundreds of Uighurs were killed by the police, care to back it up?
Here's a guy who has some fair and balanced reports on the ground.
As he mentions, the police dispersed the original Uighur rioters with no shots fired...
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/peterfoster/100002368/uighur-unrest-not-another-tiananmen/
Most of the dead and wounded are Han Chinese, butchered by the Uighur mobs....
He also praises the Chinese police for stopping the bloodshed, as he should:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/peterfoster/100002643/urumqi-criticism-and-credit-for-the-chinese-police/
The lesson? Stop and think before writing. No knee jerk reactions....
I think the larger point that people were trying to make (or should have been making) is that regardless of body counts for either side, this unrest - much like the riots in Los Angeles after the Rodney King incident and the riots among France's suburban minorities (or the 2001 riots in Cincinnati, which I witnessed), this incident was the result of deep structual inequality and long-simmering dissatisfaction among the marginalized group. Quibbling about the death toll in these riots is a rather myopic thing to do.
The real issues that matter are: How did things get to this point? What has been going on in Xinjiang with regard to Uighur - Han Chinese relations? What role has the state played?
I can see what both of you are saying. On the one hand, it's important that we get an exact death toll to understand the magnitude of the violence, to respect those who died from the clashes, and to end critical speculation. Foreign media is keen to claim that most of the dead were Uighurs razed over by PRC tanks in the riot's ensuing "clampdown," which from the first-hand accounts (by Westerners) that I have read, seems not to be the case.
On the other hand, I think it was wholly appropriate for the government not to disclose the ethnicities of those who died- a dead Uighur and a dead Han Chinese is a tragic loss of life from any angle. Amidst all the journalistic bias and the West swooping in with their "savior complex," I'm extremely curious to know exactly how Chinese Uighur-Han Chinese relations were like before the riots. I think bismillah001's mention of the LA riots and France's suburban minorities are extremely apt examples to call upon.
(Cont.) There must have been some deep seated hostility between the two groups for things to have gotten this bad, and I'm sure that many of the migrants to Xinjiang are poor laborers seeking a better life made them resentful of the Uighurs, who might have viewed them as invading the area and proliferating off the business of locals. The Han Chinese influx must have been taken a hit on the Xinjiang economy and greatly impeded on the lifestyles and cultural freedoms of the Uighur people, thus causing the riots.
But really, who knows, when our media is so bent on politicizing instead of reporting on the subtle socioeconomic dynamics of the region? When the smoke clears (if it clears), I want all the questions that the above poster has raised to be answered. I hope the Chinese government knows that their best course of action is to open up dialogue between the groups and give a voice to all of the country's minorities so that all can be heard. Only then can they move on from incidents like this.
"Quibbling about the death toll in these riots is a rather myopic thing to do. "
It's only a myopic thing to do because it puts the Uighurs in a bad light.
"The real issues that matter are: How did things get to this point? "
Internet slacktivism FTW. At the most basic level, the Uighurs are upset about income disparity, while the Hans are complaining about affirmative action offered only to the Uighurs.
From personal experience, when I visited Shanghai I was mugged TWICE in the subways by Uighur gangs. Even after I pointed out to the police the group who robbed me, the police refused to arrest them because they were "minorities". Those who think this is a stereotype simply check the expat sites, people even made a list of the locations where the Uighur gangs usually operate in major cities.
According to demographic study, there are 10 ethnic groups in China who are known to be Muslims. If it's true the Chinese government discriminates against Chinese Muslims, why no other Muslim ethnic minorities in China join the Chinese Uighurs in protests and demonstrations? Do the 2000 Chinese Uighur demonstrators, as reported in the corporate media, represent the will of all Chinese Muslims?
I think it's prudent for Muslims outside of China to first get the facts on the situation in China before jump into the water. This could be one of the reasons why Muslims in other countries remain silent and reluctant to criticize China.
I'm a Muslim outside of China, and even I don't believe the authorities in China are targeting Uighurs because of their religion. It's a bad situation caused by Han migration to traditionally non-Han areas, but the same situation exists in Xizang (Tibet), and the people there are Buddhist.
Above all the Chinese authorities have made it clear their actions are against "splittists", those who would break apart the PROC. I honestly do feel much empathy and sympathy for the Uighurs and their plight, as they are becoming a minority in their own homeland. At the same time, I cannot condone killing of innocent people even though they may be of a migrant ethnic group, in this case the Han. Nobody deserves to be lynched for who their parents are, no matter who they are.
Just because one sympathizes on a gut level with one side or another in a quarrel doesn't mean one should judge the quarreling parties based on that inclination. There's a lot more going on here than a kafir-vs-Muslim fight, and as you stated, this is why Muslims outside China have been largely silent.
In China’s minority areas, Han people have long been subjected to discrimination by the government that is supposedly to be a Han government. The minorities have all the preferential treatments that Han people resent. There are 56 ethnic groups in China, including other Muslims such as Kazaks, Tajiks, Kirgiz and Huis. Why are the Uyghurs having problems with the government? That is because they seek independence. The Uighurs want to establish East Turkistan in Xinjiang. Then, they want to go west and establish West Turkistan in Kazakhstan with the local Uighurs there. Next they want to unite the Turkistan. Finally, they may want to expand further to reach Turkey to establish a pan-continent Turk empire. For China, Uighurs are just like Kurds for Turkey. While it is ok for Turkey to fight the Kurds, it is not ok for China to the Uighurs. What a double standard for Turkey!
...who said it was OK for Turkey to attack the Kurds the way they do? I don't think so. And maybe this wasn't your actual intent but your post comes off as a bit Islamophobic -- how many times have we heard this "Muslim caliphate empire" myth being touted? Like I said, it's not necessarily where you're going with this but it's hard not to read it that way.
If you look at the historical record, the Turks believe it is OK for them to kill ANYONE, whether Christian Anatolian Greek, Christian Armenian, Muslim Kurd, or whoever else is not a Turk but happens to live in Anatolia. In short, John, I'd say Turkey is a terrible example of a country that recognizes minority rights, and that it is very hypocritical of them to complain about China's treatment of the Uighurs when they are waging a much more vicious campaign against the Kurds.
It is not the Uighurs that are the victims. The Uighur mobs murdered over a hundred innocent people. Although the Chinese government is doing the right thing by not publishing the ethnic breakdowns, but most of the killed are Han Chinese. What are you complaining about? Based on the Western report, even some of the Uighurs are “happy” now, because they are noticed by the world through killing others. Is there right or wrong in this world? For comparison, Tibetans are nothing if you look at the number of people killed by the Uighurs: 8 time more.
We thought that the Chinese people have stood up after we have fought with the imperialist Westerners. I can say here that the Chinese people have not stood up before we can fight with the Central Asian Islamic terrorists. The Russians and Americans have already done that. Now it is China’s turn. There are two difficulties for China as far as I can see. First, the imperialist Westerners still use human rights, other prejudices and double standards to hinder China’s struggle. Second, the Muslim World itself has racial altitude to China. They don’t think that an Asian and non-Muslim country should fight with the basically white Islamic terrorists. People have already emphasized the Uighurs are different stock, looking like Europeans. Turkey has already come to attack China. The same goes with the Islamic Conference. However, if China can convince the West that this fight is their fight, the victory can be achieved.
Too much bias in your claims (which you likely will claim are facts), so I'll reply showing the 'other side of coin'. First thing, the majority of people getting killed are the Uighurs. While there are mobs of Uighurs killing Han Chinese, there are also mobs of Han Chinese. There are reports that they beheaded 2 Uighur girls and hung their heads in the streets. Also, according to the RFA and Time, the police tend to be protecting the innocent Han Chinese more than the innocent Uighurs (saying that there are no innocent Uighurs would be nonsensical for obvious reasons). What intrigued me was when you said "is there no right or wrong in this world?" Upon research, Uighurs were subjected to forced abortion, conversion of mosques into slaughterhouses for pigs, torture, racial discrimination, and more; so when you ask "is there no right or wrong in this world?" you must remember the other side is saying the exact same thing.
Hopefully readers now have a more balanced view of the situation.
1. Your statement "First thing, the majority of people getting killed are the Uighurs." is based on nothing more than your own wishful thinking. According to people who have seen about 100 of the dead bodies (pics), most of the killed were Han Chinese. By the time the Han Chinese mobs started going out for revenge, paramilitary police had already cordoned off much of the uighur neighborhoods and pushed the Han back with tear gas.
2 Several of the pictures by journalists coming from there show many Mosques around (including those with police marching and protecting the Uighurs), so what is this BS about destroying all mosques?
Chinese government did not destroyed all Mosques, many of them is in tact but they have controlled the mosques:
1. The Imam - religious leader in each mosques is appointed by Chinese government
2. All the Mosques closely monitored by installing video camera and sound recording.
3. The Imams of the Mosques are forced to talk only what government allowed also forced to talk for government about "birth control" "ethnic unity" "fighting splitism" ...
4. All the money donated to the Mosques has to be given government for "safe keeping"
So actually there is no need for destroying mosques as it is working as a "show biz" and turned into a tool of the government actually.
First of all, Mona Eltahawy needs to check the right spelling. it's Xinjiang, NOT Xinxiang. She also needs to do her homework to get the facts straight to back up her views.
The majority of Muslims are peaceful and nice people, but it doesn't mean all Muslims are non-violent as evidenced by the Uighur rioters who started the riots and the Al Qaida. Why should we side with the perpetrators of violent crime, which unfortunately in this case were the Uighurs?
The fact that the Muslim world stays silent shows that most Muslims are reasonable people who don't tolerate violence even though their fellow brothers commit them.
The U.S. government's response is appropriate by not speaking in favor of the criminals, and there's no need to interfere. The bottom line is law breakers must be punished, regardless of their ethnic affiliations. The Chinese security force has done sufficient jobs arresting the violent protestors and protecting the innocent Uighur civilians. Given the scale of the violence, it takes time to tell who is innocent and guilty.
After 9/11 US government and its aliens has made a bad portrait of Muslims as almost nearly equal to terrorist, US operations in Islamic counties like Iraq, Afghanistan has generated sympathy in all muslim world and in some countries/regions this feeling has turned into a hate against US government but many Muslim countries not in a position to fight against US so they choose to backup the main and strong enemy of US - CHINA (there are many enemies of US but all of them seems weak and strong nations like Russia showed no interest or sympathy to the Muslims in the past or now so only China is regarded as a hope for US fighters )
It is an old and simple rule of "enemy`s enemy is my friend. "
Many Muslim countries actually feel sympathetic to Uyghurs but due to above reason they choose to remain silent or provide aids secretlyly.
Sounds like Tibetan redux to me.
Let's keep in mind that we Americans, neophytes on the world stage have basically done the same n short order to (in chronological order):
1. "Witches"
2. Catholics
3. Spaniards
4. Native Americans
5. African Americans
6. Japanese Americans
7. Muslims
Who are we to criticize any other country for their behavior? Narcissistic, egotistical and out of touch Americans, that's who!
Did you EVER hit the nail on the head!
*bow*
By ancestry I fall into categories 4 and 7...it's good to be a mutt! :)
"For Poor Migrants, Grief in China’s Ethnic Strife"
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/09/world/asia/09han.html?hpw
“Relations with the Uighurs were pretty good,” Ms. Zhang said. “There was a mutton stall beside the cart where my son sold fruit. On nights when my son didn’t want to bring his fruit home, he would ask the Uighur neighbor to keep the fruit inside his stall.”
.
The killing of Mr. Lu, 25, was a ruinous end to the journey of a family that had fled their poor farming village in central China more than a decade ago to forge a new life here in China’s remote desert region.
The government, apparently hoping to tamp down racial violence, has not released a breakdown of the ethnicities of the 156 dead. But Mr. Lu’s father said that of more than 100 photographs of bodies that he looked through at a police station to identify his son, the vast majority were Han Chinese, most with their heads cut or smashed.
Each victim had a number. His son was 51.
Wow. An article about Uighurs and you /still/ manage to distort it into a critique of the entire Islam world. Exactly what lengths are the pro-Israel lobby willing to go to in order to deflect attention from their own war crimes? Seriously?
Is this a bad time to point out that Israel is quietly threatening to turn to China with our military secrets if the US takes a hard line with them?
Let me repost a comment I put on another thread, so you can look the ongoing racial tension with a historical context and see why separatism is not an act that can be forgiving in China .
“Among large minority groups, Huis, Mongols and Manchuas did not have the kind of tension with Han similar to that between Han and Tibetan and Uighur, while Huis, Mongols and Manchuas also maintain a distinctive identity and large presence of around many cities in China.
The deep-rooted mistrust is related to royalty of a population group towards China especially during times of hardship. I have to emphasis that Chinese culture are very forgiving and mostly peaceful and inclusive. But once a population group made attempts to break away during time of hardship, their actions are usually not forgiving for a long time. This historical background has to be addressed head-on between Tibetans and Uighurs with Han openly someday, the sooner the better.
On the other hand, people knew how Huis, Mongols, Manchuas and Han struck together at times of foreign invasion, civil wars and hardships, even though there were kinks among them too.”
There are admitted income gap between rural migrants coming to urban area and urban residents. This has not been a severe issue in most cities in China. But when these migrants are minority of Uighur or Tibetan, the issue turns into a racial problem.
However, this is part of growing pain during China's modernization. It is being addressed. China is not Israel. The situation is clearly not a conflict between Jews and Palestines.
The Mayor of that city is a minority, so is the governor, and many other provincial officials. Does that look like an "oppressed" group to you?
I believe what mostly is happening is the refusal of the Uighur to integrate into the main society, which explains their economic situation. And btw, I do so HOPE they can read and speak CHINESE because after all, the are in CHINA.
Several of my friends live Xinjiang, and even at the school level the government is trying its best to integrate them into the main society; for example, by bringing poor Uighur schollchildren into the better schools with the Han groups.
Which version of Chinese? Are you aware that there are dozens of languages that all qualify as Chinese?
Dozens of different spoken languages or even more but the written language is the same.
Mona, I enjoyed the article.
A few things gave me pause, however. The first is the spelling of Xinjiang, which is written "Xinxiang" in the article. Don't mean to be petty, but the incorrect spelling distracts from your larger points.
Another is your treatment of Sudan. I was a bit surprised to hear the standard "arabs oppressing blacks" frame coming from you. Anthropologist and Columbia professor Mahmood Mamdani has some cogent observations about Sudan. One of his points is that "arab" is a poor category with which to distinguish people in Sudan, as many tribes are black but "arabicised", and the "blacks" supposedly being oppressed by the "arabs" are often just as "arab" as their oppressors. Many of the "black" tribes are also Muslim, and Mamdani takes issue with the complete disregard for Sudanese political realities (i.e. civil war and insurgency/counterinsurgency) and the reframing of a political conflict as something racial/ethnic/religious - which is all too easy for us to do when looking at "primitive" Africa and its "savage" "tribal" shenanigans. We create the perfect villians - Arabs, and the perfect victims - "Africans" in order to smooth over any political complexity or nuance and create an easy entry point for ourselves as saviors.
Read this article:
"The Politics of Naming: Genocide, Civil War, Insurgency"
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n05/mamd01_.html
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