H.D.S. Greenway
From: Information <info@mail.uyghurinfo.com>
China Worried about Restive Ethnic Groups
H.D.S. Greenway/October 23, 2000/UNMING, China

[H.D.S. Greenway is former editorial page editor of the  Globe.]
                               THE HISTORY OF China over the millennia has been one of expansion and contraction, of dynasties gaining and losing dominion over other peoples and cultures on the  perimeters of empire. Here in Yunnan Province, bordering on Vietnam, Laos, Burma, and Tibet, there are   more than two-dozen ethnic minorities, many of whom   have kinsmen in other countries across themountains.    Yunnan is one of nine western provinces that China is   lavishing attention on in the form of its ''Western Big   Development'' plan. The plan is designed to bind    China's minorities to the motherland, especially in the  three western provinces - Yunnan, Tibet, and Xinjiang -   where separatist sympathies have simmered.   In the 19th century a warlord founded a Muslim kingdom    here for 10 years before it was put down by the ruling   Quing dynasty, and separatist movements continued well   into the 20th century.   The struggles of the Tibetans to protect their autonomy    and identity are well known. But China's most serious   ethnic problem lies to the northwest in Xinjiang, a   province geographically half the size of India. There,   8 million Muslim and Turkic-speaking Uighars bordering   on the former Soviet Republic of Kazakhstan, outnumber  the Han, as ethnic Chinese are called. Xinjiang means   ''new province'' and has fallen in and out of Chinese  control many times. From the mid-19th century to the  Communist victory in 1949, Uighars succeeded three  times in setting up independent republics.  Unlike the Tibetans, Uighars are part of a greater   Turkic-speaking hinterland spreading westward into the  new republics of Central Asia.  In recent years Uighar separatists have blown up buses  and attacked police stations in the name of  independence. The Chinese cracked down in 1996, issuing  the infamous ''Document 7,'' which rolled back the  nascent freedom of religion that had been allowed to  grow across China. The document claimed that Islam was  being invoked to incite rebellion, which in some cases  it was, and hinted darkly that foreign influences were  at work.  Early in 1997 riots broke out protesting Document 7.  Nine people were killed and 200 injured. According to
Amnesty International, 190 people were executed in
Xinjiang betwen 1997 and 1999, most of them Uighars
accused of separatist activities. The Chinese reported
confiscating guns andexplosives.  So sensitive are the authorities that a popular  historical drama series on television was recently  banned because it presented that conquest of the  Uighars in a manner that contradicted ''correct  history,'' casting doubt on the official contention
that Xinjiang has always been part of China.  The breakdown of the Soviet Union presented China with
its worst nightmare. What if the dragon of newly won
independence should breathe fire into separatist
movements inside China? What if Islamic fighters,
hardened in Afghanistan and supported by Islamic
countries abroad, should take up the cause of Uighar
independence?  Some Chinese have even suggested that the West might  intervene as it did in Kosovo to protect a Muslim  minority. The United States did not help calm such  Chinese paranoia when it sent the 82d Airborne on a  joint exercise in neighboring Kazakhstan a few years
ago.  China sees Islamicist rebellions in the Philippines,
Indonesia, Russia, and Central Asia and wonders if it
could spread to China now that the state is loosening
its authoritarian grip.  Unfortunately, the thrust of the ''Western Big  Development'' seems to be to encourage ethnic Han  people to come and settle in the west in order to dilute the minorities and their culture - to create
''new facts on the ground,'' as the Israelies have done
in the West Bank. Given the Chinese record in Tibet,
this can only lead to more misery for the Uighars and
the growth of the same separatist sympathies that China
hopes to suppress. 

[H.D.S. Greenway is former editorial page editor of the  Globe.]

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