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.]