To understand the present unrest in Xinjiang, we must call things by their name: China is colonizing Xinjiang, the former East Turkestan. This region, which today constitutes the empire's northwest, was not definitively conquered by Beijing until the end of the nineteenth century. Peopled by Uighur Muslims, it was not truly controlled and annexed by the Chinese administration until after the Communists took power in 1949.

    Since then, Xinjiang has been a colony of settlement: the people of Chinese stock, the Han, are poised to overturn the demographic balance in their favor. That's already a fait accompli in the capital, Urumqi, a city of over 2 million inhabitants, two-thirds of them Han. The inter-ethnic confrontations since July 5 have already killed at least 156 people there. Tens of thousands of soldiers and armed police have taken control of Urumqi, where hundreds, if not thousands of Uighurs have been arrested. The Chinese president, Hu Jintao, considers the situation sufficiently dangerous to leave Italy where he was supposed to attend the G8.

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Fabrice Rousselot | Repression    â€¢

    The violence there recalls that of March 2008 in Tibet, when young Tibetans struck out at the Han merchants in the Tibetan capital, Lhasa. Beijing claims not to understand. Hasn't China delivered modernity, economic and social progress to countries the populations of which had hitherto been stuck in religious backwardness? Doesn't that discourse remind you of something? It's the exact replica of the one held forth by European colonizers at the beginning of the twentieth century in the Maghreb, in Africa, in Asia - and no doubt with the same measure of complete sincerity.

    There are two versions of the events in Urumqi. The Uighurs': they suggest a peaceful demonstration which, under the impact of a brutal repression, degenerated into riots. Beijing's: a provocation by Uighur elements manipulated from abroad where a radical Islamist dissidence movement is stoking itself up.

    We're not picking a version, but limiting ourselves to observing what these recurrent gusts of revolt in Tibet and Xinjiang reveal: the exasperation of populations en route to becoming minorities thanks to an immigration of Hans who have nothing but contempt for the "locals," their language and their culture. All around the world, there's a name for that: colonization. And it's as reprehensible in Tibet or in Xinjiang as it was in Africa or the Maghreb. Having grown great from so many successes, China knows that repression will not calm the resentment and the anger of these peoples.

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    Translation: Truthout French language editor Leslie Thatcher.

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Repression

Wednesday 08 July 2009

by: Fabrice Rousselot  |  Visit article original @ Libération

    There are words the Chinese authorities practically never use. That the New China news agency should make a point of mentioning "chaos" yesterday to describe the situation in the streets of Urumqi gives a measure of the gravity of the riots that have been shaking Xinjiang since Sunday. Certainly, mentioning the violence also allows better justification for the repression. But, a little more than a year after the troubles in Tibet, Beijing above all provides the impression of having been overwhelmed by the events in this autonomous region of central Asia, at the center of the Silk Road. The political confrontation between the Uighurs, Muslim Turkophones with independence leanings, and the central Chinese government is historic, since the guardianship created by Mao in 1949. The majority population in Xinjiang, a minority in China, the Uighurs are the object of constant harassment by the forces of order. Discrimination is common practice; the media are controlled; separatists a re imprisoned, and economic wealth concentrated solely in the hands of the ethnically Chinese Han. On top of that, since September 11, Beijing considers the Uighur as dangerous terrorists and has intensified its control operations over the populace. Last year, before the Olympic Games, Urumqi experienced a security takeover similar to the one that had stricken Lhasa, without the Western media making much of an issue over it. This time, the international community has no excuse: it has the duty of watching very closely what happens in this "other Tibet."

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    Translation: Truthout French language editor Leslie Thatcher.