Ideas, Advocacy and Dialog on Tibet

The tragedy continues

Posted by Ben Carrdus in Archives on Tuesday, July 7, 2009 | one response

Events in Urumchi, the regional capital of Xinjiang — referred to by the local Uyghur people as East Turkistan — could hardly be worse. Anyone with any understanding of the PRC’s attempts to administer its far western hinterlands, including Tibet, is well aware that the policies in place are a disaster waiting to happen. But if the protests in Urumchi and elsewhere in East Turkistan can be said to stem from the same policy failures that led to the outbreak of protests in Tibet last year, then it seems logical that China’s “ethnic problems” are only going to get worse: the only adjustment to those policies so far has been to make them more aggressive, and so the tragedy is inevitably going to continue.

The litany of abuses, deprivations and prejudices faced by the Uyghur people in East Turkistan is strikingly similar to those faced by the Tibetan people, and some would say even worse. Uyghurs are executed by the Chinese state for non-violent political crimes. There are occasional unconfirmed reports of public executions, with government workers and students ordered to watch. But the Chinese government and Party statecraft appears to know only one response to protest or dissent — which is immediately branded as “splittist” — and public executions, or banning people from entering Mosques or monasteries, or prohibiting them from observing Ramadan or Monlam, or ordering men to shave their beards and women to remove their headscarves, or imprisoning writers, or inflicting torture almost as routine — all this and more is apparently regarded by Beijing as part of the solution, not part of the problem.

Twisted into this myopic vision is the fact that these self-same policies are devised and implemented by a handful of senior politicians in Beijing, Urumchi and Lhasa. It’s worth noting that the long-serving Party Secretary of Xinjiang, Wang Lequan, is a mentor and former boss of Zhang Qingli, the Party Secretary of the Tibet Autonomous Region; and both men are close allies and cohorts of Chinese President Hu Jintao. But removing the Party Secretaries for their evidently disastrous handling of people and events in Tibet and East Turkistan would be a monumental admission of culpability in China’s faction-riven political landscape. (This partly explains the preposterous attempts to blame the former political prisoner and democratically elected head of the World Uyghur Congress, Rebiya Kadeer, exiled in northern Virginia, for “masterminding” the Urumchi protests, or the “Dalai clique” for “meticulously planning” the protests in Tibet — blame anyone and everyone but ourselves.) Incredibly, in China’s unaccountable and undemocratic system, these protests probably ensure these Party Secretaries’ continued “tenure”, or at the very worst, a “face-saving” kick upstairs to a job back in Beijing.

The sparks that started the protests in Tibet and East Turkistan may have been different, but the fuel is very much the same. And the chasm of hatred and misunderstanding that separates the protestors, rioters and vigilante groups on the streets of Urumchi is being deliberately widened by the official media doing exactly what was done in the wake of the protests in Lhasa — showing footage over and over again of Han as innocent victims and “minorities” as blood-thirsty and ungrateful barbarians — adding to hatred, and ensuring the cycle continues and becomes ever-more entrenched. Paraphrasing a point made by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, this is the true “splittism”.

And so what next? At the upcoming G8, China will attempt to stand proud and dignified while practically a third of its entire territory is under paramilitary lockdown — a situation likely to remain until the 60th anniversary of the founding of the PRC on October 1 at the earliest. One wonders with dread what the next 60 years will bring for all people in the PRC, not just the Tibetans, Uyghurs and Han. With no accountability and no change, it cannot possibly improve.

(Photo Caption: Rebiya Kadeer, head of the World Uyghur Congress and Uyghur American Association with Kofi Annan, former UN General Secretary. (c) UAA.)