Beijing Targets Uighurs In Apparent Crackdown
The Wall Street Journal
By GORDON FAIRCLOUGH
April 7, 2008 8:40 a.m.
SHANGHAI — Chinese paramilitary police sealed off a market town in central China last month and detained dozens of ethnic Uighurs, local residents and a government official said, in the latest sign of widening tension with the country’s ethnic minorities.
The arrests, which occurred in late March in Henan province but weren’t reported at the time, appear to be part of an expanding Chinese government effort to prevent dissatisfaction among Turkic Uighurs from exploding into the kind of unrest that has swept Tibetan areas of the country.
Witnesses said hundreds of armed police descended on the Henan town of Shifosi, where there is a significant population of Uighur jade traders. “About 50 Uighurs were arrested,” said a local government official who asked not to be named.
Word of the Henan incident came as unrest in Tibetan areas continued. On Sunday, police attempted to prevent a group of Tibetans from joining a religious procession with Buddhist monks in Sichuan province, sparking a confrontation, according to a local Tibetan resident.
Tibetans threw stones at police, who responded by firing nonlethal antiriot rounds at the crowd, injuring several, the resident said. Calls to the police station in the town where the incident occurred went unanswered on Monday.
Uighurs (pronounced WEE-gers) are predominantly Muslim and are the largest ethnic group in the northwest border region of Xinjiang, which covers about a sixth of China’s territory and is rich in oil and other resources.
Uighurs’ grievances with the government are similar to those voiced by Tibetans. Many complain of restrictions on civil liberties and religious practices, and say that they also face economic discrimination by China’s majority Han Chinese.
On March 23, before the police arrived in Shifosi, Uighurs in the southern Xinjiang city of Hotan, raised banners and passed out leaflets calling on fellow Uighurs to join an independence movement. Those demonstrators were quickly arrested, the government says. Hotan is the source of some of China’s most prized jade.
The Hotan government says the protests involved a “small number” of people, but Uighur exile groups say the actual number may have been in the hundreds.
Uighur activists say that once unrest started in Tibetan areas in early April, Chinese authorities began rounding up suspected Uighur dissidents in an effort to forestall similar protests in Xinjiang during the run-up to the Beijing Olympics in August.
Xinjiang “has so many natural resources, so the Chinese government has been extremely ruthless when it comes to cracking down on Uighurs,” says Rebiya Kadeer, president of the Uyghur American Association in Washington.
Ms. Kadeer, a Uighur human-rights campaigner who was imprisoned in China for more than five years, says that China is intent on creating a “very stable situation” to avoid disruptions to the Olympic torch relay, which is scheduled to pass through Xinjiang in late June. “Every day, Uighurs are being detained or arrested. Uighurs are paying a tremendous price for the Olympic torch relay,” Ms. Kadeer said.
The international legs of the torch relay, which passed through London Sunday on its way to Paris and then San Francisco, has become the focus of raucous anti-China protests by a range of activists for causes ranging from Tibet to Darfur. (See related article.)
Sun Weide, a spokesman for the Beijing Olympics, on Monday criticized protesters who tried to disrupt the relay in London. “A few Tibetan separatists attempted to sabotage the torch relay in London, and we strongly denounce their disgusting behavior,” Mr. Sun said.
Jacques Rogge, president of the International Olympic Committee, who was in Beijing for meetings Monday, said that the committee “has expressed its serious concern” about the situation in Tibet and “calls for a rapid peaceful resolution” there.
