Uyghurs and China: Christian Tyler

Christian Tyler, author of ‘Wild West China: The Taming of Xinjiang’ disusses the recent history of Xinjiang (East Turkistan) and the changing relations between Uyghurs and Han Chinese (August 2008).
Part of the Xinjiang Video Project: www.archive.org/details/xinjiang-video-p roject

Chinese minister says “respects” Turkish ties with Uighurs
Article Source
Friday, 08 January 2010 09:20

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Thursday that Turkey and China may carry out joint investments in third countries.

Erdogan, who received Chinese Minister of Commerce Chen Deming, said around 100 Chinese businessmen would attend a meeting to be held in Istanbul on Friday.

Erdogan said Turkey and China were the inheritors of two civilizations rooted in history.

Expressing great sorrow over the incidents in Uighur Region, Erdogan said he considered Uighurs as a “bridge of friendship” between Turkey and China.

Clashes over the summer between Han Chinese and Muslim Uighur residents in Urumqi, East Turkistan’s capital, left 197 people dead, according to Chinese government figures. However, Uighur exile groups said up to 800 people died, many of them Uighurs shot or beaten to death by police.

Chen thanked to Erdogan over his contributions to improvement of relations between Turkey and China since 2003.

Chinese minister said they “respected Turkey’s ties with Uighurs”, noting they also considered Uighurs as a “friendship bridge”.

Earlier in the day, Chen held talks with Turkish State Minister for foreign trade Zafer Caglayan and Transportation Minister Binali Yildirim.

China’s Mystery Mummies
China’s Mystery Mummies. 1/5

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China’s Mystery Mummies. 5/5

 Shifting sands tell the tale of the Chinese west

By Howard W. French
Published: June 12, 2008
Article Link

A local farmer leading a row of camels at a tourism resort of the Kumtag Desert in Shanshan county, China, in October 2007. (China Daily, via Reuters)

DUNHUANG, China: There has never been a marker on the ground in this area, and had there been, it would have been long ago removed, but through much of its long history, the country we know today as China has largely petered out somewhere in the vicinity of this Silk Road outpost.

A visitor today can imagine that spot as towering dunes with their shifting sands that sit at the edge of this sleepy town. You could just as easily place it somewhere in the forbidding badlands that lie within a few hours’ drive from here.

I visited them recently to get a taste of the history in this desolate corner of the country, wandering into gigantic sandstone formations cut and shaped over the ages by the wind into a sight as breathtaking as the Grand Canyon.

Intrigued by the travel stories of the exiled Chinese author, Ma Jian, along the way, I had my driver wander off the simple, two-lane road that winds through the region in search of western end of the Great Wall. Throughout the morning, my mind had raced with images of what I might find. I had imagined myself climbing atop the structure, as every visitor who travels to the wall near Beijing surely does.

When I mentioned this to my driver, he shot me a look that suggested I was crazy. He was having trouble enough finding this section of the Great Wall, which was built during the Han Dynasty two millennia ago. There would be no climbing, he informed me. What remains of the wall is scarcely high enough, and rather brittle.

When we finally caught sight of it, I was chastened but not disappointed. The voyage had been all about understanding China’s definition of itself over time, and its relationship with the “other.”

Quite rightfully, the recent earthquake in Sichuan Province has captivated the world’s attention and drawn unprecedented sympathy and support for China from countries all over the world. From the perspective of Beijing, it has also conveniently pushed out news from beyond the Great Wall of unrest that had roiled Tibet and Xinjiang - provinces that are known as “autonomous regions,” in an administrative fiction that Orwell would have appreciated.

Xinjiang alone comprises one-sixth of the land of the People’s Republic of China, and Tibet, such as it is defined today, is only marginally smaller. At various times in its history, including recently, Tibet has been much larger, comprising parts of several other provinces.

On the surface, Tibetans and the indigenous Uighur population of Xinjiang would seem to have little in common. The Tibetans are Buddhist and the Uighurs are largely Muslim. But they are united in their sense of oppression, as native people of distinctive cultural spheres with a history of autonomy and even independence, all of which has been recently snuffed out by China.

The point here is not to revisit the protests that swept Tibet in March, or the murmurs in Xinjiang that followed, but rather to think about the fragile, changeable thing that is China and to revisit the way sands have shifted dramatically in this part of the world over the ages.

Most nations have founding myths, and China is no different. Beyond the central narrative about the liberation of the country by Mao’s Red Army lie other legends, more distant in time, but equally essential to this nation’s idea of self. One of them is the notion of Chinese as being fundamentally nonhegemonic, as opposed to the violent and greedy expansionists of the West.

The warm and fuzzy story that Chinese have adopted is of a country that grew organically, gradually embracing closely related neighboring peoples, seducing them with the allure of a superior culture and sealing the deal with marriages between royal lines and other courtly statecraft.

The use and threat of force are consistently played down, leading most people to remember only the most convenient facts, and one summary conclusion, that places like Tibet and Xinjiang have been Chinese for a very long time.

The facts are stubborn, though, and that is part of the reason why history seems unlikely to go away in this part of the world. Few places have seen more to-ing and fro-ing by rival armies, contending empires, competing religions and languages than western China. It is an area that, despite the simplifying myth, has rarely remained securely in China’s grasp and has indeed often outright eluded it.

For roughly 1,000 years, until the 18th century, Xinjiang lived under a succession of names - Qarluq, Chaghatayid, Moghulistan and Yarkan, to name a few. For much of this time, a Tibetan empire was a leading power in the region, leaving its mark clearly on the Buddhist cave frescoes of Dunhuang.

Turks and Mongols, Arabs and yes, Han Chinese, were all part of it, all contending in an extremely complex mix, where flux was constant, and nothing certain beyond the now crumbling wall.

One doesn’t recall all of this history to wish China ill, much less to split it, as Beijing says its enemies are wont to attempt. Rather it is to say that as game as China’s current attempt to freeze what it holds in place, the past may offer useful alternative lessons, chief among which may be a more worldly flexibility, such as practiced by the Tang.

“Tang music was played on the lutes, viols and percussion instruments of Central Asia and India; Tang poets sang of infatuation with western dancing girls,” wrote James Millward in his exhaustively researched “Eurasian Crossroads: A History of Xinjiang,” who added that some in the Tang court spoke Turkic in preference to Chinese. “For these and other reasons the Tang period was one of imperial China’s most open and cosmopolitan.”

Compare that to western China today, where locals cannot practice their religion freely, and where Tibetans and Uighurs are badly underrepresented in their own “autonomous” governments, never mind Beijing, and one’s appreciation is renewed for why history beyond the old wall may not yet be finished.

Chinese flight returns after “suspicious” remarks
Mon Apr 14, 2008 11:46am IST

Source: Reuters

BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese police have detained five people, possibly Tibetans, whose “suspicious remarks” prompted the return of their flight half an hour after take-off, local media reported on Monday.

China has tightened security of its airways ahead of the Beijing Olympics in August and says it foiled a plot last month by Muslim Uighur separatists to blow up a plane.

The flight on Sunday afternoon was from the southern city of Shenzhen and bound for Chengdu, capital of the southwestern province of Sichuan, the Southern Metropolis Daily said on Monday.

Deadly anti-Chinese riots hit Tibet and Tibetan-populated areas in neighbouring provinces, including Sichuan, last month. Many in-bound flights to the Himalayan region stop over in Chengdu.

The five passengers talked in a language “others could not understand”, the newspaper said in a report on its Web site (www.nddaily.com).

One of them smiled at a flight attendant and said to her “You look very beautiful” and “Read the news tomorrow”, it quoted a witness as saying.

“Perhaps it was this sentence that caused alarm among the crew,” the witness was quoted as saying.

The plane landed back at Shenzhen where police took away the five passengers for investigation, the report said.

The caption of a photo accompanying the report said police checked the information on “the several Tibetans who made the remarks”.

“Because of the many suspicious points in the case, Shenzhen’s anti-terrorist office may intervene (into the probe),” the report said.

China says it foiled an attack on a flight to Beijing from Urumqi, capital city of the restive Muslim region of Xinjiang in the far west, on March 7.

The plane made an emergency landing after the crew found a 19-year-old ethnic Uighur woman with cans of flammable liquid in the toilet.

The government says the attack was plotted by Uighur separatists to disrupt the Olympics.

China, Tibet, Olympics boycott: Germany’s Merkel won’t go

Article Link
Edward M. Gomez
March 31 2008

There was a time, long, long ago, when athletes from around the ancient world would gather, without clothes and without making political pronouncements, to let it all hang out - their enthusiasm for the spirit of competition, that is - and get on with games in which victories would bring resounding honor to the kingdoms, regions and powerful city-states they represented.

Apparently, times have changed. Today’s Olympic Games have become, at least in part, a high-profile venue for the conveying of implicit or explicit political messages, and a locus for a bevy of overlapping, sometimes competing forces and interests that may be athletic, political, economic or cultural, sometimes all at the same time.

With unrest in Tibet against the central Chinese government in Beijing still simmering, and related protests still unfolding around the world to call attention to China’s human-rights record, the thoughts some critics have voiced about a possible boycott of the Olympics that will begin in Beijing in early August appear to be starting to take concrete form.

Late last week, German Chancellor Angela Merkel “became the first world leader to decide not to attend the Olympics in Beijing,” the British daily the Guardian noted this past Saturday. On that day, foreign ministers from European Union countries met in Slovenia; on their agenda was the sensitive topic of whether or not to boycott the forthcoming Olympics in China, a subject that lately has been bubbling to the surface of policy-makers’ lists of things to think about. French President Nicolas Sarkozy has made utterances on the boycott theme. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has pledged to meet the exiled, Tibetan-Buddhist spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, when he visits the United Kingdom in May. The PM also has said he is determined to attend the Beijing Olympics.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel (left) has indicated that she will not attend the Olympic Games in Beijing in August; here, in a photo from last September, Merkel is seen meeting the Dalai Lama, the exiled, Tibetan-Buddhist spiritual leader; the Chinese government was angered by the German leader’s encounter with its nemesis

The Guardian reported: “The disclosure that Germany is to stay away from the games’ opening ceremonies…could encourage…Sarkozy of France to join in a gesture of defiance and complicate…Brown’s determination to attend the Olympics. Donald Tusk, Poland’s prime minister, became the first E.U. head of government to announce a boycott [last] Thursday, and he was promptly joined by President Václav Klaus of the Czech Republic, who had previously promised to travel to Beijing.” Germany’s Der Spiegel Online reports that Tusk told a Polish newspaper “that he felt the participation of politicians at the event would be ‘inappropriate.’” Klaus pointed out that his decision “was not intended as a ‘threat to China.’”

“Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Germany’s foreign minister, confirmed that Merkel [would be] staying away. He added that neither he nor Wolfgang Schäuble, the [German] interior minister responsible for sport, would attend the opening ceremon[ies].” (Guardian) A German-government spokesman “expanded on Steinmeier’s statement,” confirming “that Chancellor Merkel never intended to attend the Olympics - neither the opening ceremonies nor the Games themselves.” The spokesman indicated that Schäuble…was not planning to attend the [Olympic Games'] opening ceremonies but would be visiting the event itself.” (Der Spiegel Online)

Steinmeier “denied” that, through their proposed actions, these German-government officials would be “boycotting or staging a political protest against the Chinese military and police campaign in Tibet and surrounding areas. While expressing skepticism about a complete boycott, he did not rule one out. ‘This is not the right moment to talk about a boycott….We should watch how the Chinese government deals with the situation in the next weeks and months,” Steinmeier stated. (Guardian)

So far, the official European Union position “has been to call for restraint and [to] urge China to open a dialog on cultural rights with the Dalai Lama, whom Beijing has accused of inciting the [recent] pro-independence riots” that have taken place in Tibet. (Deutsche Welle; also Télévision Suisse Romande)

Meanwhile, Rama Yade, France’s secretary of state for human rights, has said her country will be ready to welcome the Dalai Lama when he swings through Europe in the near future, and French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner has suggested that “if the Tibetan spiritual leader comes to France, [President] Sarkozy should meet him in person.” All of that talk prompted a spokesman for China’s foreign ministry to retort: “We must stick to the spirit of the Olympics and not politicize the Games….The Chinese government firmly opposes all forms of official contact by the Dalai Lama with any country.” (Le Parisien)

Beijing, March 18, 2008: Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao at a news conference after the closing session of the National People’s Congress; Wen dismissed calls for a boycott of the Olympics after a crackdown on riots in Tibet, saying the event should not be politicized.

Fast forward: France is scheduled to take over the European Union’s rotating presidency from Slovenia in July. Thus, Sarkozy last week said: “At the time of the Olympics, I will be in the presidency of the European Union, so I have to sound out and consult my fellow members to see whether or not we should boycott….According to how the situation is looking at the time, I reserve the right to say whether or not I will attend the opening ceremony.” (Deutsche Welle)

Yesterday’s lead editorial in the British weekly the Observer (the Guardian’s sister newssheet), stated: “When China won the right to host the 2008 Olympic Games…, Liu Qi, president of the Beijing organizing committee and the then Beijing city mayor, told the International Olympic Committee: ‘If Beijing wins its bid to host the Olympic Games, it will be conducive to China’s economic and social progress; at the same time, [China] will also make further progress on the promotion of human rights.’ Wang Wei [, the] secretary-general of the Beijing 2008 Olympic bid committee, backed him up [, saying]: ‘We will grant full freedom of the press to the journalists coming to China; they will be able to visit Beijing and other Chinese cities and cover any news event before and during the Olympic Games. We will also allow demonstrations.’”

The Observer’s editorial continued: “Four months before the Games [are scheduled to] begin, those promises look shattered. China’s human-rights record remains poor….China has seen little progress toward more freedom of expression; the country executes more people and arrests more journalists than the rest of the world combined. It routinely blocks foreign news to which the state objects and censors the Internet. The conditions that existed in 2001 have not improved at all; in many ways, they have worsened. Events in Tibet have crystalized concerns….Even a democratic China that fully respected human rights would regard Tibet as an integral part of its territory, rather as Spain regards the Basque country, France Corsica and Britain Northern Ireland. However, that does not give China license brutally to repress dissent in Tibet….”

Should Gordon Brown represent the U.K. in person at the Beijing Olympics? “Brown has made clear his absolute determination to attend the opening ceremony,” the Observer noted. It advised: “[L]ike his European counterparts, he should insist [that] China adhere to its pledges before committing himself….Merkel and Sarkozy are correct. The presence of European leaders should not be guaranteed unless China keeps its promises.”

China and its minorities

International Herald Tribune
Philip Bowring
Monday, March 17, 2008

Non-Han minorities may comprise only 9 percent of China’s population, but as the violence in Tibet and simmering resentment in Xinjiang  indicate, the problem is one that Beijing is unable to resolve.

This is a  blow to President Hu Jintao, who is supposed to be an expert on Tibet, where he was once party secretary. He ordered troops as well as police forces into Tibet and Xinjiang last year to guard against pre-Olympic disturbances, but to no avail.

There are three reasons for the Communist leadership’s inability to address the issue other than by repression. First, given that Beijing’s first priority is  government centralization,  the official designation of any “autonomous region” in China is a façade.

Second, there is the innate belief in the superiority of the Han race, a notion historically reflected in China’s attitudes to all its neighbors as well as toward  the non-Han minorities within its borders.

Third,  the three regions with significant minority populations that  are actual or potential trouble spots are all frontier areas that Beijing regards as  strategically important. The minorities in southwest China are no problem because they are small, isolated and near frontiers from which China has never been invaded. The homelands of  former invaders  -  the Mongols and Manchus  -  still exist, but they are now overwhelmingly Han.  But Tibet  -  with its long history of isolation, immense cultural, linguistic and religious differences and on-and-off independence  -  is a different matter.

So too is Xinjiang, which means “new territory” in Chinese. It saw brief independence as East Turkestan, or Uighurstan, in 1933 and  part of it was again under Soviet tutelage from 1945 to 1949. Its population is still roughly 55 percent non-Han  -  Uighurs and Kazakhs whose Turkic-speaking cousins stretch all the way to the Black Sea. Moreover, it also has an ethnic Korean minority in the northeast that would likely be agitating to be reunited with Korea if the divided peninsula  were a united and prosperous state.

At different times in history, China has sought to defend itself by expanding its western frontiers to create buffer states or subdue foreign enemies. At other times, it has been content to secure its own Han borders but not stretch its resources. Communist China has not formally expanded the borders it inherited from its predecessors. But it has made strenuous efforts to use migration to spread Han people, culture and commercial  power into Tibet and Xinjiang. Some Tibetan majority areas were also transferred to Han-majority provinces  -  Qinghai, Sichuan and Gansu. Most recently, at huge cost, Beijing brought the railroad to Lhasa in an effort to reinforce integration.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, China’s security dilemma has  gotten worse. Newly independent states like Kazakhastan may be friendly, for now. But they naturally sympathize with  minorities under the Han yoke, and Chinese efforts to present Uighur separatists as Muslim terrorists are wearing thin.

These  regions cannot be exempt from China’s opening to the outside world.  Images of protests and  military crackdowns quickly go around the world, evidence of how a wired China is also a more volatile China.

Beijing asserts that  the histories and cultures of the Tibetan, Uighur and Korean peoples  within its border are “Chinese.”  China’s attempt to turn Mount Paektu, which straddles its border with North Korea and traditionally is sacred to all Koreans,  into a Chinese World Heritage site, has  infuriated many Koreans.

China is incapable of offering minorities either cultural equality or autonomy. Officialdom and much of the population treats minorities either with suspicion or as colorful tourist attractions.  This leads to an informal apartheid  -  evident in the housing, schools and social organization in Tibet and Xinjiang  -   reinforced by official arrogance. The Han ethnic basis of Chinese identity is seen even in  cosmopolitan Hong Kong, where it is easier for ethnic Chinese born in Malaysia or Canada to get full citizenship than for a Hong Kong-born person of Indian or Philippine  background.

For now, the Olympics notwithstanding, China will  rely on an iron fist to quell dissent. Over the longer term, Beijing will have consider whether to  step up efforts to integrate the minority regions into China through money, infrastructure and migration. That might well raise the level of resentment among Tibetans and Uighurs against their relatively rich, commercially exploitive colonizers. Han Chinese may, however,  become increasingly reluctant to live in restive minority regions  when a better, safer living is available elsewhere.

It is possible that Beijing might eventually allow a little real autonomy in the hope that separatism can be contained. But it is more  likely  that China’s own rising nationalism will meet its match in the determination of Tibetans Uighurs and Koreans not to be swamped by a Han version of Manifest Destiny.

China rejects U.S. attack on human rights
CNN
BEIJING, China (CNN) — China’s foreign minister Wednesday rejected criticism of its human rights record, accusing the United States of “clinging to a Cold War mentality” and “practicing double standards.”

Yang Jiechi was responding to questions about a State Department report released a day earlier that characterized China’s human rights record as one of the most repressive in the world.

The report was released five months before the Summer Olympic Games kickoff in Beijing.

Although he chided the United States and other critics of its human rights record as “making confrontation,” Yang stressed that China is “ready for dialogue with the United States, as long as it is done in an environment of respect and fairness.”

Despite rapid economic growth and social change in China, the report said the “authoritarian” Chinese government “continues to deny their citizens basic human rights and fundamental freedoms.”

It also said there was an increase in forced relocations in Beijing, with people being thrown out of their homes to make way for Olympic projects.

“China’s overall human rights record remained poor in 2007,” it stated, citing tightening controls over religious freedom in Tibet and the Uyghur population.

China announced Sunday that militants in Xinjiang’s Uyghur Autonomous Region had planned to carry out two terror attacks, including one targeting the Olympics set to begin on August 8. China said it successfully thwarted both attacks.

The autonomous region is home to about 19 million people, most of whom are Muslims and other minorities. Many of them oppose Beijing’s rule.

The State Department report also said China has increased its efforts to “control and censor the Internet, and the government tightened restrictions on freedom of speech and the domestic press” and bloggers.

It cited a 20 percent increase over 2006 in convictions of citizens under what it called China’s overly broad state security law that is often used to silence government critics.

“The government continued to monitor, harass, detain, arrest, and imprison journalists, writers, activists, and defense lawyers and their families, many of whom were seeking to exercise their rights under law,” the report said.

“Individuals and groups, especially those deemed politically sensitive by the government, continued to face tight restrictions on their freedom to assemble, their freedom to practice religion, and their freedom to travel.”
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The report, issued annually, surveys the human rights record of more than 190 countries around the world.

In rolling out the report, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said: “No corner of the Earth is permanently condemned to tyranny. Change may take time, but change will come.”

China links plane arrests to terrorist group; Uighurs protest
Tue, 11 Mar 2008 09:52:04 GMT
Source: earthtimes

Beijing - China on Tuesday linked an attempted attack on board a plane to international terrorists, as exiles belonging to the Uighur ethnic group accused the government of a “hidden political aim” in raising recent allegations of terrorist plots. Officials from China’s far western region of Xinjiang said on Sunday that airline staff had foiled an apparent terrorist attack on a flight from Xinjiang to Beijing on Friday.

Foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang on Tuesday said two suspects arrested on the plane had confessed that they were guided by the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM), a group that the United Nations and the United States have listed as a terrorist organization.

“They admitted that it was a planned terrorist activity under the guidance of the ETIM organization,” Qin told reporters when asked about the incident on the plane.

Qin reiterated earlier official accounts, saying the flight crew had found “suspicious liquid” on board and that the incident was “still under investigation.”

The Southern Metropolitan Daily newspaper on Monday quoted unidentified sources as saying a teenage Uighur girl was one of the two people arrested on board Friday’s China Southern flight.

A Xinjiang regional official also said on Sunday that the government had evidence that at least one local terrorist group had targeted the Olympics.

But Dilxat Rexit, a Swedish-based spokesman for the World Uighur Congress, on Tuesday accused the Chinese government of trying to use allegations of terrorism to quash the Uighurs’ political movement in Xinjiang.

“There is a hidden political aim in the authorities’ accusation that Uighurs attempted to make the plane crash and sabotage the Olympics,” Dilxat Rexit said in a statement.

The statement called for international counter-terrorism experts to be allowed to investigate China’s allegations.

It said China could have fabricated the allegations to appeal to the international community, promote nationalism and isolate Uighurs.

“Uighurs oppose Beijing holding the Olympics because China didn’t fulfill its promise of improving human rights, but Uighurs respect the Olympic spirit and will never sabotage the Olympics,” Dilxat Rexit said.

Wang Lequan, the Xinjiang regional secretary of China’s ruling Communist Party, said a suspected terrorist group raided by special forces in Xinjiang in January had plotted an attack on the Beijing Olympics.

In January 2007, Chinese forces said they killed 18 suspected terrorists and destroyed an ETIM training camp in Xinjiang, but international experts cast doubt on China’s account of the incident.

The Chinese government said terrorists were responsible for 200 incidents that killed 162 people in Xinjiang from 1990 to 2001, but few attacks have been reported since then.

Uighur exiles and human rights groups said the global fight against terrorism launched after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States allowed China to claim the moral right to crack down on political and religious dissent in Xinjiang.

About 7.5 million Uighurs, most of whom are Muslims, form the largest minority among Xinjiang’s 20 million people.

The vast Muslim-majority region borders Pakistan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and Kazakhstan and has been under Chinese control since 1949.

China denies ‘creation’ of terror attack

Source: scopical

China has sought to reduce speculation over rumours it may have falsely ‘created’ the threat of a terrorist attack against its country to frame a militant group.

In the lead up to the Beijing Olympics, China has been accused by some of fabricating a story about a plot to crash a jet airline in order to frame part of the Uighur Muslim people.

The Chinese Government said that the claims were false, and that a foreign liquid was found on-board a Chinese airliner that was now under investigation.

Critics have suggested the Government created the fear or concept of an attack in order to frame the Uighur Muslim group, or those attached.

China however says that there was a real threat, and it was now under investigation as to who was involved.

With under 150-days to run before the Summer Olympics in Beijing, China is under close watch by the western world as to whether it can pull-off the feat.

Protest and action groups are also likely to cause headaches for the Chinese Government, with minority protesters vowing to bring attention to their plight while the spotlight is on China.

China parliament delegates call for Xinjiang crackdown: report

Article Link
March 08, 2008
AFP

BEIJING (AFP) — Delegates to China’s parliament have vowed to step up a crackdown on ethnic unrest, separatism and religious extremism in the western region of Xinjiang, state press said Saturday.

“We will never slacken in our fight against these evil forces,” the China Daily quoted Nur Bekri, chairman of the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region as saying.

“We should stay on high alert all the time to crush any attempt to damage Xinjiang’s development and stability.”

Speaking on the sidelines of the ongoing National People’s Congress, Bekri said extremism, terrorism and separatism were the greatest threats to Xinjiang, an area bordering Central Asia that makes up one sixth of China’s territory.

The region of 20 million people is largely populated by ethnic Uighurs and other Muslim minorities which have traditionally opposed Beijing’s rule of the area and clamoured for greater autonomy.

“As the country’s frontline in battling terrorism and separatism, Xinjiang’s anti-terrorism fight is of crucial importance to the stability of the whole country,” the paper quoted Hou Xiaoqin, a political commissar of the Xinjiang armed police, as saying.

Hou said the biggest threat came from the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, a little known grouping that is listed by the United Nations as an international terrorist group.

East Turkestan refers to two short-lived republics established in Xinjiang between 1930 and 1949 by the Muslim Uighur minority, which continues to harbour independence ambitions.

The comments follow a crackdown in the regional capital of Urumqi last month when police raided the home of suspected separatists killing two Muslims and arresting 15 others.

Sunday, 9 March 2008, 12:23 GMT
BBC
Gang ‘plotted attack on Olympics’

China sees the Beijing Olympics as key to its international prestige

Suspected militants arrested in western China earlier this year were planning attacks on the Beijing Olympics, a Chinese official says.

Two people were reported to have been killed and 15 arrested in a raid on 27 January in Urumqi, Xinjiang province.

Officials now say their aim was to attack the August Olympics.

The alleged plot was disclosed as officials also revealed that a plane crew prevented an apparent attempt to crash a jet on an internal flight.

The incident occurred on Friday.

The flight also originated in Urumqi, and was bound for Beijing.

The China Southern Airlines plane landed safely despite an attempt “to create an air disaster”, said Xinjiang Governor Nur Bekri.

He gave few details about the alleged attack.

“Who the people involved in the incident were, where they were from, what their aim was and what their background was, we are now investigating,” he said.

But he said there was “an attempt to crash the plane”, and that the crew responded and brought the plane to an emergency landing in the city of Lanzhou, in neighbouring Gansu province, with no damage or injuries.

Reuters quoted an anonymous source saying inflammable material was found in the plane’s toilet, and that at least two passengers on the flight were taken into custody.

There was no confirmation of this.

‘Sabotage’

Mr Bekri was speaking on the sidelines of the annual session of parliament in Beijing.

At the same event, the boss of the Communist Party in Xianjing, Wang Lequan, said January’s raid in Urumqi had thwarted a plot to attack the Olympics.

“Their aim was very clear,” he said. “Specifically to sabotage the staging of the Beijing Olympics.”

“Those terrorists, saboteurs and secessionists are to be battered resolutely, no matter what ethnic group they are from,” said Mr Wang.

China has been struggling for years to contain separatist sentiment among the Uighur minority in Xinjiang.

Some Uighurs have campaigned for the mainly Muslim province to become an independent republic.

The Xinjiang governor, himself an ethnic Uighur, said only a “very small number of people” in the region support the separatists.

“They don’t represent the Uighur people,” he added.

Dispatches From China’s Wild West: (5 ): China’s Nessie

from: Joshua Kucera

Article Link

KANAS LAKE, China—We were heading north, toward the Russian border. The flat, brown steppe we were driving through is considered to be a part of Siberia, ecologically speaking. The area is inhabited mainly by Tuvans, who are famous among world-music fans for their throat-singing prowess and who, according to legend, are the descendents of Genghis Khan, who used the place as a staging ground for his westward assault.

On the 12-hour bus trip from Urumqi through flat, desolate scrub, we saw almost no human settlement other than the new oil town of Karamay, with its gleaming glass-pyramid airport. It felt like the end of the earth—and a suitable home for China’s most mysterious creature, the Kanas Lake Monster.

The monster is so new on the international mysterious-creature scene that it doesn’t even have a nickname (like Nessie or Bigfoot) yet. It’s generally just called the Kanas Lake Monster. Its habitat, within sight of the Soviet Union, was a sensitive border zone until the 1980s, and only with the opening up of Xinjiang has the outside world learned about the monster. So, there hasn’t been time for its fans to get the story straight. Depending on whom you talk to, it might be a giant fish, or it might be a mammal, or the lake might have both monstrous fish and monstrous mammals. There may be only one monster or there could be eight or more. It could be 30 feet long, and it could be longer than a football field.

But last year the monster appeared to receive official approval from the central government when state-run media reported that tourists from Beijing had seen it and even caught it on video. (The clip has now been viewed more than 900,000 times on YouTube.) According to Xinjiang TV, the tourists were sitting in a boat on the lake when “two huge black aquatic animals with the length of more than 10 meters sprang out from the surface in succession.”

When our tour bus reached the park, it no longer felt as if we were at the end of the earth. There were dozens of other buses in the lot, along with vendors selling everything from bowls of hot noodles to surplus quilted People’s Liberation Army jackets for tourists unprepared for the frigid Siberian climate.

In the park, most of the tourists take a bus up to the top of Camel Mountain, which offers the best view over the lake; take a pleasure cruise on the lake; or poke around an ersatz village of Tuvans, the ethnic group that has traditionally lived around the lake. My translator, Pan, and I escaped the crowds and walked up the back side of Camel Mountain. A recently constructed staircase goes up 2,200 feet to the summit (the Chinese, I came to learn, love staircases on their mountains), but it’s already falling into disrepair. “That’s because they can make more money taking people up on the bus—no one will pay to walk up the stairs,” Pan said. And, indeed, we had the stairs all to ourselves.

We rounded a corner, Pan a little bit ahead of me. “Joshua, come look at this,” he called back, excited. I rushed up, thinking he’d seen a telltale bump in the lake. I caught up to him but couldn’t see anything. “What is it?” I asked. “The view, it’s beautiful,” he replied. And he was right—even without the lure of a monster, Kanas Lake is spectacular, its vivid, minty green water surrounded by forested mountains.

Once back down from the mountain, Pan and I asked around a village, hoping to find someone who had seen the monster. The first person we found was a retired border policeman, Tolugen Zikeli. “The monster is fake, it’s a lie,” he said. “It’s just to attract tourists.”

“The government makes a lot of money from this park, and without a monster, this is just a lake,” he said. Like a lot of crotchety old men, he cited a list of culprits that was broad and vague and included the local government, Beijing, the media, and the tourist industry.

The next morning I went in search of a Tuvan religious official, having heard that Tuvans view the monster as holy. But it turned out that the village’s last cleric died in 1986 and “wasn’t replaced.” So, instead, I talked to Bieke Qihai, a 25-year-old Tuvan who gives short talks on Tuvan history, culture, and music to Chinese tourists. Pan and I had to wait a few minutes while he finished up with a tour group—and for the tour leader to slip him a handful of cash.

Qihai was the first person to tell me that the monster actually has a name: Hobzhk, which means something like “always changing” or “strange” in Tuvan. Genghis Khan believed that the monster was lucky, so he stationed 126 soldiers around the lake to protect it. Tuvans believe the monster uses his body to plug up the entrance of another lake inside Kanas Lake that, if he allowed it, would flood the entire valley. Qihai admitted that he had never seen the monster, though he also said Tuvans don’t like to talk to strangers about it.

Finally, we found the park’s director, Tan Wei Ping, who said that in 2007 the number of visitors was expected to top 1 million, up 30 percent from the previous year. And with a new airport opening up just outside the park, he projected there would be 20 flights a day from Urumqi by the end of 2008.

Tan told us that he once saw four of the monsters all together, each 45 feet long. “The monster has been here for a long time, as long as the Tuvan people have been here. But monster is just the word that the Tuvans use—it’s just an animal with no name,” he said.

Tan acknowledged that the Chinese government uses the creature to increase tourism. “Definitely, more tourists come here because of the monster,” he said. “We did market research in Beijing and Shanghai. We asked people if they had heard of Kanas Lake, and they hadn’t. But when we asked if they had heard of the monster who lived in a lake in Xinjiang, they knew it very well.”