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One year later, China's crackdown after Uighur riots haunts a homeland
By Lauren Keane, Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
URUMQI, CHINA -- A hulking shell of a department store towers over this city's Uighur quarter, a reminder of what can be lost here by speaking up.
For years, it was the flagship of the business empire of Rebiya Kadeer, an exiled leader and matriarch of the Uighur people. If Chinese government accounts are accurate, she helped instigate fierce ethnic riots that killed hundreds and injured thousands here last July -- an accusation she vehemently denies.
Still a prominent landmark even in its ruin, the Rebiya Kadeer Trade Center was partially confiscated by the government in 2006 when Kadeer's son was charged with tax evasion, although tenants were allowed to stay. After the riots, it was shuttered and slated for destruction. The government said the building had failed fire inspections, but it seems in no hurry to set a demolition date.
The forsaken structure makes for an effective deterrent. Last summer's chaos has been replaced with a level of fear that is striking even for one of China's most repressed regions. Residents are afraid of attracting any attention, afraid of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. But they seem most terrified of talking.
"Every single family on this block is missing someone," said Hasiya, a 33-year-old Uighur who asked that her full name not be used. Her younger brother is serving a 20-year prison sentence for stealing a carton of cigarettes during the riots. "Talking about our sorrow might just increase it. So we swallow it up inside."
Fear is not unwarranted here. For years now, those caught talking to journalists have been questioned, monitored and sometimes detained indefinitely. More striking is that residents now say they cannot talk even with one another.
The Turkic-speaking Muslim Uighurs consider Xinjiang their homeland but now make up only 46 percent of the region's population, after decades of government-sponsored migration by China's Han ethnic majority.
The riots started as a Uighur protest over a government investigation into a Uighur-Han brawl at a southern Chinese factory. Several days of violence brought the official death toll to 197, with 1,700 injured, though observers suspect the casualty count was much higher. Most of the dead were Han, according to authorities. The government officially acknowledged detaining nearly 1,500 people after the riots. As of early March, Xinjiang had officially sentenced 198 people, with 25 death sentences. Of those 25, 23 were Uighur.
The riots "left a huge psychic trauma on the minds of many people of all ethnicities. This fully reflects the great harm done to the Chinese autonomous region by 'splittist' forces," said Wang Baodong, a spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in the United States.
Suspicion of fellow citizens is still common throughout China but seems especially acute here. Academics accept interviews only if they can avoid discussing the conflict's lingering effects. An apologetic professor backed out of a planned meeting after his supervisor discovered his plan, called him and threatened his job. A businessman said that he believed government security agents often trained as journalists, and asked how he could be sure that he would not be turned in.
"We're seeing increasingly intrusive modes of control over religious and cultural expression," said Nicholas Bequelin, a Hong Kong-based senior researcher at Human Rights Watch. "They live in fear of being overheard."
"It's quiet here on the surface," said Yu Xinqing, 35, a lifelong Han resident of Urumqi whose brother was killed by Uighurs during the riots. He now carries a knife with him everywhere, avoids Uighur businesses and rarely speaks with Uighur neighbors he previously considered friends. He says he is saving money to leave Xinjiang behind for good.
Still, every once in a while, when a resident is safely alone with a neutral observer, months' worth of stifled thinking tumbles out. That was the case for Ablat, a Uighur businessman who sells clothing near the main bazaar; he would not allow his last name to be mentioned. Ablat had been speaking in vague, evasive terms for three hours, and then -- ensconced in his car, speeding north out of town -- something finally released.
"Give us jobs, stop holding our passports hostage, and let us worship the way we want to," he said. "That would solve these problems. That is all it would take."
One year later, China's crackdown after Uighur riots haunts a homeland
By Lauren Keane, Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
URUMQI, CHINA -- A hulking shell of a department store towers over this city's Uighur quarter, a reminder of what can be lost here by speaking up.
For years, it was the flagship of the business empire of Rebiya Kadeer, an exiled leader and matriarch of the Uighur people. If Chinese government accounts are accurate, she helped instigate fierce ethnic riots that killed hundreds and injured thousands here last July -- an accusation she vehemently denies.
Still a prominent landmark even in its ruin, the Rebiya Kadeer Trade Center was partially confiscated by the government in 2006 when Kadeer's son was charged with tax evasion, although tenants were allowed to stay. After the riots, it was shuttered and slated for destruction. The government said the building had failed fire inspections, but it seems in no hurry to set a demolition date.
The forsaken structure makes for an effective deterrent. Last summer's chaos has been replaced with a level of fear that is striking even for one of China's most repressed regions. Residents are afraid of attracting any attention, afraid of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. But they seem most terrified of talking.
"Every single family on this block is missing someone," said Hasiya, a 33-year-old Uighur who asked that her full name not be used. Her younger brother is serving a 20-year prison sentence for stealing a carton of cigarettes during the riots. "Talking about our sorrow might just increase it. So we swallow it up inside."
Fear is not unwarranted here. For years now, those caught talking to journalists have been questioned, monitored and sometimes detained indefinitely. More striking is that residents now say they cannot talk even with one another.
The Turkic-speaking Muslim Uighurs consider Xinjiang their homeland but now make up only 46 percent of the region's population, after decades of government-sponsored migration by China's Han ethnic majority.
The riots started as a Uighur protest over a government investigation into a Uighur-Han brawl at a southern Chinese factory. Several days of violence brought the official death toll to 197, with 1,700 injured, though observers suspect the casualty count was much higher. Most of the dead were Han, according to authorities. The government officially acknowledged detaining nearly 1,500 people after the riots. As of early March, Xinjiang had officially sentenced 198 people, with 25 death sentences. Of those 25, 23 were Uighur.
The riots "left a huge psychic trauma on the minds of many people of all ethnicities. This fully reflects the great harm done to the Chinese autonomous region by 'splittist' forces," said Wang Baodong, a spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in the United States.
Suspicion of fellow citizens is still common throughout China but seems especially acute here. Academics accept interviews only if they can avoid discussing the conflict's lingering effects. An apologetic professor backed out of a planned meeting after his supervisor discovered his plan, called him and threatened his job. A businessman said that he believed government security agents often trained as journalists, and asked how he could be sure that he would not be turned in.
"We're seeing increasingly intrusive modes of control over religious and cultural expression," said Nicholas Bequelin, a Hong Kong-based senior researcher at Human Rights Watch. "They live in fear of being overheard."
"It's quiet here on the surface," said Yu Xinqing, 35, a lifelong Han resident of Urumqi whose brother was killed by Uighurs during the riots. He now carries a knife with him everywhere, avoids Uighur businesses and rarely speaks with Uighur neighbors he previously considered friends. He says he is saving money to leave Xinjiang behind for good.
Still, every once in a while, when a resident is safely alone with a neutral observer, months' worth of stifled thinking tumbles out. That was the case for Ablat, a Uighur businessman who sells clothing near the main bazaar; he would not allow his last name to be mentioned. Ablat had been speaking in vague, evasive terms for three hours, and then -- ensconced in his car, speeding north out of town -- something finally released.
"Give us jobs, stop holding our passports hostage, and let us worship the way we want to," he said. "That would solve these problems. That is all it would take."
One year later, China's crackdown after Uighur riots haunts a homeland
