Program on life of Uighur concubine in an 18th-century Chinese court will only exacerbate tensions, activists say<\/p>\n
China\u2019s efforts to quell unrest among its predominantly Muslim ethnic Uighurs have included cracking down on both beards <\/a>and traditional snacks<\/a>, forcing mosques to display flags<\/a> and charging a prominent economics professor with separatism<\/a> \u2014 a crime punishable by death. Now Beijing is trying something more whimsical \u2014 a TV cartoon <\/strong>about a disputed historical figure called the \u201cFragrant Concubine\u201d in Chinese, or \u201cIparhan\u201d in the Uighur language.<\/p>\n The quasi-historical figure of Iparhan was a Uighur noble who became a consort of an emperor during the Manchu-led Qing Dynasty in the late 1700s. The point of the animated program, according to Chinese media<\/a>, is to celebrate a marriage of cultures.<\/p>\n But rights activists say the soon-to-be-released \u201cPrincess Fragrant\u201d <\/em>cartoon series \u2014 a joint venture between local authorities in the Uighurs\u2019 native region of Xinjiang in western China and a production company based in the faraway southeastern metropolis of Shenzhen \u2014 will only further anger the embattled Uighurs, many of who say Beijing\u2019s policies and a growing influx of China\u2019s majority ethnic Han people into the region threaten their livelihood and culture.<\/p>\n On the same day that the English-language website for Chinese national daily Global Times ran a story that appeared to laud local authorities\u2019 efforts to \u201cfight an ideology war through cartoon production<\/a>,\u201d Xinjiang\u2019s government-run news channel broadcast what appeared to have been the confessions<\/a> of two young Uighur men, aged 18 and 19, who it said had orchestrated the killing of a pro-Beijing imam at a prominent mosque in Xinjiang.<\/p>\n All information about the imam\u2019s killing has been filtered through Chinese government-controlled <\/strong>media, prompting calls from international human rights groups to allow greater transparency<\/a> into Beijing’s treatment of Uighurs.<\/p>\n \u201cFor the past 65-years [since Xinjiang became part of the People\u2019s Republic], the Uighurs have learned from Chinese rule that on the one hand, they use brutal force against people who are unhappy with Chinese rule and on the other hand, they use propaganda to portray the glorious role of the Chinese government \u2014 to deceive people into accepting Chinese rule,\u201d said Alim Seytoff, spokesman for the World Uighur Congress, a rights group that bills itself as an autonomous Uighur government in exile.<\/p>\n \u201cHow could the Chinese government think that propaganda cartoons of unity can win the hearts and minds of the Uighurs while the killing and repression of our people is not being stopped?\u201d Seytoff said.<\/p>\n Staff at the Shenzhen Qianheng Cultural Communications Company, who are working with authorities to produce \u201cPrincess Fragrant,\u201d were not immediately available for comment. But program director Deng Jianglei told the Global Times that the creators were struggling to find a musician to compose a soundtrack that would be accepted by both Uighurs and Han.<\/p>\n However, Seytoff says that regardless of musical tastes, a Chinese account of Iparhan\u2019s life will only anger Uighurs. In the Chinese version, Iparhan, the daughter of a local Xinjiang leader, had a naturally sweet body odor that enticed the Manchu emperor Qianlong. Iparhan was sent to Beijing, where she became the emperor\u2019s most favored consort.<\/p>\n According to the Uighur telling, Seytoff said, Manchu army forces captured Iparhan while she was <\/strong>fighting to defend Uighur autonomy in battle. Qianlong was infatuated with her scent and beauty and sought to make her a concubine, but Iparhan attempted to kill him before the union was consummated. Later Qianlong\u2019s mother, the Dowager Empress, ordered Iparhan killed.<\/p>\n Iparhan\u2019s \u201cis a story of Uighur resistance, not one of unity. That\u2019s the story the Uighur people know, even if the Chinese government has made up it\u2019s own story,\u201d Seytoff said.<\/p>\n Regardless of the program\u2019s historical accuracy, Seytoff said he finds it particularly offensive that what is blatantly a political cartoon is, he said, trying to indicate that Uighurs are \u201ca concubine\u201d of the Chinese state. But he is confident that Uighurs won\u2019t buy it.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is an extremely offensive way of convincing the Uighur people that East Turkestan was part of China,\u201d Seytoff said, employing Uighur separatists\u2019 name for Xinjiang. <\/p>\n Xinjiang, which abuts South and Central Asian nations including Pakistan and oil- and energy-rich Kazakhstan, is of great strategic and economic value to Beijing. In September of last year, China signed a slew of contracts<\/a> with neighboring nations to import oil and gas directly into the region. Uighur rights activists have said religious repression is one means of controlling a restive Uighur public that Beijing sees as a threat to its commerce.<\/p>\n In recent months, other religious restrictions imposed by local governments have barred women wearing traditional headscarves from entering public venues. In one case in Aksu, authorities placed the Chinese flag at the head of a mosque, in an apparent bid to make worshippers bow to a symbol of the state<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Program on life of Uighur concubine in an 18th-century Chinese court will only exacerbate tensions, activists say<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1090,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"topic":[],"class_list":["post-1091","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1091","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1091"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1091\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1090"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1091"},{"taxonomy":"topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic?post=1091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}