The reaction prompts hospital authorities in Guangxi to cancel the warning.<\/p>\n
2015-04-15<\/span><\/p>\n Uyghur groups and netizens have denounced an internal notice issued by a hospital in Nanning warning staff about a possible terrorist attack by \u201csuspicious persons,\u201d a euphemism, they said, for the Turkic-speaking, Muslim residents of northwest China\u2019s turbulent Xinjiang region.<\/p>\n Guangxi Autonomous Regional Maternal and Child Care Hospital in Nanning issued an official sealed antiterrorism warning to employees on April 10 in response to a notice from the police department the previous day about the possibility of a terrorist attack in the city.<\/p>\n The hospital\u2019s notice directed staff and guards at the entrance to be on alert and contact security personnel if they saw any \u201csuspicious persons\u201d from Xinjiang during the day or at night.<\/p>\n The notice also suggested that hospital employees temporary stop their outside activities after daytime work shifts and shortened such activities as much as possible.<\/p>\n But the hospital cancelled the notice three days later because of pressure from international groups and netizens on social media.<\/p>\n Alim Seytoff, president of the Washington-based Uyghur American Association, told RFA\u2019s Uyghur Service that the incident was proof that China promoted racial separatism and Uyghur-phobic policies.<\/p>\n \u201cChina always emphasizes that \u2018Xinjiang is an inseparable part of China,\u2019 but China\u2019s government aims to separate people from each other,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cAs I know, the so-called Xinjiangren<\/i> [people from Xinjiang] indicates the Uyghurs in the eyes of the Han Chinese people. Therefore, why and what reason did the Guangxi hospital have to issue a sealed official document and warn Han Chinese people that the Xinjiangren<\/i> are \u2018suspicious people?\u2019 The hospital published this announcement according to the emergency notice from the Guangxi police department.\u201d<\/p>\n Of the cancellation of the policy three days later, he said: \u201cThis is China\u2019s media policy and the real \u2018double face\u2019 of China\u2019s Uyghur policy.\u201d<\/p>\n The Uyghur news website of the Turkey-based East Turkestan Education and Cooperation Organization published an article about the hospital\u2019s notice, charging that China used an antiterrorism umbrella to intensify racial discrimination and anti-Uyghur propaganda among the Chinese people.<\/p>\n Hospital employees are unclear<\/b><\/p>\n A daytime security staff member at the hospital, who told RFA that the institution\u2019s administration issued the notice after it was informed of a possible terrorist attack by Guangxi police, said he was unsure whether it referred to Xinjiang residents.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know if the term Xinjiangren<\/i> indicated the Uyghurs or another specific group of people,\u201d he said. \u201cI only know it\u2019s my duty to protect the security of our hospital.\u201d <\/p>\n A nighttime security guard at the hospital told RFA that she was aware that the terms \u201csuspicious person\u201d or \u201cXinjiangren<\/i>\u201d were on the notice, but she was uncertain if they referred to only Uyghurs or other people.<\/p>\n \u201cAnyway, it\u2019s already cancelled, so there\u2019s no need to discuss this,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Strong reactions online<\/b><\/p>\n The hospital notice sparked strong reactions from Uyghurs and the predominant Han-Chinese ethnic group on social media sites.<\/p>\n Web writer Lu Mingjun published an article entitled \u201cGuangxi leaders, please look at me. Do I look like a \u2018suspicious person?\u2019\u201d on WeChat, a Chinese government-approved social media site.<\/p>\n \u201c\u2018Xinjiangren<\/i>\u2019 do not equal \u2018suspicious persons\u2019 or \u2018terrorists,\u2019\u201d he wrote. Just like \u2018Fujianese\u2019 or \u2018Shanghairen<\/i>\u2019 (people from Shanghai), the so-called \u201cXinjiangren<\/i>\u201d include Uyghurs and other ethnic groups. If the government believes that Xinjiang people are a part of Chinese people, they must control this kind of nationalistic propaganda and foolish thing.\u201d<\/p>\n An anonymous writer published an article entitled \u201cWho is a \u2018suspicious person?\u2019\u201d on WeChat\u2019s forum, contending that the term \u201csuspicious person\u201d could not imply all Uyghurs.<\/p>\n The netizen pointed out that although nearly 4,000 kilometers (2,500 miles) separated Xinjiang and south China\u2019s Guangxi, the latter had recently become the second most important anti-terrorism area in the country because of Uyghurs from Xinjiang leaving China through Guangxi\u2019s borders with Southeast Asian countries.<\/p>\n \u201cSo, Guangxi police and local government offices have engaged in large-scale antiterrorism propaganda in the last two years,\u201d the netizen wrote. \u201cThe antiterrorism warning announcement by the Guangxi Maternal and Child Care Hospital was a foolish thing. If they believe that the so-called \u2018suspicious persons\u2019 and Xinjiang people are the same thing, then it is really a problem.\u201d<\/p>\n The ethnic minority Uyghurs have complained about pervasive ethnic discrimination, religious repression, and cultural suppression by China\u2019s communist government under its series of \u201cstrike hard\u201d campaigns in Xinjiang in the name of fighting separatism, religion extremism and terrorism.<\/p>\n Reported by Eset Sulaiman for RFA\u2019s Uyghur Service. Translated by Eset Sulaiman. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The reaction prompts hospital authorities in Guangxi to cancel the warning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1774,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"topic":[],"class_list":["post-1775","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\/1775","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=1775"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1775\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1774"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1775"},{"taxonomy":"topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic?post=1775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}