I first met Rebiya Kadeer, the unofficial leader-in-exile of China\u2019s Muslim Uyghur population, at Amnesty International\u2019s London offices in 2007.<\/p>\n
IAIN MARLOW
TOKYO \u2014 The Globe and Mail
Published Thursday, Nov. 05, 2015 9:53PM EST
Last updated Thursday, Nov. 05, 2015 9:56PM EST<\/p>\n
I first met Rebiya Kadeer, the unofficial leader-in-exile of China\u2019s Muslim Uyghur population, at Amnesty International\u2019s London offices in 2007. At the time, the Uyghurs of China\u2019s remote western Xinjiang region \u2013 a barren landscape of deserts, jagged peaks and oasis towns roughly 3,000 kilometres from Beijing \u2013 were just beginning to come onto the modern world\u2019s geopolitical radar, but for all the wrong reasons.<\/p>\n
With the endless war on terror raging in Afghanistan next door, China had been able to fuse its grim political repression of a largely peaceful Uyghur populace with the global struggle against radical Islamist terrorism. Ms. Kadeer, an entrepreneur and Chinese politician who was jailed by China\u2019s government and eventually left for a life of exile leading the World Uyghur Congress, was then already pushing hard against this narrative. But nearly a decade later, when I listened to her speak at a talk in Tokyo, Ms. Kadeer was still saying the same things, and seemed to have made little progress in the fight for Xinjiang\u2019s 10 million Uyghurs.<\/p>\n
In fact, things in Xinjiang are far worse today than a decade ago. One reason is that Uyghurs \u2013 unlike Tibetans \u2013 make for a particularly unlikely cause c\u00e9l\u00e8bre<\/em>, being an inconvenient Muslim minority lodged in the desolate expanses of a powerful state few countries will dare anger. But the main reason things are worse today is because of Beijing\u2019s ham-fisted response to the Uyghur issue: a widespread, alienating crackdown that has stoked tensions further.<\/p>\n Ms. Kadeer, whose detention elevated the Uyghur cause internationally before she was released in 2005, does not command the same attention now. She does not deliver her remarks abroad in English, unlike the Dalai Lama. She thunders her Turkic-Uyghur language in a resonant voice that lessens in impact as it filters through her bookish translator. She is unlikely to fill a stadium. When we spoke in 2007, I already couldn\u2019t find anyone who wanted to publish the interview.<\/p>\n That has changed: Xinjiang is newsworthy again.<\/p>\n Unfortunately this is because fringe elements among the Uyghurs \u2013 unlike Tibetans who have immolated themselves in protest \u2013 have begun knifing, rioting and killing innocent Han Chinese settlers in Xinjiang, as well as elsewhere, such as in Kunming. Every fresh, though entirely predictable, reaction of outrage in China \u2013 or abroad, such as in an August bombing in Thailand in which Uyghurs are suspected \u2013 simply permits China greater latitude in dealing harshly with the Uyghurs.<\/p>\n Beijing\u2019s hold over the land that now comprises the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region \u2013 which stretches west from China\u2019s Gobi Desert, north of Tibet and all the way to the borders of Russia, Afghanistan and Kyrgyzstan \u2013 has always been precarious. The region was a distant colonial acquisition of Chinese dynasties thousands of kilometres to the east. The region even temporarily broke away \u2013 declaring itself East Turkestan \u2013 in the political chaos of China in the 1930s and 1940s. The land is studded with ancient Buddhist landmarks and steeped in Silk Road history: Caravans took routes around the Taklamakan Desert\u2019s towering dunes and stopped in oases such as Turfan, Urumchi, Yarkand and Kashgar. These names are now synonymous for clashes between Uyghurs and recent Han migrants.<\/p>\n The Silk Road\u2019s ethnic melting pot is now a distant memory. Today, the Chinese run the show in Xinjiang, both in business and in politics, with Uyghur workers losing out to Han migrants. Mosques are monitored; religious gatherings can attract the police. Imams are suspect and there have been intermittent crackdowns on Islamic clothing and beards. Those who push for better rights are labelled \u201csplittists\u201d and dissidents, and locked away.<\/p>\n \u201cThe policy of the Chinese government is to treat East Turkestan like a war zone,\u201d Ms. Kadeer told the Foreign Correspondents\u2019 Club in Tokyo in mid-October as part of a visit to see supportive Japanese politicians. \u201cIt looks like a war zone. Every day there is a bloody incident and every day Uyghurs are being killed by the Chinese security forces. This situation is deteriorating.\u201d<\/p>\n The blame for this tragic situation \u2013 an opaque, rising power, anxious about territorial integrity, relentlessly persecuting a minority whose every ethnic, linguistic and religious difference reminds its colonizers, and the world, of their precarious hold \u2013 belongs squarely with China, both historically and in the present.<\/p>\n There\u2019s not too much one can do about history \u2013 unless someone wants to do what Russia did in eastern Ukraine. So, that leaves us with the present.<\/p>\n Until China begins treating Xinjiang like a normal province, and the Uyghurs like the citizens with equal rights that they are, the situation is unlikely to get better. And that\u2019s too bad, because China has actually created its own legitimate security concerns in Xinjiang (its citizens are also now joining Islamic State militants). While generating untold misery among the Uyghurs, Beijing has endangered innocent Han migrants trying to make a living on China\u2019s frontier and made China a more dangerous place.<\/p>\n The near-term future looks grim in Xinijang. But even if it\u2019s tough, Ms. Kadeer obviously can\u2019t give up just yet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I first met Rebiya Kadeer, the unofficial leader-in-exile of China\u2019s Muslim Uyghur population, at Amnesty International\u2019s London offices in 2007.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2186,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"topic":[],"class_list":["post-2187","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\/2187","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=2187"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2187\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2186"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2187"},{"taxonomy":"topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic?post=2187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}