It was broad daylight in a busy part of Beijing when a local doctor\u2014a friend of mine\u2014rear-ended the car in front of hers.\u00a0<\/p>\n
By Matt Moir
\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200bAugust 9, 2016<\/p>\n
It was broad daylight in a busy part of Beijing when a local doctor\u2014a friend of mine\u2014rear-ended the car in front of hers. Though it wasn\u2019t a major accident, she was frightened to step outside of her BMW to survey the aftermath of the collision. The 41-year-old pathologist says, \u201cI wasn\u2019t hurt and I don\u2019t think I hit the other car hard enough to hurt anyone in their car. But there was no way I was getting out.\u201d<\/p>\n
What spooked her wasn\u2019t any potential damage to her vehicle, or the honking cars negotiating the Chinese capital\u2019s notoriously busy streets. It was the occupants of the car she hit. \u201cI could tell they were Uyghurs, and they can be very violent,\u201d she explains. \u201cI thought they might attack me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her prejudice, while seeming extreme, has sadly become commonplace among Beijing\u2019s 20 million residents and across China. Uyghurs are a Turkic-speaking, mostly Muslim ethnic group from Xinjiang province in western China. Many Uyghurs migrate to big Chinese cities in search of work opportunities, but they often face mistrust and oppression.<\/p>\n
In much of the rest of the world, Uyghurs are considered socially and politically alienated victims of state suppression. But across large cities in China, they are seen as hot-tempered criminals who, for one\u2019s own safety, should be avoided at all costs.<\/p>\n
The doctor, who spoke to me from her home in a southeastern suburb of Beijing, told me she had a negative experience with \u201cXinjiang people\u201d before the car accident: When she was a university student, she was pickpocketed by a group of Uyghur children. \u201cI can still remember them laughing. I was scared,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
That day on the roadside, she stayed in her car and called her husband. While she was on the phone, the other car drove away.<\/p>\n
SIMMERING ETHNIC AND RELIGIOUS<\/strong> tensions in Xinjiang between Uyghur Muslims and Han Chinese have made the region one of the Chinese Communist Party\u2019s biggest domestic challenges.<\/p>\n Over the past several years, there have been numerous riots and other violent incidents in the province that have left hundreds dead and many more wounded. In July 2009, at least 1,000 ethnic Uyghurs clashed with police in a riot in Xinjiang. In 2014, there was a Uyghur-led mass knife-attack in a train station that killed 31 people, and injured another 140. More recently, Uyghurs reportedly have been seen fighting alongside the al-Nusra Front<\/a>, an al-Qaeda offshoot, in Syria.<\/p>\n Xinjiang is roughly the size of Iran and borders several Muslim-majority countries, including Afghanistan and Pakistan. The province is at the forefront of what the Chinese government labels the \u201cthree evil forces\u201d of extremism, terrorism, and separatism, and authorities have vowed to take firm measures to defeat those so-called evils. In 2012, a top Communist official<\/a> in Xinjiang promised to use \u201ciron fists\u201d to stamp out terrorist threats, and that extremists should have \u201cno place to hide.\u201d<\/p>\n Human rights organizations, on the other hand, say that heavy-handed government responses to isolated acts of violence are exacerbating the problems between Xinjiang\u2019s Uyghur and Han communities, who represent roughly 45 and 40 percent of the province\u2019s population, respectively. According to Human Rights Watch<\/a>, \u201cPervasive ethnic discrimination, severe religious repression, and increasing cultural suppression justified by the government in the name of the \u2018fight against separatism, religious extremism, and terrorism\u2019 continue to fuel rising tensions\u201d in Xinjiang.<\/p>\n Uyghur activists and numerous other experts believe that the discrimination faced by Uyghurs isn\u2019t confined to Xinjiang\u2019s borders, however. They say that a xenophobic Chinese government, with the help of propagandistic media, has created a climate of fear and intolerance for the thousands of Uyghurs who leave Xinjiang every year for other parts of China.<\/p>\n ILSHAT HASSAN CANNOT BE<\/strong> blamed for having a jaundiced view of the Chinese justice system. Police have arrested the 50-year-old Uyghur activist more than once. According to him, the arrests were arbitrary and illegal.<\/p>\n Hassan says he was once detained, beaten, and electrocuted with a cattle prod after getting picked up at a railway station. On a different occasion, he says he and other Uyghurs were ushered off a crowded bus in the middle of the night, and made to stand on the side of a deserted country road while a security officer trained an assault rifle on him. Hassan now lives near Washington, D.C.\u2014a prominent enclave of Uyghurs in the U.S.\u2014and he says security officials arrested his sister in Xinjiang and held her for months in retaliation for an article he wrote from the United States about the Chinese government\u2019s treatment of Uyghurs.<\/p>\n But the police encounter Hassan remembers most vividly doesn\u2019t involve an electric shock or a machine gun. Instead, it\u2019s the time an officer tried to search his book bag. Years ago, he says that he went with some Uyghur friends from university to Beijing on a school holiday, and the group of students attempted to go on a boat cruise. \u201cAs soon as we boarded the ship, two police singled out all of us Uyghurs and told us to empty our bags,\u201d Hassan says. \u201cAt the time, there were no security checks. It was before 9\/11, so it was a very unusual.\u201d<\/p>\n Hassan says he asked the officer why only the bags of Uyghurs were being checked. The officer, he says, \u201csaid we looked different so we were suspicious.\u201d Hassan sees his experience with the Beijing police as representative of a larger problem in China: Uyghurs are made to feel like second-class citizens. \u201cWe\u2019re barbaric people to them,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n