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It’s been more than a year since riots in the western Chinese city of Urumqi resulted in at least 200 dead and 1,600 people injured. Urumqi is the capital of the region of Xinjiang – home to the Turkic Muslim Uighur population, and an ever-growing number of Han Chinese migrants. Most of the rioters were Uighur, and most of those killed were Han Chinese, but each side tells a different tale – both of who started the violence, and of what lay behind it. For the Han Chinese – it’s terrorism and separatism. For many Uighurs – it’s decades of being marginalized and treated as second class citizens in their own land. The World’s Mary Kay Magistad just visited Xinjiang, and has a tale of two narratives. Download MP3
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MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman and this is The World, a coproduction of the BBC World Service, PRI, and WGBH in Boston. About a year ago the Chinese city of Urumqi erupted in riots. At least 200 people died. Urumqi is the capital of the region of Xinjiang. Its home to Uighurs, who are Turkik Muslims. And its home to a growing number of Han Chinese migrants. Most of the rioters were Uighur and most of those killed were Han Chinese. But each side tells a different tale of who started the violence and of what lay behind it. The World’s Mary Kay Magistad visited Xinjiang, and has a tale of two narratives.
MARY KAY MAGISTAD: The military museum in the city of Shihezi is a monument to what it calls the Heroic Han Chinese, who came out to settle the Wild West. Films like this one tell of the hardships the first settlers endured, struggling to turn desert into farmland. [PH] Lu Jon Oh came here as a 20 year old demobilized soldier. He’s now 81.
SPEAKING MANDARIN
MAGISTAD: He says when he arrived here, sent by his military unit to settle the land, there was no where to live and not much to eat. I ask him whether in 60 years of living here, he’s learned any Uighur.
SPEAKING MANDARIN
MAGISTAD: No, he says, I just speak Mandarin in my own dialect. Later he adds, but the Uighurs here are smart. They can speak our language. But even when they do speak Mandarin, many employers don’t want to hire Uighurs. The head of a state run cotton farm near Shihezi, [PH] Lua June Fong, says less than 1% of his 8,000 farm workers are Uighur. He claims that’s because there aren’t many Uighurs around here.
SPEAKING MANDARIN
MAGISTAD: And, he says, there never were. The Uighur side of the story is different. Rabiye Kadir is the exiled Uighur spokeswoman that the Chinese government loves to hate. She says the [PH] Bing Twan, the military-linked group that founded Shihezi, confiscated farms and resources from Uighurs, including her own family’s farm, when she was 13.
SPEAKING UIGHUR
RABIYE KADIR: When we were banished to the southern part of our homeland, we saw Uighur farmers whose land and water were also taken away by the Bing Twan. And they told us that if they complained, they’d be arrested or even executed.
MAGISTAD: And while the Chinese government paints a picture of ethnic harmony and tolerance, Kadir says the real history is very different.
SPEAKING UIGHUR
KADIR: In 1954, the Chinese authorities said if we get rid of the rich, then the Uighur people will have peace and harmony. Then they arrested and killed a number of Uighurs. And in 1957, they said if they get rid of the Uighur intellectuals, then the Uighur will enjoy true peace and harmony. And they killed a lot of Uighurs.
MAGISTAD: Rabiye Kadir, now 63, petite with long gray braids, used to be a successful Uighur businesswoman. But then she publicly criticized government policies toward Uighurs and spent 6 years in prison. She now lives in Washington and heads the Uighur American Association. The Chinese government has accused her, without showing hard evidence, of having masterminded last July’s riots. Xinjiang’s governor, Nur Bekri, has been especially outspoken in his accusations.
SPEAKING CHINESE
NUR BEKRI: What happened on July 5, 2009 was a criminal act collaborated by separatist forces, inside and outside Xinjiang, in a very pretty organized scheme.
MAGISTAD: After the riots, the government shut down most internet access in the area for almost a year. Almost 200 Uighurs were sentenced for their part in the riots, 35 to death. Hundreds more have been detained. These include Uighur intellectuals and journalists. One received a 15-year prison sentence for talking to a foreign journalist. The man had been working for a website run by Uighur academic, [PH] Eelham Toti, who teaches at the Ethnic Minorities University in Beijing.
EELHAM TOTI: [INDISCERNIBLE] access our people [INDISCERNIBLE] information there on the people.
MAGISTAD: Toti says it’s vital for Uighur to be able to get information out and to share ideas. But he says, it comes at a cost. After last year’s riots, he was detained for 3 weeks, while Xinjiang’s governor accused him of conspiring with Rabiye Kadir to plan the riots. Toti was released for lack of evidence. But, he say, police still watch him and let him know when he does something that makes them unhappy. Writing articles about the continuing crackdown on Uighurs makes them unhappy, he says, as they made clear a few months back in a particularly chilling way.
SPEAKING UIGHUR
MAGISTAD: Toti says his 16-year-old daughter disappeared. He asked the police to help find her. After 2 weeks, one of them called and said, oh, don’t worry. One of our friends took her out of the city to have some fun. But, say, you might want to think about those articles you write. His eyes fill with tears as he tells the story. That’s one way the Chinese government tries to muffle the other side of the story. The side about Uighur’s being frustrated by decades of being marginalized, persecuted and left behind in an economy dominated by Han Chinese. This frustration has periodically boiled up into riots and attacks on Chinese government targets. The government now says it will try to do better for Uighurs. Xinjiang governor, Nur Bekri.
SPEAKING CHINESE
BEKRI: We work to our outmost to promote the development of the three [INDISCERNIBLE] in [INDISCERNIBLE] to improve the [INDISCERNIBLE] climate and working on living conditions of the local people there.
MAGISTAD: China’s central government plans to pour billions of dollars into the region to do all this. But if this is a program to win Uighur hearts and minds, there’s one part that’s not likely to work. The government is tearing down the ancient Uighur city in Kashgar, which dates back to the Silk Road. The government wants to rebuild it as a kind of western version of [PH] Shon Jon, the fishing village turned megacity just across from Hong Kong made up almost entirely of Han Chinese migrants. So, it seems the government response to Uighur concerns is to throw money and more Han Chinese migrants at the problem and complete the taming of China’s Wild West. For The World, I’m Mary Kay Magistad, Urumqi.
WERMAN: You can read Mary Kay’s blog posts from Xinjiang. They’re at TheWorld.org.
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