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Slum TV gives voice to Kenya poor

The World — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 20:10:27 +0000

In Kenya, the rural poor from different tribes are brought together in urban slums where ethnic tensions flared in 2007 following disputed election results. One of the worst affected areas was the Mathare slum in Nairobi. While international media focused on machete attacks in Mathare, a local non-profit called Slum TV told the stories of residents who helped each other survive. The World’s Matthew Brunwasser has the story.(Photo: Matthew Brunwasser) Download MP3

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MARCO WERMAN: Many of us first heard of the ethnic tensions that rippled through Kenya’s urban slums back in 2007. That’s when those tensions flared into violence, following a disputed presidential election. One of the worst affected areas was Mathare, a slum in Nairobi. The international media focused on machete attacks in the slum. But a local non-profit called Slum TV told the stories of residents who helped each other survive the chaos. Today, Slum TV continues its mission. To teach television production as a development tool. From Mathare, Matthew Brunwasser reports.

MATTHEW BRUNWASSER: The streets are filled with mud and sewage after recent rains. Dirty teenagers hang around openly sniffing glue from plastic bags. It looks like a sad place of poverty and decay. But there are positive stories here too. Slum TV is the place to hear them. The volunteer organization uses television to promote positive examples of Mathare residents helping themselves. In this news clip, a woman interviews two young brothers, Moise and Rasta, who opened what the reporter calls an elegant barber shop in Mathare.

FEMALE SPEAKER: In life, it’s about trial and error, and they had to take a chance of risking in creating such a business, especially in this locality.

BRUNWASSER: The stories are reported and produced by young residents who learn video production at Slum TV. Vincent Omuga is a cameraman. Showing me the streets where he was born and raised, he says there are loads of stories that no one outside the slum ever hears about.

VINCENT OMUGA: In the slum, good things happen there. We have people with big businesses, big minds, great ideas that we can see.

BRUNWASSER: There’s the story of a woman who fries potatoes for a living. A man who fixes shoes. A water vendor. Ethnic diversity is shown as something positive, not a threat. Slum TV manager Kenneth Wendo says it was coincidence that the project started shortly before the violence in 2007. But that just made it even more important to highlight the positive.

KENNETH WENDO: There was a group of Kikuyus who were supporting Luo people. They actually believed in positivity. So in some of our clips, we focus on a group of Luo people who helped Kikuyus to resettle after they were chased away from their home. So we realized there is love in that slum as much as there is also hatred.

MARGOLIS: Wendo says it would be difficult for outsiders to tell these stories. Slum TV members use an air compressor to blow up an inflatable 20-foot screen and hammer in spikes to support it. There’s no formal electricity in Mathare. What little that exists is stolen from the grid and few have television sets, so Slum TV brings its programs to the people. And it’s clearly a major event. A Slum TV member warms up the crowd, many of whom are children. Esther Wanjiru, a Slum TV reporter, says that if locals can just see positive examples, they can learn to improve themselves.

ESTHER WANJIRU: People in the slums they have no hope. If you just show them, instead of waiting for someone to come and give you something, just do it yourself, like the DIY culture. But if you’re just saying oh oh nothing is going to ever happen. Just show them what other people are doing, and instead of these people just staying back and being prostitutes, being thieves, they’ll have something to do.

MARGOLIS: When Kenyans hear about Mathare, its only stories of crime, poverty and filth, says resident Basi Embura. Watching from her doorstep, she says Slum TV is helping to raise the slum’s self-esteem.

BASI EMBURA: Slum TV is teaching us on how to be happy with what we have, we should accept ourselves and try to be better. Yeah, we love it.

MARGOLIS: Reporter Wanjiru says she’s curious about why people like telling their stories, so she asks them.

WANJIRU: Every time when I walk around the slums, people just know me. They see me and they see Slum TV. And most of them are like, “I have a story to tell you,” and you want to listen to them. And what they say is, “I think my story can help someone else in the other side of the slum.”

MARGOLIS: Slum TV has no plans as of yet to broadcast over the airwaves, but they have started posting their stories on the internet. The crew from Slum TV says people in Mathare have started taking themselves more seriously, just from seeing themselves and their everyday stories on TV. For the World, I’m Matthew Brunwasser, Mathare slum, Nairobi.

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An interview with author Tracy Kidder

The World — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 21:10:16 +0000

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Pulitzer prize-winning author Tracy Kidder (right) stopped by our studios this morning for an interview with Anchor Jeb Sharp. Kidder was here to talk about his new book, entitled Strength in What Remains. The book tells the story of Deo, a survivor of the decades long civil war that ripped apart the central African nation of Burundi. Kidder follows Deo’s story as the young African arrives in New York City having fled the ethnic violence in his country.

Click here for more information about the book.

Here’s a short video of a part of the interview:

An Interview with Author Tracy Kidder from Clark Boyd on Vimeo.

Strength in What Remains

The World — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 19:30:57 +0000

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Anchor Jeb Sharp speaks with Pulitzer-Prize winning author Tracy Kidder about his newest novel, Strength in What Remains, the true story of a man who survived the ethnic violence between Burundi and Rwanda and managed to find his way to the United States.

Click here for more information about the book.

Here’s a short video of a part of the interview:

An Interview with Author Tracy Kidder from Clark Boyd on Vimeo.

JEB SHARP: A young man named Deo has memories as disturbing as those of the Afghan refugee we just met. Deo is the subject of a new book. It’s called “Strength in What Remains.” The author is Tracy Kidder. His 2003 book, “Mountains Beyond Mountains” told the story of a doctor’s mission to revolutionize healthcare in Haiti. Kidder profiles another extraordinary man in “Strength in What Remains.” Deo was born to a poor rural family in the central African country of Burundi. He was 24 years old and working at a hospital when the horrors began.

TRACY KIDDER: He escaped first the onset of ethnic civil war in Burundi but unfortunately for him he escaped to Rwanda where six months later the genocide began. He escaped back to Burundi. At that point he ended up… It’s too complicated to explain. But he ended up flying to New York City. So he arrived in New York City with $200 in his pocket, a visa obtained under false pretenses, no English, no friends or relations, memories of horrors so fresh that he sometimes confused past and present. He had a bad time there for a while. First ride on a subway he was lost for most of the day. He eked out a sort of living delivering groceries for $15 a day. He lived in tenements, abandoned tenements in Harlem and then in Central Park and yet less than two years after that he was a student at Columbia University. And I think even more improbable and interesting than that, he’s gone back to Burundi, built a remarkable medical facility and public health system in a rural village which they sort of hope will be a beacon for the rest of the country.

SHARP: So in a sense there are many chapters there. There’s Deo and his coming of age in Burundi. Becoming a medical student. There’s his becoming embroiled, engulfed, in the ethnic violence of that period in both countries – in Burundi and Rwanda. His flight to New York sort of getting through all kinds of things and then this other chapter of returning to Burundi and building a clinic. But I wonder. You start the book with the flight to New York. Tell us a little bit of just what it is to flee the kind of violence he fled.

KIDDER: I’m not a great expert on this because I didn’t live through it. But I do believe in being able to extend one’s imagination. The way I chose to do this was to tell the story as he told it to me over many, and sometimes rather painful, sessions of talk. But this is a book in part about memory. The idea is to see him in the throws of these memories. I mean that’s one of the costs I should think for any survivor.

SHARP: What were those memories? What’s most striking about some of the key things that happen to him?

KIDDER: Well I think the first and strongest one is of being in the hospital where he was working as an intern. A big hospital in a pretty rural part of Burundi and it was the day after the president, the first elected president of Burundi, had been assassinated. And, for lack of better term, militia men had come to the hospital and they were, as near a Deo could tell conducted a rather indiscriminate slaughter. And he ran to his room and hid under his bed but he forgot to close his door. And it was for that reason when they came to his door they decided he had left. So he lay there and listened to the massacre and then when they had left he set off on foot. That’s indelible memory of course. And there were others. When he was crossing the border into Rwanda there was a woman, a Hutu – he’s a Tutsi – who saved him.

SHARP: She pretends he’s her son.

KIDDER: Her son. Yeah.

SHARP: And there’s a terrible, terrible moment in a banana grove where he comes across a dead woman whose baby is still alive.

KIDDER: Yes. The baby is still alive and he is utterly exhausted and the place is just full of corpses. He remembers saying to himself I can’t help that baby. I can’t. I can’t do anything and he sort of got up and staggered away until he couldn’t see the baby and then went to sleep for he didn’t know how long – whether it was a day or two days. And [INAUDIBLE] doesn’t know what happened to the baby but almost certainly it died. And he still feels a bad about that you know although… I mean one does I suppose.

SHARP: As you say the story is as much about memory as it is about the account of survival either from the genocide or in New York. And in the prologue to the book you talk about this Burundian term gusimbura.

KIDDER: It’s a very… It’s unusual. A linguist friend of mine said he knew of no language that had a single word for this.

SHARP: What does it mean?

KIDDER: Gusimbura means to remind people of something unpleasant in particular by naming the dead. And it’s not a good thing to do. It’s a very rude thing to do. But I was introduced to this word by Deo as we drove to the place where he was born and raised. Suddenly he was warning me not to mention the death of this childhood friend when he was a little boy. And it stuck with me. You know I found myself writing late in this book lines to the effect that of course we need these memorials to genocide, of course we need to remember, or else this business of never again will never be anything more than an empty self-enhancing platitude. But I also feel like too much remembering can choke a person, even a culture, and a feeling that there was also something to be said for a culture with a word like gusimbura.

SHARP: So Deo goes back to Burundi to build a medical clinic in the place where his parents have ended up after the war. Tell us about that. Tell us about what it was like for him to go back to Burundi and how he found meaning in the work there.

KIDDER: Yeah my trip to Burundi with him was just incidental to what he was really up to. This was 2006 and he was beginning the foundations of this public health and medical system. With an enormous amount of help – he’s quite a charismatic guy – and he’d rallied a very large number of American friends and the number of which they’ve grown and grown. The clinic is fully functional now. They saw 20,000 patients the first year. It’s about 30,000. They come… People come from all over Burundi because the care is good and it’s free to all those who really can’t afford to pay. People even come from as far away as Congo and Tanzania. And my favorite story is of the one man who showed up that didn’t really need medical help to come from a long distance. Deo said why have you come? And he said to see America. Which actually I’ve sometimes thought that was misconception for us to live up to but in a sense this is a good side of America, a really good side of America, this clinic. And it has tremendous support from our State Department and from a lot of Americans.

SHARP: Tracy Kidder’s most recent book is “Strength in What Remains.” Tracy Kidder thank you so much.

KIDDER: Thanks for having me.

SHARP: You can find a video of Tracy Kidder talking about his new book on our website. That’s The World dot org.

Muslim reaction to China’s actions against Uighurs

The World — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 20:55:55 +0000

The riots in China’s Xinjiang region and the subsequent Chinese crackdown on the Muslim Uighurs have drawn a muted response from the Muslim world — with the exception of Turkey. The World’s Aaron Schachter reports. Listen

JEB SHARP: I’m Jeb Sharp, and this is The World. More than 180 people have died in ethnic violence in China’s Xinjiang region. Human rights groups say most of the victims have been members of the Uigher minority. Uighers are Muslims, and yet, most leaders of Muslim countries have been muted in their response to the Chinese crackdown. There’s been one notable exception, Turkey’s prime minister. Recep Tayyip Erdogan was especially outspoken, because Turks share ethnic bonds with the Turkic speaking Uighers. Today, China urged the Turkish leader to retract his remarks. The World’s Aaron Schachter reports.

AARON SCHACHTER: Thousands of protestors gathered in Istanbul this past weekend to denounce China’s actions. They chanted “China the murderer” and “Free East Turkestan”, that’s the name some Muslims give to Xinjiang province. And Turkey’s Prime Minister suggested that China’s actions against the Uighers constituted a kind of genocide. That didn’t sit well with China’s foreign ministry spokesman, Qin Gang.

QIN GANG: [TRANSLATED TO ENGLISH FROM CHINESE] The Uigher population 60 years ago, in 1949, was 3.29 million. Now, the Uigher population in Xinjiang has increased to about 10 million. The population has tripled. What kind of genocide is this?

AARON SCHACHTER: Other critics of Turkey’s Prime Minister also took issue with his reference to genocide. They accuse Tayyip Erdogan of pandering to his largely conservative Muslim constituency. But Turkish analyst Abdulhamit Bilici says arguing over words misses the point.

ABDULHAMIT BILICI: We can debate if those definitions are proper or helpful for the situation. But I guess the question is to ask why other people, other countries, other prime ministers are keeping quiet. If there is a tragedy, any person has a responsibility to do something to improve the situation.

AARON SCHACHTER: But other prime ministers and world leaders, especially those in Muslim powerhouses like Saudi Arabia and Egypt, may be keeping quiet people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. Adbullah Bouhabib heads the Issam Fares Center for Lebanon.

ABDULLAH BOUHABIB: What China is using to stop the revolt, or whatever it is, any other Arab regime would do the same here.

AARON SCHACHTER: There are other reasons the Muslim world hasn’t made a stink over what’s happening in western China. First, many Muslims don’t realize that Uighers share their faith. Then there’s the concern of disrupting business with China, a major trading partner in the region. And Lebanese political analyst Michael Young says, many in the Middle East don’t have time or energy for problems half way around the world.

MICHAEL YOUNG: I think that this notion of trans-Islamic solidarity is often overplayed in the West with respect to reality. We have to understand China is a very foreign place to a lot of people in the Middle East. I mean, we don’t see a mobilization of Western societies for what happened in the Balkans, and I don’t think we should expect a mass mobilization in the Arab world for what happens to Muslims in China.

AARON SCHACHTER: Still, the violence affecting the Uighers is making an impact in parts of the Middle East. Iranian clerics have condemned the crack down. The Secretary General of the Organization of the Islamic Conference has expressed deep concern. And news reports quote residents of Saudi Arabia comparing the way Uighers are being treated in China to the way Muslims are being treated in Palestine. That’s about as serious a denunciation as one can make in this part of the globe. For The World, I’m Aaron Schachter in Beirut.

Al Qaeda group vows revenge on China

The World — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 20:54:20 +0000

An Al Qaeda affiliate in northern Africa has vowed to avenge the deaths of Muslim Uighurs in China by targeting Chinese workers in Africa. The World’s Gerry Hadden explains. Listen

Unrest in western China

JEB SHARP: A group calling itself Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, appears to be calling for attacks against Chinese living and working in North Africa. Several web sites have published the threats which call for revenge against the killing of Uighers in Xinjiang. From Rabat, Morocco, The World’s Gerry Hadden assesses the threats.

GERRY HADDEN: For al-Qaeda, the Chinese have long been incidental in their jihadist fight in the Middle East and beyond. Justin Crump heads terrorism analysis at Sterling Assynt, a London based security firm. Crump says his sources suggest that Al Qaeda’s North African offshoot, has decided to make the Chinese direct targets, to avenge Uigher deaths in recent weeks.

JUSTIN CRUMP: So it’s an autonomous decision but it reflects, you know, what’s going on. And as such they’re tapping into a grassroots sort of mentality of anger over what’s seen as a slight to fellow Muslims.

GERRY HADDEN: Crump won’t say how he learned of al-Qaeda’s decision, but he says online chatter has spiked on al-Qaeda related websites. He says the threat to the tens of thousands of Chinese living and working in North Africa is real.

[SOUND CLIP]

GERRY HADDEN: In the capital of Morocco, Rabat, Chinese immigrants tend to own restaurants, or small clothing stores like this one in the city’s main bazaar. The Chinese owner here is so new to town that he doesn’t speak Arabic or even French, but his employee, Faiza, is a local resident. Faiza says he’s not worried about Al Qaeda targeting his employer.

[SOUND CLIP]

GERRY HADDEN: “I don’t think it will happen,” he says, “the Chinese are not push-overs, you know? If they feel that their interests are threatened they won’t hesitate to strike back.” Faiza’s sense of security is not uncommon in Morocco, where al-Qaeda has not pulled off a major attack in several years. But next door in Algeria, some 50 thousand Chinese are working and living. Last month Al Qaeda attacked a convoy of Chinese workers, killing one of them and 18 of their security guards. Scott Stuart is an analyst with Stratfor, a U.S. based global intelligence company. He says he doesn’t think this week’s reports that al-Qaeda will target the Chinese marks an important change in the situation.

SCOTT STUART: And, you know, and quite frankly in Algeria, they are working in the mountains to the east of Algiers, which is quite hostile territory for anyone. And, you know, there really doesn’t need any statement to tell them they’re in danger.

GERRY HADDEN: Local Moroccan newspaper editor, Mustafa Khalfi, isn’t so sure. He says the Chinese need to move quickly to diffuse a potentially explosive situation in the Magreb.

MUSTAFA KHALFI: The government of China has great responsibility in managing and addressing this issue without having a genuine policy, a new policy, to recognize and to respond to the demand of the Muslims within China. I think the situation will be worse.

GERRY HADDEN: The Chinese today have made appeals to the Muslim world, trying to assure it that they’re treating their Muslims fairly. For The World, I’m Gerry Hadden in Rabat, Morocco.

Ethnic identity in China

The World — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 20:15:02 +0000

The fighting between minority Uighurs and the majority Han Chinese last week has revealed a crack in China’s self-perception as a unified country of one people. The World’s Mary Kay Magistad reports. Listen

Unrest in western China

JEB SHARP: I’m Jeb Sharp, this is The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH in Boston. Security forces in Urumqi killed two Uighurs and wounded another today. The three allegedly attacked and stabbed a fourth man before being shot by police. The incident underscores the tension that still exists after last week’s rioting. More than 180 people were killed, and at least 16 hundred injured in fighting between the minority Uighurs and the majority Han Chinese. The World’s Mary Kay Magistad says that violence is just an extreme sign of self-assertion among China’s minority peoples.

MARY MAGISTAD: It’s become chic in China, these days, to embrace things ethnic. The Chinese middle class flocks to Tibetan and Uighur restaurants, and more and more Chinese are identifying themselves as belonging to one of China’s 55 ethnic minorities.

DRU GLADNEY: But I think it goes deeper than that.

MARY MAGISTAD: Dru Gladney is an expert on China’s Muslims, at Pomona College in California.

DRU GLADNEY: There is an interest in ethnic roots, regional heritage, and in the past, we’ve tended to downplay that and sort of focus on the official ethnic minorities. But I think that there’s this unofficial ethnicity in China that does not get recognized, Hakka people, Sichuanese, Cantonese, Shanghainese, and that is really becoming a very important factor in cultural politics across China.

MARY MAGISTAD: Gladney sees the Uighur riots last week, and the Tibetan uprising last year, as part of a bigger picture, a trend of people in China, even those broadly classified as Han Chinese, identifying more with their smaller ethnic group than with a bigger, harmonious, multi-cultural family, united by the common purpose of seeing China rise and prosper in the world. But the big, harmonious family is what China’s leaders insist their citizens are. So the government paints disruptions like last week’s riots in Xinjiang, or the Tibet uprising last year, as the fault of outside agitators. Abdul’ahat Abdulrixit, is vice-Chairman of the highest civilian advisory body to China’s legislature. He said this today, in an interview with state-run television network CCTV.

ABDUL’AHAT ABDULRIXIT: The terrorists, separatists, and extremists used distorted reports to create and instigate national hostility. The July 5th riot was very serious and distressing. Minorities cannot live without the Han. No ethnic groups can live without each other. We have the same homeland and the same goal, and share a common fate.

MARY MAGISTAD: There’s been no state-run media examination of grievances that may have sparked the violence in Xinjiang, but you can catch a glimpse of those grievances in Nianzigou, a tangle of mud brick shanties, on a hill overlooking Urumqi’s gleaming new hi-rises. I climb a steep dirt path to the village, next to an open sewer, and chat with residents near the village mosque. A small crowd of about 30 Uighurs gathers. I ask how many of them have jobs.

[SOUND CLIP]

MARY MAGISTAD: None of them are working, and only two of them speak even a little Mandarin, the language here of economic advancement. The government does encourage Uighur children to attend school in Mandarin, and more and more do. But then, their parents lament that the kids no longer want to speak Uighur at home, and that their Turkic cultural heritage is in danger of disappearing. Many Uighurs resent being forced into a choice of preserving their culture or getting a decent job. It’s a choice many of China’s ethnic minorities have had to make. But it’s different here, as in Tibet, says Jim Seymour, who teaches Chinese politics at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

JIM SEYMOUR: The Uighurs have a strong sense of identity. It comes partly from their religion, partly from their sense of history, their knowledge that they had a great empire in Central Asia, and have survived through all these centuries being independent most of the time.

MARY MAGISTAD: Seymour says former Chinese leader Mao Zedong originally promised ethnic minorities they’d have the right to preserve their language, religion and culture, and to enjoy considerable autonomy. Those promises were flouted during China’s political storms, like the Cultural Revolution. Now, he says, they’re being chipped away by attrition, and pressure to assimilate, but, with Uighurs still not getting the rights and respect that go to Han Chinese.

JIM SEYMOUR: If a Uighur is beaten up, he can’t even go to the police and say, so and so beat me up, you should do something about it. The police often just won’t pay any attention.

JIM SEYMOUR: In recent days, Uighurs have complained of exactly this, of being turned away at police stations. In the slum I visited, a man lifted his shirt to show welts that all the villagers said came from Han Chinese coming here a few days ago to beat up Uighurs. One Uighur I talked to near a mosque in the heart of Urumqi summed it up.

UIGHUR: [TRANSLATED TO ENGLISH] In the People’s Republic of China, Uighurs don’t have many rights. The People’s Republic of China is actually the Han People’s Republic of China.

JIM SEYMOUR: The challenge for the People’s Republic of China is to change that perception among China’s ethnic groups, and make them feel like equal partners, before the fissures grow deeper and frustration erupts again. For The World, I’m Mary Kay Magistad in Beijing.

Curfews in Urumqi

The World — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 19:22:30 +0000

The World’s Mary Kay Magistad has an update on the mood in the Chinese city of Urumqi, where 184 people were killed during riots this week. The riots have ended, but the government re-imposed a nighttime curfew today.
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Unrest in western China

JEB SHARP: I’m Jeb Sharp and this is The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH, Boston. China’s Xinhua news agency now says 184 people were killed during riots in Urumqi, capital of the Xinjiang region in the past week. And, it says most of those killed were Han Chinese. Up to now, it’s been reporting 156 deaths and did not give ethnic breakdowns. And, the government re-imposed a nighttime curfew in Urumqi. And the World’s Mary Kay Magistad reports that a small disturbance around one of the city’s mosques may have brought the curfew.

MARY KAY MAGISTAD: Most mosques in Urumqi were closed today. In front of one of them was a sign that read: Because of the recent situation, and for the security of the Muslim masses and the mosques, and so as not to give opportunity to the violent terrorists, the local government has decided that today’s prayers will not be held in the mosques, but should be held in people’s homes. We hope the Muslim masses will understand, and tell each other.” Near this particular mosque, a group of young Uighers said they did not understand, and did accept the edict.

[SOUND CLIP OF UIGHERS TALKING ALL AT ONCE]

MARY KAY MAGISTAD: They said they’d go to the mosque at prayer time regardless, even though it was padlocked shut. They might not have gotten in, but at the White Mosque, near Urumqi’s old bazaar, Muslims arriving with their prayer rugs did argue their way in. After prayers, they hung out in clusters. Foreign journalists, some with video cameras, interviewed some of them, including an emotional young Uigher woman.

UIGHER WOMAN: Our people are afraid, all the time, all the time might die, every time.

MARY KAY MAGISTAD: As she grew more emotional, the crowd grew, and became emotional too.

UIGHER WOMAN: Our people, two hundred, two hundred Uighers people die.

MARY KAY MAGISTAD: They started shouting out their grievances about how Uighers have been treated in recent days. They said Uighers have been killed in retaliation for the riots last Sunday, but no one talks about that. The government just blames the Uighers for everything. By now, about 50 people had gathered in a loud and emotional cluster, and hundreds more were looking on, so were the police. They lined up within view of the crowd, and the crowd started to move on down the sidewalk. But as they went, they pumped their fists in the air and shouted, “Free our relatives! Free the innocent people!” That lasted about five minutes, before heavily armed military police arrived. They pointed their guns at the demonstrators and at everyone nearby, and told them to crouch on the ground.

[SOUND CLIP OF A MAN YELLING]

MARY KAY MAGISTAD: The commander was particularly annoyed to see foreign journalists, including me. Following a distance behind the group, he told me to clear out, complaining about foreign journalists causing trouble. At least two foreign journalists were detained. More police and military vehicles arrived, a helicopter hovered overhead. Police punched and kicked some of the demonstrators, and piled them into police vans. And within a couple of hours, a government that had said just yesterday that it had everything under control, decided to re-impose an overnight curfew. The heavy reaction to this seemingly small event shows how much on edge Urumqi still is. Many Uighers and Han Chinese say they’re still afraid, and some are still angry. But many on both sides say they’d like nothing better than for Urumqi to be peaceful again. Some Uigher shop owners told me today, they don’t mind the police presence if it helps everyone calm down. But one of them also said, “My heart is broken. It will be very difficult to recover from this.” For The World, I’m Mary Kay Magistad in Urumqi.

China’s response to ethnic clashes

The World — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 19:20:33 +0000

Anchor Jeb Sharp speaks with Gardner Bovingdon, professor of Central Eurasian Studies at Indiana University, about China’s response to the unrest in the western province of Xinjiang.
Listen

JEB SHARP: Gardner Bovingdon is an expert on the politics of western China. He’s a professor at Indiana University, and he says that China’s harsh response in Urumqi, tends to make matters worse than they already are.

GARDNER BOVINGTON: Certainly human rights organizations and Uigher organizations internationally, have turned this into a public relations nightmare for China. At the same time, I think it’s right to say that China’s heavy handed tactics, responding to protests not by sitting down with protestors and asking, inquiring to the sources of the protest, and trying to think of ways of resolving them peacefully, but rather bring in the military and police, clamp down, try to freeze news sources and so forth, I think in these ways it is not helping itself.

JEB SHARP: Why does China react the way it does? What is it specifically afraid of?

GARDNER BOVINGTON: First of all, I would say habit. The Chinese government is accustomed to responding to open protest, and organized descent with clampdowns. Second, I think the Chinese communist party is really worried about the kinds of popular insurgencies that built into regime toppling movements, such as we saw in the so-called color revolutions, Georgia, Ukraine, Kirguistan, and so forth.

JEB SHARP: How real or realistic are those fears, how legitimate?

GARDNER BOVINGTON: I would say, when it comes to burgeoning democratic organizations in the country, and human rights organizations, and to the labor elopement in China, I think this is a legitimate concern. But I think it’s not accidental, but Ouighers and Tibetans are called minorities in China. They constitute very small parts of the population, and they are easily contained by a very large Chinese force of police and military. So, I don’t think that there is serious worry in Beijing, that a Ouigher protest or a Tibetan protest is actually going to cause major political problems inside the country. I think it’s mostly about PR inside the country.

JEB SHARP: And, ultimately is the struggle to keep minority populations in check more ideological, or is it about resources in the territories they inhabit?

GARDNER BOVINGTON: I don’t think there’s a single State in the world that would willingly part with territory it claims. I think that’s important to state, and more countries in the world are very concerned about energy right now. Jiujiang is both a source of energy in itself for China, it’s also a conduit for energy coming from central Asia. So, resources are a consideration. But I think ideology is also an important issue. The Chinese government does not want to be seen as a repressive State that treats its culturally distinct minorities badly, and I think Chinese high officials regard such criticisms as bumps in the road on its quest to become an internationally recognized world leader, both in terms of its economic might, and in terms of its sort whirl of force in the world.

JEB SHARP: Gardner Bovington is a professor in the department of central Eurasian studies at Indiana University, he joined us from Taiwan. Thanks so much for talking to us.

GARDNER BOVINGTON: Thank you very much.

Unrest in western China

Michael Rass — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 13:25:32 +0000

A night-time curfew has been reimposed in the restive western Chinese city of Urumqi, officials have announced. The curfew had been suspended for the last two days after officials said they had the city under control.

Mosques in the city were ordered to remain closed on Friday – but at least two opened at the request of crowds of Muslim Uighurs that gathered outside. The city remains tense after Sunday’s outbreak of ethnic violence that killed 156 people and wounded more than 1,000. Thousands of people – both Han Chinese and Uighurs – are reportedly trying to leave the city.

The BBC’s Quentin Sommerville, who is in Urumqi, said the authorities announced the city would be under curfew on Friday from 7pm local time (7am EDT).

News of the curfew came as hundreds of Muslim Uighurs defied an order to stay at home for Friday prayers. Officials had posted notices outside Urumqi’s mosques instructing people to stay at home to worship on Friday, the holiest day of the week in Islam.

President Hu Jintao was forced to leave the G8 summit in Italy on Wednesday to attend to the crisis as thousands of troops remain on Urumqi’s streets to try to maintain order.

More pictures from Xinjiang

On Thursday, Beijing again accused US-based Uighur leader-in-exile Rebiya Kadeer of organizing the disorder. The official news agency Xinhua reported government sources had said there was evidence linking the World Uighur Congress, led by Kadeer, to the riots.

It said that in the days beforehand, the group met, plotting to instigate the unrest using the internet and mobile phones, and that Mrs Kadeer had tipped off her brother in Urumqi on the eve of the disorder.

On The World: Mary Kay Magistad has the latest update (July 9):

Update with Mary Kay Magistad (July 8):

Mary Kay Magistad on the escalating ethnic tensions (July 7):

Lisa Mullins speaks with Xiao Qiang director of the University of California, Berkeley’s China Internet Project, about China’s strategy for handling media coverage of the protests in western China:

Mary Kay Magistad reports on what led to the violence in western China (July 6):

Listen to Mary Kay Magistad on PBS NewsHour Online (July 6):

More coverage from PBS NewsHour Online

Who are the Uighurs?

The Uighurs are Muslims. Their language is related to Turkish and they regard themselves as culturally and ethnically close to other Central Asian nations. The region’s economy has for centuries revolved around agriculture and trade, with towns such as Kashgar thriving as hubs along the Silk Road.

In the early part of the 20th Century, the Uighurs briefly declared independence. The region was brought under the complete control of communist China in 1949. Officially, Xinjiang is now described by China as an autonomous region, like Tibet to its south.

What are China’s concerns about the Uighurs?

Beijing says Uighur militants have been waging a violent campaign for an independent state by plotting bombings, sabotage and civic unrest. Since the 9/11 attacks on the United States, China has increasingly portrayed its Uighur separatists as auxiliaries of al-Qaeda. It has accused them of receiving training and indoctrination from Islamist militants in neighboring Afghanistan.

However, little public evidence has been produced in support of these claims. More than 20 Uighurs were captured by the US military after its invasion of Afghanistan. Though imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay for six years, they were not charged with any offence. Albania accepted five in 2006, four were allowed to resettle in Bermuda in June, 2009, while the Pacific island nation of Palau has agreed to take the others.

What complaints have been made against the Chinese in Xinjiang?

Activists say the Uighurs’ religious, commercial and cultural activities have been gradually curtailed by the Chinese state. China is accused of intensifying its crackdown on the Uighurs after street protests in the 1990s – and again, in the run-up to the Beijing Olympics. Over the past decade, many prominent Uighurs have been imprisoned or have sought asylum abroad after being accused of terrorism.

China is said to have exaggerated the threat from Uighur separatists in order to justify repression in the region. Beijing has also been accused of seeking to dilute Uighur influence by arranging the mass immigration of Han Chinese, the country’s majority ethnic group, to Xinjiang. Han Chinese currently account for roughly 40% of Xinjiang’s population, while about 45% are Uighurs.

What is the current situation in Xinjiang?

Over the past decade, major development projects have brought prosperity to Xinjiang’s big cities. The activities of local and foreign journalists in the region are closely monitored by the Chinese state and there are few independent sources of news from the region.

China has been keen to highlight improvements made to the region’s economy while Uighurs interviewed by the press have avoided criticizing Beijing. However, occasional attacks on Chinese targets suggest Uighur separatism remains a potent and potentially violent force.

A protest in July in Urumqi, the region’s capital, turned violent, with about 140 people killed and hundreds injured. Authorities blamed Xinjiang separatists based outside China for the unrest, while Uighur exiles said police had fired indiscriminately on a peaceful protest calling for an investigation into the deaths of two Uighurs in clashes with Han Chinese at a factory in southern China.

Chinese city on edge

The World — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 20:40:50 +0000

Anchor Lisa Mullins speaks with The World’s Mary Kay Magistad about the mood in the city of Urumqi in western China, where ethnic riots broke out earlier this week between ethnic Uighurs and Han Chinese.
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Unrest in western China

This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

LISA MULLINS: China is dealing with continuing unrest, but this is unrest of a different sort. Ethnic violence between Turkic Uighurs and Han Chinese in the western City of Urumqi has already killed more than 150 people. Today, the government made sure that there were no more clashes. It sent thousands of troops into the city, and Communist Party leaders in Beijing vowed to maintain stability in China’s volatile West. The World’s Mary Kay Magistad is in the west, in Urumqi. She says the troops are making their presence felt.

MARY KAY MAGISTAD: They’re marching down the streets in different area, they’re riding around on trucks chanting, and they’re really trying to make it clear that they are here to enforce order. And I think the Han Chinese here definitely feel that these troops, and these police, are on their side, and they’re here to protect them. The Uighurs, who are in a different part of town are much more concerned about the police. There have been searches within Uighurs neighborhoods over the last couple of days for people who might have been involved in the riots on Sunday. And, you know, when I was in one of the neighborhoods where it’s primarily Uighurs, today, a lot of people said they were very afraid of the police that were coming through.

LISA MULLINS: Mary Kay, what do you make of something that was read out on the State run news service in China? We’re gonna play a little bit of it now. This is a newsreader speaking in Mandarin.

NEWSREADER: [SPEAKS IN MANDARIN]

LISA MULLINS: Here’s what she’s saying, “We should bare this in mind that the Han people can’t be separated from minorities, and minorities cannot be separated from the Han people.” By minorities, she’s referring to the Uighurs there. She concludes by saying, “Officials and ordinary people should cherish the great atmosphere of all the minorities working, preparing, and developing together.” This is a statement that was issued by the Chinese government, read on the news there. So what do you make of it?

MARY KAY MAGISTAD: This is an ideology that People’s Republic of China had its foot forward for the last 60 years. Also, it has a story that it [INDISCERNIBLE] that China, as it is now, has always been this way. That Shin Jung and Tibet have always been part of China. But when you talk to Uighurs, and when you talk to Tibetans, they have a different story. You know, it’s striking going around here and talking to people how there are two parallel realities. And this really came home to me today with two young people I talked to. One of them is a young Uighur woman who had been learning English, one of them was Han Chinese. The Uighur woman was saying, you know, “It really kind of burns me that both Uighurs and Han were violent and killed people. Uighurs say that a number of Uighurs were killed by Han on Tuesday.” And she says, you know, “Why aren’t the police going after them?” You know, she was saying, “This is just typical.” And she said, “This is why I don’t have any Han friends, and why I don’t trust them.” On the other side of town, I’m talking to this young University student who says, you know, “My Uighur friends at University say how grateful they are, that the Han Chinese came here and built up this beautiful city and healthy economy. And, indeed they should be grateful to us because we really have done amazing things here.” And when I ask, you know, do you think that there might be some Uighurs who aren’t so happy that so many non-Chinese came here? He looked at me like he had no idea what I was talking about. And when I told him about the earlier conversation I had, he was really kind of shocked.

LISA MULLINS: Well, it will be interesting to see what happens tomorrow, a key day, because it will be Friday, a day for weekly prayers among the Muslim/Uighur population, as a Muslim holy day. It’s also though, potentially, a day for more unrest. What are you hearing there?

MARY KAY MAGISTAD: Well, certainly no one’s gonna come out and say, you know, by the way, tomorrow after prayers, we’re gonna take to the streets again. And I think that it would be very difficult, actually, for Uighurs to, you know, rise up in any significant way, given how many troops are around. I went by a Mosque today where there were troops up in the [INDISCERNIBLE] and all around the Mosque, armed troops. The Uighurs I talked to today said they think that the Mosque will be open tomorrow for prayer. It would certainly, probably create a problem if it weren’t. But, I would have no doubt that they will be closely watched, and that if anyone does decide to try to agitate, then it’s gonna be put down pretty quickly.

LISA MULLINS: Thank you very much. The World’s Mary Kay Magistad in the heart of Urumqi in western China. Thanks again Mary Kay.

MARY KAY MAGISTAD: Thank you Lisa.

Ethnic clashes in western China

The World — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 20:25:58 +0000

Anchor Lisa Mullins gets the latest on the ethnic clashes in western China from The World’s Mary Kay Magistad. Chinese authorities have sent 20,000 troops into the western capital of Urumqi to calm the violence between minority Uighurs and Han Chinese, the country’s majority ethnic group.
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LISA MULLINS: I’m Lisa Mullins, and this is The World. Security forces blanketed the western Chinese city of Urumqi today. The city’s been paralyzed for days by ethnic tensions and violence. Mobs of ethnic Uighurs and Han Chinese have been roaming Urumqi and attacking each other. More than 150 people have been killed since an initial riot on Sunday. Today, a local Chinese Communist Party leader issued this warning.

CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY LEADER: [SPEAKS IN MANDARIN]

LISA MULLINS: What he’s saying here is, “For those who brutally killed the other people in the riot, the government will execute them.” The World’s Mary Kay Magistad is in Urumqi right now. Mary Kay, you heard the government’s threat there, I know it was matched with the dispatching of a barrage of Chinese security forces in the region. What have you seen so far around you?

MARY KAY MAGISTAD: Well, starting this morning, there were thousands of security forces, very well armed security forces on the street here. And it was to send a strong and perhaps needed signal that the government and the security forces are again, in control of the streets. Now, this comes after yesterday when there were Hun Chinese taking to the streets with makeshift weapons, and going after Uighurs. And some of that even continued in spots today. You know, you’d walk down the street and everything seems calm, and then turn a corner and there’d be a little skirmish. and in one situation that a colleague of mine saw, there was a skirmish, people were saying, “Get them, get them. Arrest them, arrest them.” And a couple of people were brought forward, their hands were shackled behind their backs by the police. And then the crowd saw that these were two Han Chinese, and suddenly the mood turned and they said, “Release them, release them. These are Han, we need to stand up for Han.” So there’s still very high tension along ethnic lines here.

LISA MULLINS: Mary Kay, are there aggressors that are identifiable at this point, either the Han Chinese or the Uighurs who the Chinese are accusing of, the Chinese government anyway, is accusing of starting this a fomenting the violence?

MARY KAY MAGISTAD: Well, the Chinese government continues to say that this was instigated abroad, that Rebiya Kadeer, a Uighur businesswoman who spent six years in prison, and was released for humanitarian reasons to get medical treatment abroad, is the one who’s behind this. She has categorically denied that. I must say right now, as I’m standing out here in the last evening, on the streets of Urumqi, and it feels a little like people coming out after a storm to take a look around. There are people who are strolling down the street, despite the fact that occasionally truckloads of armed soldiers go by. Despite the fact that, you know, from where I’m looking, I can look down a long street and see every few yards a black cloud helmeted policeman with a baton. And people are pretty much, you know, sort of taking all that in stride, and wandering around. I must say though, that most of those who I see doing that are Han Chinese.

LISA MULLINS: One final question. President Hu Jintao went to the G8 summit in Italy, turned around, went back to China, basically saying that this is something going on in the region where you are right now, that he has to tend to. What do you make of that?

MARY KAY MAGISTAD: I think China’s leaders increasingly feel that they have to be seen to be responsive. They have to be seen to be out, if not on the scene, as Hu Kintao Wen Jabao was immediately after the Sichuan earthquake last year, then at least in the country. At least showing the Chinese people and the world that he’s on top of the situation, that things are quickly gonna return to normal, and that he’s taking this seriously.

LISA MULLINS: Alright, thank you very much. The World’s Mary Kay Magistad in Urumqi, the capital of China’s western Xinjiang province. Mary Kay, thanks for the update.

MARY KAY MAGISTAD: Thank you Lisa.

Ethnic tensions still high in western China

The World — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 19:30:43 +0000

The World’s Mary Kay Magistad has the latest on escalating ethnic tensions between Uighurs and Han Chinese in China’s western Xinjiang region.
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Violence in western China

The World — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 19:31:07 +0000

Ethnic tensions and a government crackdown in western China have left more than 150 people dead and hundreds more injured. The World’s Mary Kay Magistad reports on what led to the violence between ethnic Uighurs and Han Chinese in western China.
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More coverage from PBS NewsHour Online

Listen to Mary Kay Magistad on PBS NewsHour Online

LISA MULLINS: I’m Lisa Mullins, and this is The World. The White House says it is concerned about the violence and death in China’s autonomous region of Xinjiang, and it called on all sides to show restraint. Riots broke out in the region Sunday night. Local officials say those riots left at least 156 people dead and more than 800 injured, mostly in the capital, Urumqi. And local police are said to be rounding up hundreds of Uighurs. Uighurs are a Muslim, ethnically Turkic group that’s losing its majority status in Xinjiang to Chinese immigration. The World’s Mary Kay Magistad reports from Beijing.

MARY KAY MAGISTAD: Last night’s riots appear to have started as an orderly demonstration of a few hundred people.

[SOUND CLIP OF THE RIOT]

MARY KAY MAGISTAD: A video, taken on a shaky hand-held camera, was posted online, showing demonstrators marching in the middle of an Urumqi street. Uighur exile groups say these were Uighur college students, who were calling for an investigation into a June 26th fight between ethnic Han Chinese and ethnic Uighur workers at a toy factory on other side of the country, in Guangdong. It left two Uighurs dead. At the end of this video, you can hear the sirens of police arriving. Eyewitnesses say, that’s when the demonstration turned into a riot. Uighur groups say it was the police that used violence first.

ZHANG YULAN: Hello, and welcome to this news update on CCTV International. I’m Zhang Yulan, Beijing.

MARY KAY MAGISTAD: The Chinese State-run media blame the Uighurs, and say the riots left 260 vehicles burned, 200 shops destroyed, 140 people dead, and more than 800 injured.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: An initial investigation shows the violence was masterminded by the separatist Group, World Uighur Congress. The group is led by Rebiya Kadeer, a former businesswoman in China. The group has recently been instigating unrest via the Internet, and by other means, calling on the rioters to be braver and to do something big. The Xinjiang regional government says terrorism, separatism and extremism are behind the violence.

MARY KAY MAGISTAD: The World Uyghur Congress has issued a statement saying Rebiya Kadeer had nothing to do with Sunday’s protest. But Kadeer, now in exile in Washington, D.C., has long been a voice for Uighur rights. She served years in prison for complaining to the government that Uighurs are treated as second-class citizens in their own land, by Han Chinese migrants, and by the government. She complained about this to me, in an earlier interview:

REBIYA KADEER: [TRANSLATED TO ENGLISH] So the Chinese settlers, they come to our land, take advantage of our natural resources, at the same times, they hate us for no reason. It’s the same in Tibet and in our own homeland. And Chinese, they come, take advantage of everything that we have, and take away everything that we have, and they think they’re highly civilized than us. They look down upon us.

MARY KAY MAGISTAD: She said Uighur children are made to go to Mandarin Chinese schools, where they’re told that their own language is backward and useless. She said, even Uighurs who learn Mandarin and graduate from college have a hard time getting hired by Han Chinese companies because they’re Uighurs

REBIYA KADEER: [TRANSLATED TO ENGLISH] And those who can’t get a job and complain about it write this or that about the government policy, is arrested one way or another by the authorities as even as a terrorist, then arrest, sentenced and tortured, some cased even executed.

MARY KAY MAGISTAD: Kadeer said, the last time there were large-scale riots in Xinjiang, 12 years ago, some 15 thousand Uighurs protested, but four times that many were arrested, because the government went after not just the protesters, but also their relatives and friends. She said, some 11 thousand Uighurs were sentenced to life in prison, and more than 400 were executed. This time, the local government is also talking tough. Nuer Baikeli is the chairman of the Xinjiang government.

NUER BAIKELI: [SPEAKS IN CHINESE]

MARY KAY MAGISTAD: He said, Sunday’s riots were obviously instigated from abroad, and carried out here. People from different ethnic groups must open their eyes and not do things that make our enemies happy. Here in Xinjiang, he said, security comes first. What that means today, on the ground, is that hundreds of Uighurs have been rounded up, police have cordoned off the city of Urumqi, and Internet service there has been suspended for three days. Nicholas Bequelin, a China researcher with Human Rights Watch, says it’s important to watch what happens next.

NICHOLAS BEQUELIN: I think a key concern about this incident is to have some measure of accountability, about who is arrested, where people are detained, whether they’re given legal process. In the case of Tibet, what we saw, on the opposite, was massive arrests and security sweeps for weeks. And up to today, there’s still hundreds of detainees that are unaccounted for.

MARY KAY MAGISTAD: There have also been reports of torture of detainees, as well as a general crackdown on religious and cultural activities. Taking the same approach in Xinjiang isn’t exactly going to help the Xinjiang government with what it says is its goal of promoting ethnic happiness and harmony in the region. But it may help with the central government’s goal of ensuring security for the all-important 60th anniversary of the Communist Party’s rule, on October first. That short-term thinking may cause more Uighur anger and frustration in the future, but the Party shows no sign of changing its approach. For The World, I’m Mary Kay Magistad in Beijing.