【10.01.02 澳大利亚人报】The violence has ended in Urumqi but shadows remain in hearts a

青蛙小王子

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/the-violence-has-ended-in-urumqi-but-shadows-remain-in-hearts-and-minds/story-e6frg6so-1225815346008
THE bright winter sun bouncing off the green and gold decorated mosque in the remote northwestern Chinese city of Urumqi is deceptive.
It's minus 6C as thousands of the city's male Uighur population slip off their shoes and lay down their prayer mats for Jumu'ah, the sacrosanct Friday service.
Worshippers have been gathering for the past hour and at 2pm the Imam begins his sermon, preparing the faithful for their ritual. Men in a wide variety of hats spill beyond the front fence into the street.
This is the biggest of Urumqi's 265 or so mosques. The Uighurs are not the only Muslims in this fast-growing Chinese city -- there are members of the Hui, Kahzak, Uzbek, Tajik, Kirgiz, Khalkhar and Sala ethnic groups here as well. But because of a long history of tension with the Chinese government, which erupted into deadly riots on July 5 when 197 people died, they are its best known.
At the mosque, apart from a smattering of largely Uighur police and plainclothes operatives scattered through the crowds, things seem calm.
It's the same story in other corners of the teeming sector south of the city, where the air is scented with cumin-basted lamb kebabs and round baked bread flecked with garlic and spices.
The riots six months ago stemmed from student-led protests over the videotaped murder in June of two Uighurs working as internal Chinese "migrants" in the southern province of Guangdong.
Nurahmed, a Uighur man, owns a pomegranate juice stand in Urumqi's main bazaar, where he also sells sweet honey melons, watermelons and home-made butter. Just around the corner, about 30m away, is one of the streets worst hit by the riots, where shop fronts were smashed and people died.
"I'm still angry about what happened in that factory in Guangdong," Nurahmed tells The Weekend Australian. "We were hurt. Urumqi has recovered from the riots, but not completely. I doubt if it ever will. The city is now like a cracked glass -- it works but you can't really repair it. The crack will always be there as a reminder to the fact that it once broke."
Around the corner from the mosque, deep in the south Urumqi Uighur heartland, is Shanxi Shan, another street where the most violent of the riots occurred. A local butcher arrives back at his outdoor stall with a live sheep. After he serves a customer, he wrestles the animal to the ground and chants as he slits its throat halal-style.
The sandbagged corners filled with machine-gun-armed soldiers have gone, but groups of eight men in camouflage fatigues and riot shields still saunter down Shanxi Shan five to six times a day. At night, the police presence intensifies with posses of men in blue and green prowling the area's ill-lit streets, twisting alley ways and night markets.
Six months of constant police and militia patrolling of the streets has made local Uighurs nervous.
"Everything's fine, it's back to normal," is the message from the locals. "Things are good, the government has been very supportive, that's all I can say," says one noodle shop proprietor. But there's a rider. "That's all I can say, I am a Uighur," he says. "I can talk about the noodles and the bread and the tea in my shop. That's all I can talk about."
According to the government, too, everything is fine. "The situation is stabilised, daily life and work have resumed," Xinjiang Information Office director-general Hou Hamin says.
She blames the violence on two elements: exiled Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer and the increasingly popular government bogyman -- "anti-China forces".
The Chinese government has brought its awesome propaganda machine into play to hammer home the message that everything is back to normal. There are weekly stories in the national press and a regular page in the Xinjiang Daily -- still unavailable online, as are any Xinjiang publications or websites to the wider world -- devoted to telling heartwarming stories of Uighur and Han friendships.
The problem is that normal was not so good for the Uighurs, and the Han had plenty of problems with it too.
Only a few decades ago, Xinjiang was more than 90 per cent Uighur; now that stands at 40 per cent. An influx of China's majority Han people in search of cheaper living, as well as the natural agriculture and mineral wealth the province has to offer, is changing forever a place that makes up one-sixth of China's land mass.
Until three years ago, many Uighurs did not learn Chinese in schools, cruelling their chances of moving far in Xinjiang's increasingly Chinese society. In some areas, more than 70 per cent cannot speak Chinese.
Conversely, the Han have been annoyed at affirmative action policies designed, particularly in education, to help close the gap between ethnic groups.
The government has also produced a graphic and widely distributed video, "Xinjiang Urumqi July 5: Truth", demonising Ms Kadeer, leader of the US-based World Uighur Congress.
The millionaire business- woman was once held up as a model minority member by the government -- before she was jailed and fled China after her release in 2005. There is little doubt her group helped promote protests, but there is no evidence they fomented violence.
But there appears to be evidence Muslim hardliners were involved in inciting violence in Urumqi with a number of Uighurs, less than fully clad women, victims of violence during the riots. "One of my friends was beaten up for having her arms showing," an Uighur woman said.
An Uighur businessman who exports good to Russia said: "It's beyond me as to who the mobs are, and who are behind them.
"But I guess Islam fundamentalists might be involved. On the night of July 5, my wife was driving in a car, and my mother was sitting in back seat. They were stopped at Renmin Road by the mobs; the mobs wanted to beat them. They yelled at them, `Are you believers?' My mother took a Koran from her bag and told them loudly that `Yes, yes, we believe'.
"So they narrowly escaped. On the same night, some Uighur women dressed in shorts or with long hair were killed." He utters a familiar refrain on Ms Kadeer: "I don't know Rebiya Kadeer, all I knew of her comes from media, I can't say whether she can represent Uighurs or how much she is supported by Uighurs."
The violence may have dissipated but suspicion remains, particularly from the Han Chinese, who accounted for about 120 of the slain. "Of course we still have Uighur friends, but my Han friends are closer," Li Shan, a Han tradesman says.
And the economic effect, particularly on the Uighurs, has been devastating. "The July 5 event has impacted on the Xinjiang economy and the most obvious one is tourism," Ms Hou says.
Many businesses in the Uighur sector of Urumqi relied on the 20 million tourists the province enjoyed in 2008.
"Business in first three months has not been good. From July 6 to middle of August, the bazaar was closed, and in September I sold only about 300 yuan ($50)," Mehmet Miriti, a clothing vendor in front of the bazaar says.
"Now business is coming back since winter stuff like socks and underwear are more needed than in summer."
Other vendors in and around the bazaar reported similar problems, with business falling away as much as 70 per cent because of the sharp decline in tourism. But it's Han and other groups who appeared more concerned, worried for their safety now that that snipers no longer patrol city rooftops.
As one young Hui Muslim taxi driver in Urumqi said: "There are shadows in our minds and shadows on our hearts."