【The New York Times】Clashes in China Shed Light on Ethnic Divide

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【原文标题】 Clashes in China Shed Light on Ethnic Divide
【原文链接】http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/08/world/asia/08china.html
【时间或作者】By EDWARD WONG, Published: July 7, 2009
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【正文】
URUMQI, China— Some women glared through their black veils at the paramilitarytroops encircling them. Others held identity cards of missing relativesin the air. Fists raised, tears in their eyes, they demanded therelease of sons and husbands seized by the police after Muslim Uighurs rioted in this western regional capital days earlier.

And as the group of several hundred Uighur women beseechedjournalists on a government-sponsored tour here on Tuesday, they gavevoice to broader concerns at the heart of the deadliest ethnic violenceto strike China in decades.

“They don’t respect our lifestyle,”said one woman, a 26-year-old who gave her name as Guli. “We want ourdignity. We just want fairness, and we want equality.”

A widevariety of government policies here in the western desert region ofXinjiang, a lightly populated area that covers about a sixth of China’stotal landmass, has for years led many of the area’s 10 million Uighursto believe their culture and livelihoods were under assault by the HanChinese, the dominant ethnic group in China, according to localresidents, foreign scholars and recent studies of the area.


Thepolicies include limits on religious practice, the phasing out ofUighur-language instruction in schools and the reinforcement of bettereconomic opportunities for the Han, from businesspeople to migrantworkers.

Uighurs are the largest ethnic group in Xinjiang, butHan migration, encouraged in part by government incentives, is quicklychanging the demographics here: census figures show that Han made up 40percent of the population in 2000, a huge leap over the 6 percent in1949. Under the Chinese Communist Party, Han have always held the powerin Xinjiang. Wang Lequan, the party secretary of the region, is a Hanwhose hard-line policies have inspired systems of control in otherethnic minority regions of China, including Tibet.

“Fundamentally,the relationship between Uighur and Han is one of colonized tocolonizer,” said Nicholas Bequelin, a China researcher at Human Rights Watch who has written about policies in Xinjiang.

Thatdynamic may have laid the foundation for the riot on Sunday in which156 people were killed and more than 1,000 injured when angry Uighursattacked Han civilians and battled with security forces across thecity.

Government officials declined Tuesday to give an ethnic breakdownof the dead. The riot began as a protest over government handling of a brawl between Uighur and Han factory workers in southern China.

On Tuesday afternoon, thousands of Han Chinese armed with sticks,shovels, pipes and meat cleavers tried to march to the Uighur quarterto exact revenge for those Han civilians who were killed on Sunday.Paramilitary troops fired tear gas at the mob, but not before the firstwave got into a brick-throwing battle with Uighurs perched on rooftopsnear Erdaoqiao Market, where the rioting began on Sunday.


ManyHan Chinese say the Uighurs, like China’s 55 other ethnic minorities,actually enjoy generous advantages under government policies. Uighurwomen, for example, can give birth to more than one child withouthaving to pay a fine, unlike the Han. Uighur students have extra pointsadded to their scores when taking the standardized tests that determineuniversity placement.

But on issues that go to the heart of Uighur identity, the government takes a strict line, many Uighurs say.
Thevast majority of Uighurs are Sunni Muslims, but the practice of Islamis tightly circumscribed. Government workers are not allowed topractice the religion. Imams cannot teach the Koran in private, andstudy of Arabic is allowed only at designated government schools. Twoof Islam’s five pillars — the sacred fasting month of Ramadan and thepilgrimage to Mecca, the hajj— are also closely managed: students and government workers arecompelled to eat during Ramadan, and passports of Uighurs have beenconfiscated to force them to join official hajj tours.

Three years ago, in its annual report on international religious freedom,the State Department singled out Xinjiang for criticism in a section onChina: “Officials in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region tightlycontrolled religious activity, while elsewhere in the country, Muslimsenjoyed greater religious freedom,” the report said.
On Tuesday,Abudurehepu, a religious leader in Xinjiang who supports thegovernment, said at a news conference here that “our religious freedomis respected,” noting that Xinjiang had more than 2,000 mosques.
Healso said that “the party and the government have been doing very wellon ethnic policy, like having Uighur kids going to Uighur-languageschools.”

In fact, the government is phasing out the use of theUighur language in schools. Many Uighur parents know the importance ofhaving their children learn Mandarin Chinese, but they are upset overthe disappearance of their native language from the education system.There are some bilingual schools, but those generally relegate theUighur language to a marginal role.

A 2009 Amnesty International reporton threats to Uighur identity charts the recent history of the erosionof the Uighur language in education, beginning with a policy in the1990s that eliminated Uighur as a language of instruction at theuniversity level. Today, at Xinjiang University in Urumqi, only Uighurpoetry classes are taught in Uighur, the report says. In 2006, thegovernment began carrying out policies that make Chinese the mainlanguage of preschool instruction.


Sincethe central government adopted a “develop the west” campaign in thepast decade, Xinjiang’s economy has grown quickly, and living standardson the whole have risen. But many Uighurs complain about highunemployment and the growing income gap with Han Chinese, who controlthe largest industries in Xinjiang: oil, agriculture and construction.They give many more contracts and jobs to other Han.

“Uighursfeel cut out of this process,” said a former resident of Kashgar, anoasis town near China’s western border where more than 200 protestersgathered on Monday.

The bingtuan, vast farms started by themilitary in the 1950s to employ demobilized troops, are amongXinjiang’s biggest moneymakers. But Mr. Bequelin, the human rightsresearcher, said more than 90 percent of employees at bingtuan wereHan.


Chinese officials deny that government policies contributeto ethnic unrest. They place blame for the tensions on outside figureslike the Dalai Lama or, in the case of the latest Xinjiang riots, Rebiya Kadeer, a Uighur businesswoman and former political prisoner who lives in Washington.


OnTuesday, as thousands of Han armed with makeshift weapons tried toattack the Uighur quarter, the party secretary of Urumqi climbed atop acar and pleaded with them to go home.


“Strike down Rebiya!” yelled the official, Li Zhi.

Jonathan Ansfield  contributed reporting from Beijing. Huang Yuanxi contributed research.


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