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本帖最后由 vivicat 于 2009-7-21 20:24 编辑
Uighur Slaughters In China
http://www.forbes.com/2009/07/16 ... li-aydintasbas.html
Asli Aydintasbas , 07.16.09, 12:30 PM EDT
Turks cry out for their Muslim brothers, but not others.
They talk like us and behave like us. Their women cover their hair in much the same loose fashion our women do. They live in honor-bound families and go to mosque for Friday prayers in the silent acquiescent Turkish way.
They are, no doubt, our people, these Uighurs, and the Chinese government has been killing them by the dozens for over a week now.
Week-long unrest in the Muslim northwest Xinjiang province of China hit a raw nerve here in Turkey, where the Turkic-speaking Uighurs are seen as not-so-distant cousins. While in reality an ethnic melting pot, modern Turkey was founded in 1923 on the collective ethos of the final destination for Turkic speaking Central Asian tribes moving westward. Uighurs then, most Turks would say, are the people of "Eastern Turkestan," those who have stayed behind while the luckier ones made their way to the more fertile Anatolia.
While that might be historically debated, the magnitude of the Turkish reaction to the ethnic clashes in Xinjiang and the Chinese government's suppression of Uighur demonstrations this week is not debatable.
The story has been the top item in most papers and newscasts for the past week, and the Chinese government's claim that only 184 people, mostly non-Uighurs, were killed during the demonstrations is countered by the more gory and heart-wrenching stories of ethnic suppression in Turkish papers. The exiled leader of Uighurs, Washington-based Rebiya Kadeer, makes a frequent appearance in Turkish media, and in the daily protests here, angry people burn Chinese flags and cheap made-in-China toys. Barbies and plastic baby bottles burn up in flames, while a blue flag of Eastern Turkestan is proudly displayed in the background.
A government minister has called upon "consumers" to privately boycott Chinese goods this week and Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan has gone even further by comparing the Chinese treatment of Uighurs to "genocide." "We ask the Chinese government not to remain a spectator to these incidents. There is clearly a savagery here," Erdogan said, giving us a flashback of his outburst at the Davos summit last January telling Israeli President Shimon Peres, "You know well how to kill."
There is no doubt that the Chinese government has brutally suppressed the Uighur culture and religion for a very long time. Uighurs are both Turkic and Sunni Muslims, and China has used discrimination and demographic gerrymandering as a tool to deny Muslims basic rights.
But Ankara's sudden interest in democracy-promotion in China is surprising, given that the government has remained silent during the election upheaval in Iran only a few weeks ago. Perhaps as a testament to the recent rapprochement between the two countries, Turkish leaders were the first to congratulate Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad after the controversial elections on June 12, 2009. President Abdullah Gul summed up Ankara's see-no-evil response to the Iranian government's suppression of pro-democracy protests by calling it "Iran's internal affair" during a trip to, of all places, China. Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said, "We would like the developments in Iran to reach a healthy conclusion internally. Within this framework we hope that the result of the elections, which received a high turnout, will not be overshadowed by the latest developments."
Turkey's conservative Islamic government was criticized in a similar fashion last year for courting Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, who has been indicted for genocide by the International Criminal Court but enjoyed visiting Turkey twice over the past year.
Can Turks be so incensed by the suffering of the Sunni Uighurs but turn a blind eye to massacres in Darfur or the ordinary Iranians' quest for justice and democracy? When officials here complain about Han militiamen attacking Uighur homes, does the killing of Neda Agha Soltan by Basij militia out in daylight cross their minds?
Seems not.
Sure, the Uighurs are our brothers, and it is encouraging to see Ankara take a firm stand on their long-documented suffering. But who will watch out for the Sudanese and Iranians?
Asli Aydintasbas is an Istanbul-based journalist and a columnist for the Turkish daily Aksam.
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狗仔卡
发表于 2009-7-18 02:59
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发表于 2009-7-21 13:16