The challenge of reducing racial tensions and confronting stereotypes about Uyghurs requires a new dialog between Uyghurs, Han Chinese dissidents and human rights activists internationally, a Washington conference heard today.
China’s communist authorities had reacted to the July unrest in Urumchi with ominous terminology that hasn’t been heard since the days of violent “class struggle” in China four decades ago, Nury Turkel, a lawyer and Uyghur activist, told the meeting, co-organized by the National Endowment for Democracy, the Uyghur American Association, and the Laogai Research Foundation. Xinjiang Communist Party chief Wang Lequan’s call for zhenya – to kill or cleanse, or completely suppress – and other references to “re-education” of an entire group are reminiscent of the rhetoric of the Cultural Revolution, he said.
Inter-ethnic dialogues are a necessary start in combating what seems to be an overwhelming situation of state suppression of Uyghur identity and state encouragement of inter-ethnic suspicion. Several have been organized outside China over the past 10 years, by Initiatives for China and by Beijing Spring. Another effort to foster understanding of the reality behind Chinese government propaganda is a special exhibition on the Uyghur experience in the People’s Republic of China at the Laogai Museum through March 2, 2010.
The July violence may recur, warned George Washington University’s Sean R. Roberts, because the underlying causes have not been addressed. Driven by Xinjiang‘s geo-strategic significance as a thoroughfare for hydro-carbon pipelines from Central Asia, Beijing was promoting economic development “at breakneck speed” without consulting or involving the Uyghur population.
Tokenistic efforts to improve Uyghurs’ social and economic status, such as advantages in university placement, feed racist stereotypes among Han Chinese, who portray Uyghurs as pampered, lazy, and ungrateful, he said. What many Hans perceive to be privileges, such as tuition-free placement of teenagers in special Chinese-language schools in eastern China, are experienced by Uyghurs as attempts to break up their families and erase their culture.
It is ironic that Beijing tries to portray Uyghur political demands as terrorist and separatist when the Urumchi protesters were initially carrying PRC flags and demanding protection from the Chinese state, said Roberts.
Beijing Spring’s David Dahai Yu suggested that the Uyghurs could emerge as key players in a “new Cold War” pitting China’s newly confident and aggressive authoritarianism against the democratic West. He highlighted the growing strength of Han Chinese nationalism, invoking China is Displeased, a wildly successful recent book, which gives vent to a widely prevalent sentiment that China is still bullied by the West and must assert its superiority, militarily if necessary.
He urged Uyghurs to embrace secularism, individual rights, and to regard Western democracies as allies and model societies. “In upholding democratic values, the Uyghurs can find many soul mates within the Chinese society,” he said. “In demanding religious freedom, for example, the Uyghurs have as their potential allies the rapidly growing ranks of Chinese believers…. Democracy is a language that most Chinese can eventually understand.”
Xinjiang is to communist China what Siberia was to the Soviet Union, said the Laogai Foundation’s Harry Wu. Uyghur leaders, including Rebiya Kadeer and her sons, have experienced China’s labor camps at first hand.
Chinese President Hu Jintao recently demanded that President Barack Obama not allow “separatist” forces to act against Chinese interests on U.S. soil, suggesting that U.S.-based Uyghur groups advocated violence and independence for Xinjiang or East Turkestan, as it is also known. The NED’s Louisa Greve rebutted his claim, noting that the leading exiled Uyghur groups, including all NED grantees, are committed to non-violence and have explicitly condemned violence directed at both Uyghur and Han victims.
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