November 9, 2005

Your Excellency,

The World Uyghur Congress (WUC) presents its compliments tor your excellency and has the honour to refer to the following urgent matter.

Eastern Turkestan, also known with its colonial name Xinjiang  Uyghur Autonomous Region, continue to be a venue of systematic human rights violations by the Chinese athorities.  Today, the Uyghurs in Eastern Turkestan are waging a life and death struggle for survival.  Fundamental human rights and freedoms of the peoples of Eastern Turkestan including civil, political, economic , social and cultural rights continue to be violated by the Chinese authorities.

The Uyghurs seeking only to live with dignity continue to be arrested, tortured and executed on political grounds. However, after the unprovoked barbaric terroristic attack on the United States on September 11, the Chinese authorities staged a world-wide campaign to portray Uyghurs as  “terrorists”. Despite the warnings of the international community, the Chinese autorities are still using the war against international terrorism as an excuse to arrests, torture and execute Uyghurs in Eastern Turkestan. According to Amnesty International, since September 11, 2001, the Chinese authorities have arrested more than 3.000 Uyghurs, arrested Uyghur jave become a target of inhuman torture and more than 200 Uyghurs have been executed on political grounds. According to Amnesty Internationa, recently, the Chinese authorities have also sentenced 50 to death for so-called seperatist and terrorist activities.

It is not the first time that the Chinese authorities are blaming the Uyghurs for the turmoil in Eastern Turkestan. In the last 55 years , the Chinese authorities have tried to brand Uyghurs as “ The Agents of the American Paper Tigers”,  “The puppets of the Soviet hegemonists”,  “Counterrevolutionaries”, “Pan-Turkists”, “Spillitists”, “Seperatists”  and  “Islamic Fundamentalists” , depending on which suited their political agenda. It is not difficult to imagine that Uighurs are experiencing identity problems as a result.

China’s current efforts to lable the Uyghurs as “terrorists” is clearly a part of their strategy as outlines in a secret document of the Standing Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, “Defending the Stability of Xinjiang” , adopted on March 19. 1996 which stated that the Chinese government  must “through disinformation, prevent by all means, the seperatist forces from making the so-called  Eastern Turkestan problem international”.

At present, however, the steady flow of Chinese settlers, together with coercive birth control among Uyghur women and the systematic sinozation of the Uyghur literary language pose the biggents threat to the survival of the Uyghurs as a nation.

Before 1949 there were only 300 thousand Chinese settlers in Eastern Turkestan. Now there are more than 7 million according to the Chinese census. The ever growing Chinese population has brough wide-spread unemployment, hunger and disaster to the Uyghurs in Eastern Turkestan. The Chinese have nort monopolized not only official rank of authority and influence, but positions in almost all walks of life in Eastern Turkestan. As a result, there is no unemployment among the Chinese in Eastern Turkestan, but among the Uyghurs unemployment rate is very high. Despite Eastern Turkestan’s natural wealth, the Uyghurs live at bare substance level.Almost 80 percent of the Uyghurs live below the threshold of poverty.

In order to restrain the growth of the Uyghur population coercive birth control is being carried out among the Uyghur women. In fact, this policy directly contradicts China’s stated policy of implementing special, preferential population policies for the nationalities.

At present, the Chinese authorities are pursuing a policy of systematic sinozation of the Uyghur literary language. If preventive steps are not taken, the Uyghur literary language, a most representative language of the Altay Language Familiy, which played a major role in the enrichment of Central Asian civilization for almost two  thousand years, will gradually dissapear from the linguistic scene in the coming decades.  Moreover, the Chinese authorities have also banned all Uyghur language schools in Eastern Turkestan. Uyghur language schools have been merged with Chinese language schools, imposing Chinese  as the language of instruction. Hundreds of thousands of books has been destroyed.

As a result of this policies, Uyghurs at home are in a very hopeless, desperate and frustrated situation. Continued hopelessness could lead   to violence. Were there is no justice there is invariably  violence. Therefore, there is an urgent need to defuse the rising tensions in Eastern Turkestan. Respect for human rights in an essential element in conflict prevention. Thus, the WUC kindly urge your excellency  to the gross and systematic violation of human rights of the Uyghur people in Eastern Turkestan be given the highest priority during Chinese President Hu Jintao’s visit to Berlin.

Thanking you in anticipation,