Inside Stories of Bloody Conflict in Xinjiang
Originally published by Epoch Times, 07 July 2010
By Fang Xiao
The clash that erupted in Xinjiang on July 5 of last year (7-5 incident) is considered by some China’s worst ethnic violence in decades. The Epoch Times talked to residents in Urumqi, Kashi and Aksu over the phone a few days before the one-year anniversary, asking them for their opinion of what caused the violence in 2009.
Policy of Discrimination
People said rancor between Han and Uyghur groups has been growing due to discrimination by authorities against Uyghur citizens. One person stated that the communist regime’s policy for Uyghurs is to eradicate them.
Discontent among the Uyghur community has been growing due to accumulation of discrimination and unequal treatment by authorities of Han and Uyghur citizens. People said that authorities’ being partial to ethnic Han Chinese is increasingly causing rancor between Han and Uyghur groups.
People said they feel that the authority’s conniving attitude, and not punishing members of the Han group when they commit crimes, has resulted in accumulated animosity between the two ethnic groups and was the trigger of the 7-5 incident last year.
In Kashi, everyone knows that for two years a Han teacher has been sexually molesting Uyghur students at a local elementary school. When parents of the victimized students reported the crime to officials in Urumqi, the provincial capital, nothing was done to punish the teacher.
A Uyghur in the technology business who wished to remain anonymous said, “Uyghurs send their children to Han schools. In about two years, a Han male teacher molested almost every Uyghur third- and forth-grader in his class. Every several days, he had a student come into his office to perform oral sex for him. The children were too scared to tell their parents.
“Two years later the parents found out that something was not right and reported it. The authorities did not arrest the teacher. One of the teacher’s relatives is an official, who found a forensic doctor to diagnose the teacher with schizophrenia, and that ended the case. The parents went to the provincial capital to file a complaint, and still did not receive justice. This incident hurt the Uyghurs tremendously.
“So many unbelievable things such as this have happened in Xinjiang in past years. The authorities block the information, and not many people know about them. In the past, minority ethnic groups were still interested in learning Han culture. Now we refuse to learn Han language, and no one sends their children to Han schools.”
The person ended by saying, “The authorities may have already overheard the things I am saying right now. It can very well result in the authorities monitoring my phone conversations and Internet usage. The communist regime’s policy for the Uyghurs is to eradicate us.”
Police Brutality
Cai, a Han ethnic businesswoman who has lived in southern Xinjiang’s Aksu for more than 20 years told the Epoch Times that although the 7-5 incident took place in Urumqi (northern Xinjiang), the situation was also very tense in southern Xinjiang.
Cai said, “Everyone stayed highly alert and closed down their businesses after noon. Right after the protest in Urumqi, very brutal things happened in Aksu as well.
“There are many Uyghurs living in Aksu. Initially, Uyghurs dared not fight with Han. However, whenever there is a conflict between Uyghurs and Han, nobody from the government would come to stop it, even when you called the police, nobody would come. Gradually, the complaints and hatred have accumulated between the two races. Especially in Urumqi, the grudges against each other have gotten deeper and deeper. It is one of the reasons that triggered the 7-5 incident.
“I went to Urumqi last year right before the 7-5 incident. I videotaped the bloody conflict with my cell phone. The extent of the police brutality was worse than how Japanese soldiers slaughtered the Chinese in W.W.II… After the police fired at the Uyghurs, the Internet in Xinjiang was cut off. Too many people taped the bloody violence with their cell phones and the authority did not want the videos posted online. Many of us locals saw the videos. The authorities concealed the number of deaths,” Cai said.
Death Toll Disputed
According to official Chinese reports, there were less than 200 deaths during the 7-5 incident, and some 1,700 were injured, most of them Han. Authorities later executed over 20 people.
Amnesty International (AI) collected testimonies from Uyghurs who fled China after the clash last year and released a report on July 2 that challenges the official Chinese coverage of the 7-5 incident.
The AI report documents testimonies of Uyghurs who fled China during the unrest. They described “unnecessary or excessive use of force, mass arrests, enforced disappearances, and torture and ill-treatment in detention that occurred on 5 July 2009 and during the ensuing government crackdown.”
Catherine Baber, AI’s Asia-Pacific deputy director, said, “The official account leaves too many questions unanswered. How many people really died, who killed them, how did it happen, and why?”
According to the report, eyewitnesses said, “The protest against government inaction in the face of killings of Uyghur factory workers in southern China started peacefully, but was met with violence by security forces.”
Two days before the one-year anniversary of the incident, U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner urged China to “handle all detentions and judicial processes relating to last year’s violence in Urumqi in a transparent manner.”
People in Urumqi contacted by phone said that armed police and patrol cars have occupied the streets to interrogate and monitor Uyghurs before the anniversary.