Originally published by Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 16 July 2010

Chinese authorities are demolishing hundreds of buildings in an area of Urumqi, in the country’s northwest which is home to many Muslim Uighers. More than 200-thousand people lived in the Heijiashan area, one of the flashpoints for the ethnic violence that erupted last July, leaving nearly 200 dead. The government now says it wants to build a new residential development to prevent a repeat of the violence. But there are fears the move will only increase tension and lead to further unrest.

Presenter: Helene Hofman
Speakers: Dru Gladney, Director, Pacific Basin Institute, California; Alim Seytoff, spokesman, World Uyghur Congress; Sophie Richardson, Asia Advocacy Director, Human Rights Watch

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HOOFMAN: Heijiashan is home to the majority of Urumqi’s Muslim Uighur population.

And this time last year it was one of the flashpoints of the ethnic clashes that left 197 people dead, and over 1-thousand-700 injured.

Heijiashan is where most of the civilian casualties occured.

Local authorities blamed the violence on poverty and over-crowding. It claimed the transient population was poorly-managed and therefore easily recruited by rioters.

Following last July’s clashes, China’s Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development ordered the local the government to put Heijiashan (Hey-jah-shan) at the centre of its 44 billion US-dollar plan to redevelop the city’s slums and shanty towns.

They say they want to improve living conditions for the Uighurs and encourage them to live among other ethnic groups to ease tensions.

Dru Gladney is a professor of anthropology and director of the Pacific Basin Institute at California’s Pomana University in California. He has studied China’s Uighur population extensively.

GLADNEY: This was an earth-shaking event. There’s never been such a bloody riot. the government until then besically maintaining a story of a happy minority with some disgruntled seperatists but the events of last summer suggested much deeper problems than that and that 60 years of communist policy in the region had not worked. They’re now looking to redress these policies. Maybe in the long run it will certainly improve the living conditions, but I think Xinjiang population is already so embattled and discontent that I think this is not in the short term going to help the situation.

HOFMAN: Last September and November over 900 Uighur families were ordered to leave Heijiashan (Hey-jah-shan), as the effort to crackdown on crime and poverty began.

Now, local authorities have moved in and begun bulldozing houses.

Alim Seytoff is spokesman for the World Uyghur Congress. He says the local Uighur community hasn’t been consulted about the project, and he’s warning it may fuel existing tensions.

SEYTOFF: The Uighurs are a communal people. We usually live together, that’s how we preserve our culture, our language, our traditions and our way of life. With the Chinese government scattering the Uighurs, then they will gradually lose what makes them different and unique from the rest of China. Uighurs have never traditionally lived in apartment buildings, and for the China governement: ‘ok we have a building and you live in the building and you’ve got water and gas. so now you enjoy a better life’. Now that’s a lame excuse used by the Chinese government to justify the current eradication of the Uighur people and this is not going to help the situation on the ground. It’s going to backfire because the Uighur population, they have not only lost their homes, they’ve lost their own traditions and their way of living. They can no longer live like Uighurs.

HOFMAN: The New York-based organisation, Human Rights Watch, has also raised concerns about the legality of the demolitions.

It says international and Chinese laws do allow governments to relocate people, as long as residents are consulted and compensated.

But the organisation’s Asia Advocacy Director, Sophie Richardson, says that hasn’t happened in Urumqi, which could have serious repercussions.

RICHARDSON: It’s hard to see how moving people out of these areas, espeically without giving people the opportunity to say no or be adequately compensated, is going to do anything other than inflame those existing tensions and it’s worth pointing out that a lot of those tensions are in response to wildly intrusive government policies that essentially criminalise peaceful forms of cultural expression. I mean it is now very difficult for Uighurs to practice Islam in the way they want to, it is difficult to have their children educated in their own languages and so if you superimpose on that forcing people out of their homes its hard to see that ending well.

HOFMAN: Radio Australia did attempt to contact local authorities in Heijiashan (Hey-jah-shan) as well as China’s Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development but did not receive a response.

China’s official Xinhua news agency, however, reports that residents are being offered either new apartments with the same floor area as their old houses or the value of their property in compensation.

Certain residents whose homes are unlicensed are reportedly being offered 70 per cent of the value of their home.

http://www.radioaustralia.net.au/connectasia/stories/201007/s2955567.htm