Security in Xinjiang: Tightening the screws
The Economist, 5 November 2013
“WE DON’T like them,” says a young man, referring to the small groups of paramilitary police deployed every 150 metres or so along Liberation South Road in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang province, ie the “Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region”. “They say they are here to protect us, but …”, he adds. His voice trails off as he looks around nervously at the helmeted troops dressed in camouflage, some carrying automatic weapons and others holding batons and riot shields.
The man, like many of the people who live in this part of Urumqi, is an ethnic Uighur. The authorities say Uighur terrorists were responsible for a car crash in Tiananmen Square on October 28th that killed five people, three of them Uighurs riding in the vehicle and the other two bystanders, and injured 38 others. It was the first time the government has ever blamed an incident in the square on terrorists. In Xinjiang, where Uighurs form the biggest ethnic group, the security forces have become even edgier than usual.
Since an outbreak of inter-ethnic rioting in Urumqi in July 2009 that left around 200 people dead, many of them members of China’s ethnic-Han majority, the police have remained vigilant in Uighur-dominated areas of the city. During an evening walk from the People’s Square in the centre of Urumqi to Liberation South Road your correspondent noticed no unusual police presence until he reached the edge of the predominantly Uighur area. Residents said the numbers of paramilitary troops deployed there had been stepped up since the Tiananmen crash. A police van drove up and sounded its siren to disperse a group of Uighur men who had gathered on the pavement (with no obvious intent other than to chat).
In the entrance to a pedestrian subway, a government poster dated July 1st—just before the fourth anniversary of the riots—offers rewards of 50,000 to 100,000 yuan ($8,200 to $16,400) for leads relating to terrorist incidents. That is the equivalent of up to five-and-a-half times the annual median disposable income of urban residents in Xinjiang. “Violent terrorist activities are anti-human criminal acts”, says the poster, in Chinese (the same message is conveyed in Uighur in another poster next to it). “Perpetrators of violent terrorism are the common enemies of people of all ethnicities. Struggling against violent terrorist crimes is the unshirkable responsibility and duty of all ethnic groups.”
Despite the ethnically neutral tone of such pronouncements, it is Muslim Uighurs about whom the government worries. Uighurs often complain that whenever a “terrorist” incident occurs (the government uses the term liberally, even though there is little sign of an organised extremist force in Xinjiang) they are treated with heightened suspicion by police. Uighurs from southern Xinjiang (Urumqi is in the north) have the toughest time, because of the authorities’ belief that militancy is strongest in that part of the province. After an attack in June in the northern Xinjiang county of Shanshan that left 35 people dead, residents say the authorities tried to block southern Uighurs from visiting the area (which is relatively easy to do: Shanshan is surrounded by desert, with few roads leading in).
Further to the east lies Hami prefecture, on the border with Gansu province and China’s predominantly Han interior. A local driver says that, on at least one occasion since the violence in Shanshan, police at a checkpoint on Hami’s border have turned back Uighurs trying to enter the prefecture. They have been on heightened alert since the deaths in Tiananmen Square (five people, all of them from the southern Xinjiang prefecture of Khotan, are said to have been arrested for complicity in the crash). Police on the expressway leading to Hami record the identities of everyone entering the remote desert city.
The authorities have blamed the Tiananmen deaths on a Uighur group, the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM). Chinese officials often accuse the ETIM of terrorist activity and having connections to al-Qaeda, but independent sources have little to say about the group. Late last week, Guo Jinlong, the Communist Party chief of Beijing, called on security forces to “learn a lesson” from the incident and to strengthen security in key areas of the capital. On November 3rd it was announced that the military commander in Xinjiang, Peng Yong, had been removed from a concurrent post in the province’s party leadership. It is not known whether his apparent demotion was linked to the Tiananmen crash.
Uighurs themselves are often reluctant to lay the blame on organised terrorism. In Hami some say personal grievances with the police lay behind the killings in June in Shanshan. In other cases restrictions on religious expression, including the wearing of Islamic face-coverings by Uighur women, are said by Uighurs to have ignited violence. Outside a mosque in Hami a government notice (pictured above) denounces “abnormal” clothing such as the jilbab, a full-length outer garment which is often worn with a veil (and seen more often in southern Xinjiang, locals say). It says such garb is “linked with illegal religious activities and the infiltration of extremist religious thinking”. A sign behind it says that only adults are allowed into the mosque.
(Picture credit: J.M. / The Economist)