Xinjiang Riots Anniversary: Continued Suppression of Uighurs
NTDTV, 9 July 2011
Two years after riots broke out in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region in China and the atmosphere is still tense there.
Xinjiang is home to the Uighur ethnic minority. On July 5th, 2009 Chinese security forces suppressed Uighur demonstrations in the capital of Urumqi. The Uighurs were calling for justice for factory workers killed in a fight with Han Chinese that June. The situation quickly turned into full-scale ethnic riots.
A crackdown followed with many Uighurs being detained.
[Sarah Cook, Asia Research Analyst, Freedom House]:
“Some have been sentenced to very severe prison terms and even executed, and there are still a lot of people that we don’t know where they are.”
The Internet in Xinjiang was shut down for almost a year after the protests, making it difficult to get information from the region.
Amnesty International reported on the case of a Uighur journalist, Hairat Niyaz, who is serving a 15-year prison sentence for speaking to foreign media about the 2009 protests.
However, some reports about the situation have emerged in the run up to the anniversary.
[Sarah Cook, Asia Research Analyst, Freedom House]:
“There have been reports, also, of armored vehicles in the street and an intensified police presence in advance of the anniversary…there’s a real sense that there’s a close eye being kept on who’s talking to who, what people are doing.”
Uighurs living abroad have also been suppressed. The website of the World Uyghur Congress has been subject to cyber-attacks over the past week and is still offline.
[Alim Seytoff, World Uyghur Congress]:
“The Chinese hackers basically hacked into the website of the world Uyghur Congress and basically made it dysfunctional…so we had to move some of the content, and especially announcements of protests, from the World Uyghur Congress website to the Uyghur American Association website.”
The World Uyghur Congress believes the Chinese regime is behind the attacks.
[Alim Seytoff, World Uyghur Congress]:
“Even though some hackers may be individuals, they do it with the encouragement of the government…If it is the Chinese government then it’s no surprise, it’s been hacking into a lot of companies, Google, even the Pentagon.”
The organization’s German office also told NTD over the phone they had experienced constant anonymous phone calls around the time of the anniversary, blocking most of their communications.
Since the protests in 2009, Chinese authorities say they have turned their attention to boosting the economy in Xinjiang and are creating jobs, especially for Uighurs. Yet Freedom House believes they are reluctant to tackle the real issue—the suppression of the Uighur minority’s cultural and religious freedom.
[Sarah Cook, Asia Research Analyst, Freedom House]:
“There’s a sense that they are not really willing to deal with the root cause, which in some ways, is actually a backlash and resentment against some of the cultural and religiously repressive policies that the Chinese authorities have instituted. All of that is still in place and may have even gotten worse, I mean situations where even during the Ramadan, restaurants were forced to keep open, things that really violate some of the fundamental tenants and beliefs of the Muslim faith that just breed a lot of resentment.”
The Xinjiang region, known to many Uighurs as East Turkistan, makes up one sixth of China’s land mass and has significant oil, gas and coal deposits.