A Uighurs' History of China | History Today - 0 views
-
Towards the end of 2018 reports began to emerge that China was building a widespread network of compounds in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region. It was being used to detain hundreds of thousands of – some estimates suggested over a million – members of the Muslim Uighur community suspected of involvement in, or sympathy for, demonstrations and attacks on government institutions
-
Although the conflict in Xinjiang between the Uighurs and the Chinese state has intensified in the past two years, it is nothing new.
-
Eastern Turkestan was formally incorporated into the Chinese Empire as the province of Xinjiang in November 1884.
- ...9 more annotations...
-
Uighurs are not ethnically or culturally Chinese, but a Turkic people whose language is close to the Uzbek of nearby Uzbekistan and distantly related to the Turkish of Turkey.
-
. In 1955 the PRC created the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region as a concession to the non-Han population and in parallel with similar arrangements for Tibet and Inner Mongolia
-
As China emerged from the horrors of the Cultural Revolution, the power of the Chinese Communist Party recovered; there was no equivalent liberation for the Uighurs.
-
Demonstrations in 1995 in Yining, the base of the 1940s’ independent republic, provoked Beijing to issue Document No. 7 the following year. It identified the conflict in Xinjiang as the most serious threat to the Chinese state and a ‘Strike Hard’ campaign was launched against resisters. In 1997 another major Yining demonstration in the north-east of the state was violently suppressed.
-
The repression under the ‘Strike Hard’ campaign became permanent. Anyone suspected of sympathies for ‘separatism’ – advocating an independent Uighur state – or involvement in ‘illegal religious activities’, primarily with the Sufi brotherhoods – could be detained without trial. Attempts by family members to extract relatives from police stations or other detention facilities have led to frequent clashes with the authorities, many of which have turned violent. Sporadic attacks against the police or other symbols of Chinese rule, either by local people or armed militant groups, were followed by government reprisals. Most conflict occurred in the old Sufi strongholds in the south of Xinjiang but, in July 2009, clashes between Uighurs and Han Chinese in the regional capital, Urumqi, cost many lives. They also resulted in the detention of thousands of Uighurs, some of whom were executed, and the eventual replacement in April 2010 of the Xinjiang Communist Party Secretary, Wang Lequan, who had held the post since 1994. The level of repression and the secrecy of judicial processes aroused widespread international concerns about human rights abuses.
-
In August 2016 Xi appointed Chen Quanguo, who had previously ruled Tibet, as Xinjiang Party Secretary: he rapidly introduced draconian measures of repression – ‘counter-terrorism’ in the official terminology – including the now notorious concentration camps and advanced surveillance technology. The clampdown on religious activities has intensified and satellite images indicate that many mosques and Sufi shrines have been destroyed, including the Imam Asim shrine outside Khotan, the site of an annual festival attended by thousands of pious Uighur Muslims. This intensification of repression shows no sign of ending.
-
It was being used to detain hundreds of thousands of – some estimates suggested over a million – members of the Muslim Uighur community suspected of involvement in, or sympathy for, demonstrations and attacks on government institutions.