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In Urumqi, intact traditional neighborhoods are becoming a rarity |
COVER STORY
China's Other Oppressed Minority
Since Sept. 11, Bejing has been cracking down in Xinjiang. Decades of repression have already made native Uighurs strangers in their own land
Culture Wars
The Bob Dylan of Xinjiang
Photo Essay
Life Under the Crackdown
Timeline
The Uighurs in China
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One Nation—Divided
Since Sept. 11, Beijing has been cracking down in Xinjiang. Decades of repression have already made native Uighurs strangers in their own land
By MATTHEW FORNEY Kashgar
Xinjiang lies beyond the place where the Great Wall crumbles to the earth. Across these hot sands the first Turkic camel trains probed into the Middle Kingdom 2,000 years ago, laden with ivory and gold, skirting the forbidding Taklimakan desert—the name means "Those who enter may never leave"—to secure silks, which were the rage in Rome. Through this dusty back door they brought China some of its greatest treasures: spices, ivory, Buddhism and, later, Islam.
It's the latter that Abdul wants to talk about, but not right away—there are too many Chinese around. Follow me, he says, and his shoes clack along the cobblestones of a narrow maze of mud-brick houses in Kashgar's old neighborhood. It's nightfall and time for children to empty the chamber pots. Abdul locks his courtyard gate behind him, then his front door. Finally, under the roof beam of seasoned wood, he feels it's safe to state his message. "I will teach my son myself," he says, "because the Chinese won't let him into the mosque until he's 18." That's it. A simple message—that he believes in his religion—and Abdul feels he's risking jail to offer it.
The Great Wall might have petered out before Xinjiang, but that's a symbol of a China
long gone. Modern China has a titanium grip on today's Xinjiang. Beijing's ambition to develop its vast Far West is centered here, which explains the new highways, rail lines and tile-and-glass towers that are the ubiquitous stamp of Deng Xiaoping and his successors. The population bears a similar mark: Han Chinese have been moved en masse to Xinjiang
from other regions of the country, partly for development but also to dilute the dominance of the Uighurs who are as distinct an ethnic minority as the more internationally known Tibetans to the south. Political control is of the familiarly unyielding Chinese style: the Uighurs chafe under Beijing's grasp and have demanded independence. Nothing frustrates Beijing more. Since 1997 the central government has brought its nationwide "Strike Hard" campaign to Xinjiang with a vengeance, hoping to wipe out local separatists. After Sept. 11, the campaign was intensified, as China took cover under Washington's war on terror. The Uighurs, conveniently for Beijing, are Muslim.
The separatist threat has virtually been eradicated, but the crackdown continues. The result is a region as embattled as Tibet but with almost no international recognition—and a distinctly schizophrenic personality, as can be seen on a stroll through Kashgar's bazaar. Caucasian Uighur men in embroidered hats sit on handwoven carpets hawking fearsome knives, gaudy jewelry, kebabs and figs in a guttural language received from their Turkic forebears. Their script is Arabic, their staple is bread, their worship is performed in a mosque on Fridays. The Chinese in Kashgar, part of a group that has grown from almost zero half a century ago to 40% of Xinjiang's total population of 17 million now, live in modern apartments, eat rice—and shop in new department stores, not in the bazaar. The worlds are so separate that the two sides can't agree on what time the sun rises. Uighurs set their watches to Central Asian time; Chinese to Beijing's two hours earlier.
Beijing worries that the province will become its Chechnya, that the Uighurs are its link to the fanaticism of al-Qaeda, and the world has largely turned a blind eye. However, the U.S. State Department this month in its annual human-rights report said the crackdown was more against freedoms than terrorism. In Xinjiang, that certainly seems to be the case—and the heavy hand of repression just might be forging the exact sort of rebellion it is supposed to prevent. "Chinese control the banks, get the loans, win the disputes," says Mohammad, who runs a general store near the bazaar. The inflow of Chinese has completely changed his part of the city; his rent has climbed fivefold in as many years, to an annual $4,000. "Uighurs have to fight for everything. Better to fight the Chinese."
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