These are the main expressions used both by the Western and Turkish media to describe the bloody incidents that have occurred recently in the capital of the far west region of China, called the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region.The region's name, Xinjiang, means “New Territory, New Region, New Dominion” in Mandarin Chinese and has been in use since the Chinese conquest of the Tarim Basin in 1759. Historians estimate that a million local people were slaughtered and the region so devastated that it took a generation for it to recover.
The region's true historical name is, of course, East Turkistan, and the people who have lived there for thousands of years are Uighur Turks. Given these facts, the name Xinjiang merely represents a colonial name, nothing else, so the current official name is wrong and impertinent. This is first point I would like to make.
The second point is that recent incidents in Urumqi could not be described or qualified as ethnic unrest or conflict because not only did they not erupt as a result of ethnic conflict between the Uighurs and the colonial Han Chinese, but also the development of the incidents had nothing much to do with the same theme.
The incidents were sparked by the protest of several thousand Uighur youth, mostly university students gathered in several locations in Urumqi to express their discontent with the authorities over the handling of the killing of Uighur workers at a Guangdong toy factory more than a week ago.
However, instead of addressing the legitimate demands of the peaceful Uighur protesters, the Chinese authorities responded mercilessly to quell the protests with the deployment of four kinds of police (regular police, anti-riot police, Special Police and the People's Armed Police [CAPF]). The Special Police and the CAPF used tear gas, automatic rifles and armored vehicles to disperse the protesters. During the crackdown, hundreds were shot, and some were beaten to death by the police units. According to eyewitnesses, some of the demonstrators were crushed by armored vehicles near Xinjiang University.
Therefore, in view of this, one can safely say that the incidents and the ensuing bloodbath were nothing to do with ethnic clashes, but to do with the violent response of the Chinese police. Had they not acted brutally and violently, the protests would not have ended with blood and pain. So the main culprit in these incidents is the Chinese authorities who, instead of heeding the demands of the protesters, decided to suppress them with force.
Following this, encouraged by the support of the Chinese authorities, ethnic Chinese mobs took to the streets and went on hunting and killing the Uighurs, while the police and army stood by and did nothing to prevent them. So the drama ended with ethnic Chinese attacking the unprotected Uighurs. Therefore, only for the last phase of the chain of incidents could the adjective ‘ethnic' be used. But only like this: “Ethnic onslaught by the Chinese vigilantes or mobs against the Uighurs.”
In a wider perspective, the recent incidents can be characterized as “the very last response of Uighur Turks against 60 years of Chinese invasion, repression, assimilation and violation of basic human rights.”
Of course, many facts related to 60 years of Chinese brutality and violence can be cited, but they would make a long list, too long for this column. However, in short we can say that the recent incidents represent the cries of the Turkic Uighur nation, which is being slowly and meticulously destroyed by the Chinese communist regime since they invaded and occupied Eastern Turkistan in 1949.
I hope the world, at least that part of the world which still has a conscience and dignity, would hear those cries and do what is to be done.
Let us hear the cries of the Uighurs, and hear well…
