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NY Times, Jan. 3 2016
Xinjiang Seethes Under Chinese Crackdown
By ANDREW JACOBS
KASHGAR, China — Families sundered by a wave of detentions. Mosques
barred from broadcasting the call to prayer. Restrictions on the
movements of laborers that have wreaked havoc on local agriculture. And
a battery of ever more intrusive ways to monitor the communications of
citizens for possible threats to public security.
A recent 10-day journey across the Xinjiang region in the far west of
China revealed a society seething with anger and trepidation as the
government, alarmed by a slow-boil insurgency that has claimed hundreds
of lives, has introduced unprecedented measures aimed at shaping the
behavior and beliefs of China’s 10 million Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking
Muslim minority that considers this region its homeland.
Driving these policies is the government’s view that tougher security
and tighter restraints on the practice of Islam are the best way to stem
a wave of violence that included a knife attack at a coal mine that
killed dozens of people in September.
The tough security measures are on full view for travelers as they stop
at the ubiquitous highway checkpoints that slow movement across this
rugged expanse of deserts and snowy peaks.
As heavily armed soldiers rummage through car trunks and examine ID
cards, ethnic Uighur motorists and their passengers are sometimes asked
to hand over their cellphones so that the police can search them for
content or software deemed a threat to public security.
In addition to jihadist videos, the police are on the lookout for Skype
and WhatsApp, apps popular with those who communicate with friends and
relatives outside China, and for software that allows users to access
blocked websites.
“All of us have become terror suspects,” said a 23-year-old Uighur
engineering student who said he was detained overnight in November after
the police found messages he had exchanged with a friend in Turkey.
“These days, even receiving phone calls from overseas is enough to
warrant a visit from state security.”
Here in Kashgar, the fabled Silk Road outpost near China’s border with
Pakistan and Afghanistan, officials have banned mosques from
broadcasting the call to prayer, forcing muezzins to shout out the
invocation five times a day from rooftops across the city. The new rule
is an addition to longstanding policies that prohibit after-school
religious classes and children under 18 from entering mosques. (The
installation of video cameras on mosque doorways in recent months makes
such rules hard to ignore.)
Southeast of Kashgar, shopkeepers in the city of Hotan seethed over a
government decision to outlaw two dozen names considered too Muslim,
forcing parents to rename their children or be unable to register them
for school, according to local residents and the police.
To the north in Turpan, a fertile oasis famed for its grapes, a vineyard
owner complained about new restrictions that bar Uighur migrant laborers
from traveling there for the harvest, leaving tons of fruit to wither on
the vines.
And farther north in Ghulja, an ethnically diverse city near the Kazakh
border with a history of tensions, a pair of unemployed college
graduates fumed about a crackdown prohibiting young men from wearing
beards and women from veiling their faces. Those who ignore the rules
are sometimes jailed, residents said.
“Me, myself, I’m not religious, but forcing our women to take off their
head scarves is an affront to their dignity and makes many people
angry,” said one of the men, who, like others interviewed, asked to
remain anonymous for fear of punishment by the authorities.
Other measures contribute to the widespread perception that Uighur
identity is under siege. Schools have largely switched to Mandarin as
the main language of instruction instead of Uighur, and the government
has begun offering cash and housing subsidies to encourage intermarriage
between Uighurs and Hans, the country’s ethnic majority, who have
migrated to the region in large numbers.
Surveillance, too, has been increased. Since 2014, Uighurs seeking to
travel outside their hometowns have been required to carry a special
card that lists phone numbers for the holder’s landlord and local police
station. Many Uighurs complain that these “convenience contact cards,”
as they are called, single them out for scrutiny.
“The state’s ability to penetrate Uighur society has become increasingly
sophisticated and intrusive,” said James Leibold, an expert on China’s
ethnic politics at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia. “But
while these new measures allow the party to nip a lot of problems in the
bud, they also foster new forms of alienation and violence that
ultimately weaken the party’s legitimacy and rule.”
After 43 people were killed in a pair of attacks in the regional
capital, Urumqi, in 2014, Beijing began a “strike hard special
operation” that it says has dismantled nearly 200 terrorist groups and
resulted in the execution of at least 49 people. The state news media
describes those caught in the crackdown as terrorism suspects or
separatists seeking an independent Xinjiang, and blames recurring
violence in the region on jihadists influenced or directed by agents
overseas.
Foreign journalists seeking to examine such claims face a gantlet of
challenges. Officials in Xinjiang seldom respond to interview requests.
Those ubiquitous checkpoints prevent journalists from reaching towns and
cities recently hit by unrest, and in other places, the sudden
appearance of government minders makes it hard to speak with residents.
Last week, Beijing expelled a French reporter for an article that
criticized its harsh policies in the region.
Fear and resentment are widespread, though such sentiments often emerged
haltingly and only in private.
Nervously rearranging the painted tambourines and traditional carved
knives in her family’s tiny gift shop, a young woman in Urumqi wept as
she described families torn apart by the recent detentions.
“In some homes, only the babies are left because the father and mother
have been taken away,” she said, adding that many were serving three- or
four-year sentences for violating religious regulations that provide no
avenue for appeal. “We think it’s O.K. to live in China, but we wish
they would treat us like they did before,” she said.
In Yarkand, a city in southern Xinjiang where violence claimed nearly
100 lives in 2014, an unwanted escort from the local propaganda bureau,
Murat, vigorously defended the new restraints on religious life, saying
they were needed to combat the sort of extremism that is convulsing
parts of the Muslim world.
“When I was a kid, my mother used to wear sleeveless shirts, but now,
because of the rise of conservative Islam, she no longer does,” said
Murat, who did not want his last name to be used. “Without the
government’s strong hand, we would become more like Iran, where they
stone girls to death.”
It remains a matter of dispute whether radical Islam has taken hold
among many Uighurs, the majority of whom subscribe to a moderate form of
Sunni Islam. But the recent terrorist attacks in Paris and the Islamic
State’s killing in November of a Chinese hostage in Syria have prompted
Beijing to step up efforts to position its battle to pacify Xinjiang as
part of the global war on violent religious extremism.
Experts outside China, however, say much of the bloodshed here is fueled
by local grievances, among them job discrimination against Uighurs,
endemic poverty and a widespread belief that the flood of Han migrants
to the region is part of a government plan to dilute Uighur identity.
“What we’re seeing in Xinjiang is homegrown self-radicalization that is
made worse by repressive policies and an attempt to hollow out Uighur
culture and religious practices,” said Nicholas Bequelin, East Asia
director for Amnesty International.
Most Uighurs, especially the educated and the middle class, have little
interest in pushing back against Beijing, and not just because they are
afraid. Abdul, 30, a home furnishing salesman who frequently travels
across China for work, said he did not support an independent Xinjiang,
citing the social instability and economic stagnation he has seen across
Central Asia and the Middle East.
“Here in China, we are 56 minorities living together in peace,” he said,
echoing the propaganda that blankets billboards across the region. But
later, over a meal of lamb and fragrant rice, he angrily described how
the police, alerted by front-desk hotel clerks, almost always visited
his room when he was on business trips.
“I am Chinese; this is what it says on my ID card,” he said, his voice
rising with emotion. But that same card also lists his ethnic identity,
and his facial features — light eyes and an aquiline nose — set him
apart in a nation that is 92 percent Han. “Sometimes I feel confused
about what I really am,” he said.
Then he paused, glanced behind his shoulder, and leaned forward. “To be
honest,” he said, “these days, the government’s policies make me so sick
in the heart that I sometimes wish I wasn’t Chinese.”
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