At last, a voice for the latest victims of Chinese brutality

Question Time Live: 18/03/2010

by Tory Maguire

110
What voters really think of Tony Abbott’s religion

by Nic Christensen and Tina Tek

210
Why stop at binning welcome to country and prayers

by Chris Deal

310
Twin revolutions to help troubled suburbs

by Nick Champion

410
Ignore water, ignore women

by Juliet Willetts

510
Let the aircraft noise roar

by Paul Colgan

610
Don’t bring your kids and other supermarket rules

by Lucy Kippist

710
Woman who wants to be world’s fattest reveals more

by Daniela Elser

810
SA’s whispering campaign has Adelaide by the balls

by Tory Shepherd

910
Punch on: Open thread 18/03/10

by Lucy Kippist

1010

by Tracey Spicer

30 Jul 05:55am

Filed under: China, Rebiya Kadeer, Uighurs

13 comments

The Uyghurs need a good spin doctor.

A Uyghur woman confronts Chinese troops

These forgotten people of northwest China are the Tibetans the world doesn’t care about.

It might be because they’re Muslims.

Or that their name is hard to pronounce (WEE-ger).

Perhaps it’s because the history of the region, which the Chinese call Xinjiang and the Uyghurs call East Turkestan, is too goddamn complicated.

But like their Buddhist counterparts in the southwest, these gentle artistic people are the victims of cultural genocide and systematic slaughter.

It began when the People’s Liberation Army stormed into the resource-rich region in 1949.

A year later, Chinese forces invaded Tibet.

In the decades since, Han Chinese have flooded the so-called ‘autonomous regions’, precipitating widespread repression and brutality.

Dissidents are routinely tortured and executed.

Young women forced to have abortions.

Cultural treasures destroyed in Kashgar.

A thousand years ago, the northern and southern branches of the Silk Road converged at this oasis town. The historic Old City is now about to be razed.

Nightly infomercials feature happy Uyghurs dancing in front of their new concrete apartments, the voiceover intoning that citizens will “completely experience the care and warmth of the party”.

Gotta love communist propaganda.

It’s the Cultural Revolution all over again. What a great leap forward.

Last year, the world reacted with horror at the brutal Chinese crackdown on Buddhist protesters in Tibet.

Yet the death of hundreds of civilians and arrest of thousands of Uyghurs in Xinjiang early this month has been met with resounding silence from the West.

The masters of the semiotics of spin, Chinese authorities are blaming ‘separatists’.

Oh, I get it. Because they’re mussies, they must be terrorists.

Because a bunch of Uyghurs has just been released from Gitmo, they all must be mates of Osama.

(China made similar accusations prior to the Beijing Olympics, tarring the moderate Islamic Uyghurs with the brush of fundamentalism.)

The Chinese government yesterday ramped up the rhetoric, calling on the diaspora to unite around the Communist Party on the basis of “blood lineage” (the only good Chinese is a Han Chinese) and spread the “truth” about separatism in Xinjiang.

This is clearly aimed at distracting attention from reports that 20,000 Chinese troops are heading to the region to carry out mass executions.

Fearing a repeat of the citizen journalism campaign during the deadly riots in Iran, China has cut access to mobile phones and the internet.

But not before the release of footage of a lone Uyghur woman with a crutch challenging armoured personnel carriers, echoing the iconic image from Tiananmen Square in 1989.

The world is slowly waking up to the oppression of this ethnic minority.

They finally have a voice, in the form of exiled Uyghur activist Rebiya Kadeer who lives in the United States.

She’s kinda cute, like the Dalai Lama, and they share a love of quirky hats.

The ‘Mother of the Uyghurs’ spent five years in a Chinese prison, so there’s a branding opportunity as the new Aung San Suu Kyi.

Surely there’s a Hollywood celebrity with a bleeding heart and fading star who’d support this worthy, yet fledgling, cause?

So, at your next inner-city dinner party, get with the Zeitgeist and say you’re concerned about the plight of the Uyghur people.

Tibet is so last year.

Share post:
Print page:
- Print Article

13 comments

Show oldest | newest first

- Shane From Melbourne says:
  
  09:25am | 30/07/09
  
  I hear that the Melbourne Film Festival is getting the heavy from the Chinese Government for showing The 10 Conditions of Love, a documentary about Rebiya Kadeer. It’s not enough to have heavy censorship in China, now they want to censor what goes on in Australia.
  
  Reply
- Liz says:
  
  09:55am | 30/07/09
  
  Yes it’s Tibet all over again.Will the world take notice this time? censoring what happens here wont wash.
  Actually find this article a bit patronising and no I haven’t missed the point but some things are just too serious to make light of, one of those is Chinese interventionism.
  
  Reply
- RT says:
  
  02:44pm | 30/07/09
  
  Isn’t the situation more akin the that in Chechnya or Aceh? An area within a confederacy that wants to break away due to ethnic or religious differences, but where the advantages of breaking away might not outweigh the disadvantages, including for regional stability? Political oppression is always to be deplored. Maybe there is a way for the Uyghars to happily remain in China. The Chinese don’t seem to be good at sweetly pacifying these breakaway regions.
  
  Reply
- Common Sense please says:
  
  03:31pm | 30/07/09
  
  Change your religion. Problem fixed.
  
  Reply
- paul says:
  
  03:36pm | 30/07/09
  
  Very good story on this weeks foreign correspondant about this issue. http://www.abc.net.au/foreign/content/2009/s2639008.htm Basically the Chinese Communist Party is being true to form in believing that if it repeats its lies enough times people will think its true. Anyway, while the average westerner might be aghast, you can be sure that our political and business leaders will turn a blind eye, as cheap chinese labour and the chinese thirst for our minerals is just too good for profit margins.
  
  Reply
- iansand says:
  
  03:56pm | 30/07/09
  
  I think the Chinese leadership are more concerned with internal politics than with what outsiders think. The prosperity gap between eastern prosperity and western poverty is a real powderkeg for the Chinese. The Han are contemptuous of westerners, partly as a result of natural prejudice and partly through government propaganda. The first response of Han Chinese to criminal activity, begging on the street and general antisocial behaviour is to blame westerners (people from the western provinces).
  
  Reply
- Madison says:
  
  08:47pm | 30/07/09
  
  This piece is full of broad sweeping under researched facts. Save this journalistic rubbish for A Current Affair and spare us the indignities.
  
  Reply
- Chuck says:
  
  03:04pm | 31/07/09
  
  Is there any understanding of the true situation going on here by the author ? I mean , to allude that this is the same as Tibet is nothing but ill-informed rubbish.
  
  Do you understand the real situations and history of China? It is no different to the race riots in Cronulla. It is the people rising against the people. The government of China , holds no loyalties in ensuring that the peace is kept. It will crush whoever is creating the disturbance. How else could you suggest you bring a nation of 1.3+ Billion people to order when there is rising unemployment and inflation ? Maybe we should just ask that that everyone play nice ?
  
  The PLA did take this region by force , but by the nature of the PLA , they believed they were LIBERATING the region from the local war lords in power. There is and was resources to be had , and yes , this was no doubt part of the game , but 60 years on , has this game changed anywhere around the world ..... ?
  
  Tibet had the ruling class and serfs , and the serfs were liberated , then they decided that they were not happy to be ruled by a government who had provided education and basic amenities to a great number of the people of Tibet.
  
  We all seem to forget that what we think is right , may not be best for others.
  
  Reply
- Michael says:
  
  06:07pm | 31/07/09
  
  Right on chuck, about someone brought some balance to this article.
  
  Reply
- johnv_au says:
  
  04:45pm | 08/08/09
  
  Madison says
  
  Madison your here too ? is it prononced madison in china? and now you have chuck and michael there must be a whole bunch of you working for the right to tell australians there wrong to listen to reporters on chinese matters and form there own oppinion might work in your own country but not here
  
  Reply
- Madison says:
  
  08:45pm | 08/08/09
  
  I’m sure we’ll listen when it’s objective and accurate. Have you considered revisiting primary school so you can bring your grammar up to scratch? And what does my name have anything to do with anything? You’ve simply come across as a racist pig who can’t accept the fact not everyone holds the same opinions as you do.
  
  Reply
- johnv_au says:
  
  11:31am | 09/08/09
  
  Sticks and stones
  
  Look it up? regroup or retire
  
  Reply
- Asheq Islam says:
  
  08:30am | 22/01/10
  
  As an ICEM.(Indigenous Colored Ethnic Moslem) myself, THANK YOU TRACE—Oh Nordic Princess, Aryan Goddess—for bringing China’s Ethnic Moslems to public attention!!!!! And that I, not just an *Ethnic Moslem*[I prefer MOSlem to MUSlim] but more pertinently a SOCIALIST & COMMUNIST, was quite ignorant about Chinese Ethnic Moslems[numbering in the 10’S OF MILLIONS, MORE than in many a “Moslem nation”]—let alone their PLIGHT.[Being from the Soviet rather than Chinese side of Social/Commun-ism may explain this] So, all this really must be *NEWS* to those in Australia, although the lot of the Uighurs WAS globally covered in the prelude to the 08 Olympics. Since Tiananmen Square 1989, I brand myself a *DEMOCRATIC socialist, RESPONSIBLE communist*, something which the PRC. ISN’T, eh Madison[30/07/09, 08/08/09]. DITTO the USSR., hence its demise just 2 yrs later. And NO this article ISN’T “full of broad sweeping under researched facts’ nor “journalistic rubbish”[Maybe this would, generally, apply to Australian commercial mass media], but an EXCELLENT entree into a SUBSTANTIAL topic authored by an obviously PROGRESSIVE, ADVANCED Australian intellect[SORRY Trace, I didn’t know that you were more than just a tv. newsreader!!!].
  
  Reply