Yujing Lin

The Uighur

Covered by deserts and snow mountains, western China is sparsely populated and underdeveloped, unlike the eastern part, which is famous for openness and prosperity. This region is well-known for its beautiful landscapes and austere plateau ecology. However, under a snow mountain called Tianshan, an oasis breeds over 21 million people. The oasis is now known as Xinjiang, the biggest administrative province under People’s Republic of China.

Throughout history, Xinjiang was a meeting point of Han Chinese, Arabic, Western, and Indian cultures, mostly due to the Silk Road. People who live in Xinjiang are the Uighur. The Chinese empire had been long for this vast land, which would open its access to Central Asia and valuable mineral resources like jade. Since the Han dynasty (2^th Century B.C.E.), people in Xinjiang area and Han China kept a trade and diplomatic relationship. Even though Han and the Uighur spoke different languages and practiced different religions, through learning each other’s language and culture, they seemed to get along well. Han people contributed to the development in Xinjiang by exchanging their technology and knowledge with local resources. After two thousand years of trading, communicating, fighting, and negotiating, Xinjiang finally became a part of the Qing China’s territory in 1884 and was granted the name “Xinjiang”, meaning “new territory” in Chinese, by the Qing royal family.

Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (XUAR), or Xinjiang in short, was established under the rule of People’s Republic of China in 1955. The region takes up about 16% of the Chinese territory, and borders eight countries—Mongolia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India. Until recently, its population was mainly Uighurs, which are ethnically Turkic, speak a Uighur language related to the Turkish languages and practice Sufi Islam. More than 14 ethnic groups live in Xinjiang, with Han and Uighurs each occupies over 40%. Whereas, the Han population keeps increasing and by now, it may already surplus the Uighurs, because the Chinese government developed propaganda praising the besuty of Xinjiang in order to promote Han from the east to migrate to Xinjiang.

Nonetheless, the conflicts between the Uighur and Han never stopped since 1884 while the Uighur achieved brief statehood twice after the fall of Qing: one was from 1931 to 34, and the other was from 1944 to 49. The radical Uighur nationalists kept fighting for separatism whereas the moderate Uighur scholars were advocating for a harmonic relationship under autonomy. There was no improvement after the communist party took over. Instead, it gradually went out of control in the 1990s and almost faced a dead end after 2001.

Ongoing Attacks

Cities in Xinjiang were struck by protests, riots and bombings since the 1990s in response to the tight control. Most of the attacks were against Han Chinese security forces as well as Han civilians and Chinese government has been blaming separatist groups for these attacks. Due to the lack of a clear definition of terrorism from the government, these movements were sometimes called “terrorist attacks” but sometimes “violent attacks.”

The unrest reached a peak in 2009, on July 5, a bloody riot broke out in Urumqi, the regional capital of Xinjiang. According to the Chinese government, the riot resulted in the deaths of 197 people, including 137 Han and 46 Uighurs, and injured 1,700. Chinese officials said, according to the government-run Xinhua News Agency, “the latest riots were started by Rebiya Kadeer, a Uighur human rights advocate who had been imprisoned in China and now lives in Washington.” This riot was defined as a terrorist movement by the government.

Nevertheless, on October 28, 2013, three Uighurs drove an SUV, crashed through the crowd in Tiananmen Square. The car then burst into flames and the crash killed five people. Later, according to the Guardian, the Chinese police reported that “they found machetes and flag with extreme religious content in vehicle that crashed through crowds in Beijing” and they defined this as a “carefully planned, organized and premeditated” terrorist movement.

However, China’s own war on terror was in Kunming, the capital city in southwestern Yunnan Province, when assailants from Xinjiang used knifes to kill at least 29 people and injured more than 130 in a train station, according to Xinhua, on March 1, 2014. At least 5 of the 10 attackers were shot dead by security forces right away. Xinhua described the incident as a “premediated violent terrorist attack” and identified the perpetrators as separatists from Xinjiang, but it was unsure if the perpetrators were linked al-Qaeda.

Nick Holdstock, once an English teacher in Yining, Xinjiang, has invested in the situations of Uighurs. He wrote a book called China’s Forgotten People in Xinjiang, which analyzed the terror attack in Xinjiang. In the book, he said:

The killing in Kunming in March 2014 were one of the most shocking acts of violence in China’s recent history. They also seemed a major departure from other incidents linked with Xinjiang, not least because they did not take place in the region. Given the planned nature of the attack, and the targeting of civilians, it was unsurprising that the Western media followed the lead of the Chinese media by describing the incident as a terrorist attack. Chinese media called the event “China’s 9/11,” and placed it in a context of supposedly similar terrorist acts “over the past two decades” (164).

So are these Uighurs terrorists?

ETIM

The Uighur was not satisfied under Han’s occupation. According to The Tree That Bleeds, also by Nick Holdstock, Uighurs held different views than Han. For example, on the relations between the different ethnic groups:

Han said Xinjiang is a good example of how the problems of a very different mix of ethnic groups have been solved. They have been united into one big family. The Han nationally has always kept a higher level of development, so many of the other peoples have learns a lot from the Han mode of production and way of life. The Han have self lessly regarded this kind of assistance as their responsibility. They are the big brother of the family. They have helped to develop a once backward region. Life today in Xinjiang is better than ever before! (21)

Whereas, Uighur said The Han have been sucking our blood for decades. They only know how to take. Our oil, minerals and gas, our homes and our freedom. We are homeless in our homeland, we are orphans in our mother land, we are slaves in our fatherland. Our people are starving in the worst conditions of human misery. (21)

The same thing happened when talking about Xinjiang’s independence. Instead of using the name “Xinjiang,” pro-independent group argued that they should be recognized as East Turkestan, “a place that has always been the homeland of Uighurs and certainly separate from China” (Holdstock, 22).

As a result, these aggressive Uighur nationalists are suspicious. Also taking Xinjiang’s location into consideration, it seemed that they are very likely to become terrorists.

ETIM, or East Turkestan Islamic Movement, is a Muslim separatist group founded by militant Uighurs. After the 2013 Tiananmen Square car crash, the government directly blamed on ETIM for the first time. However, they denied the charges on the car crash. In addition, ETIM has not claimed to be responsible for any attacks; but it did release a video backing the Kunming attack.

According to “Exploring the nature of Uighur Nationalism: freedom fighters or terrorists?” by Committee of Foreign Affairs, ETIM is the only one Uighur-sponsored terrorist organization that agreed by both the U.N. and the U.S. so far. However, “the vast majority of the Eastern Turkestan independence and information organizations disclaim violence” (45). The report also pointed out that these people have left China before the Communist party takeover in 1949, and not everyone in ETIM advocated separatism. The main activities of ETIM is via the Internet: they press for radical change to fight back human right violations, environmental degradation, economic imbalance and alternative histories of the region. In this case, they may be terrorists for the Chinese government because they want independence. However, they may also be the freedom fighters for the Uighur because they are fighting for Uighurs’ basic rights.

The U.S. Treasury Department listed ETIM as a terrorist organization in 2002 when there was increased cooperation between the U.S. and China on anti-terrorism after Sept. 11, 2001. According to Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), “first mention of ETIM surfaced around 2000 when a Russian newspaper reported that Osama bin Laden had pledged funds to the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) and ETIM during a 1999 meeting in Afghanistan.” Some experts doubted ETIM’s tie to global terrorism while others said ETIM operated as an umbrella organization for many splinter groups in Pakistan and central Asia.

Nevertheless, the Chinese government has publicly connected ETIM to al-Qaeda. According to Chinese government study in 2002, “ETIM had received money, weapons, and support from the terrorist organization…ETIM militants were trained by al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and crossed back into Xinjiang, where they set up terrorist cells.” But Hasan Mahsum, ETIM leader, denied the claim.

TIP

On the other hand, another suspicious organization called the Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP) was formed in 2006 by Uighurs who fled to Afghanistan and Pakistan in the 1990s. According to CFR, TIP took credit for some attacks in Chinese cities in 2008, including the deadly bus explosions in Shanghai and Kunming. However, the U.S.-based intelligence firm Stratfor said TIP’s claims appeared exaggerated, but the potential threats laid by TIP cannot be ignored. Whereas, Omer Kanat, senior editor of the Uighur service for U.S.-funded Radio Free Asia (RFA), said that “the TIP may not even be a Xinjiang-based Uighur group.” And he suggests “a possible affiliation between the TIP and the Islamic Party of Turkestan (formally known as IMU).”

Although a lack of independent investigation, it is true that some Uighurs have participated in terrorist movements. According to Philip Potter, a professor from the University of Virginia, “ongoing security crackdown in Xinjiang has forced the most militant Uighur separatists into volatile neighboring countries, such as Pakistan, where they are forging strategic alliances with, and even leading, jihadist factions affiliated with al-Qaeda and the Taliban.”

Additionally, the Uighur overseas generally considered Xinjiang as China’s colony and sought building an independent nation as the ultimate goal.

However, it is unclear about the relationship between the ETIM or TIP and the attackers in China, because the perpetrators seemed unsophisticated, comparing to the 9/11 in 2001, according to Potter. Meanwhile, the Uighurs that belong to jihadist factions have left China and were active in central Asia. It seemed that Uighur terrorists in central Asia and Uighur advocators in China are different groups.

Diplomacy and Uighur Terrorists

Nevertheless, the Uighur terrorists who fought in foreign nations were recognized by China, which sought to restrict their activities. However, the intent to control Uighur terrorists in central Asia and China’s Belt and Road police in the region make diplomatic relations complicated.

According to an article from the New York Times, “China’s Uighur unrest is opportunity for Afghans,” after the war, Afghanistan is eager to find a new source to paid its bill due to its dire economic situation. Meanwhile, China is worried about the Uighur separatists in central Asia. Through arresting the Uighurs who fought inside Afghanistan, Afghan officials “hope to use the presence of Uighur militants here to drive a wedge between China and Pakistan” and at the same time obtained a new, rich benefactor by providing cooperation in arresting the Uighur terrorists.

Meanwhile, China is handling its relationship with Pakistan—it hesitates in its long-term support for Pakistan. China “is struggling to balance its contradictory interests in South Asia and may be trying to evade the potential cost of its long-standing support for Pakistan-backed, anti-Indian militants,” according to James Dorsey. And China is increasingly concerned about the potential attack of “Uighur Islamic State fighters returning from Syria and Iraq to either the province itself or neighboring Afghanistan and Tajikistan, risks being called out for a less than stellar attitude toward political violence.”

In short, Uighur militants are becoming more important for terrorist organizations in Pakistan and Afghanistan, which are threating the people.

However, Uighur terrorists were mainly fighting for al-Qaeda and Taliban. Their connections with Uighur attackers inside China were unclear. Moreover, no evidence show ETIM and TIP were the perpetrators of the attacks in China. However, the Chinese government and media have been blaming ETIM, al-Qaeda and Taliban for the Uighurs’ attacks in major China cities and calling the Uighur “terrorists.”

Media Coverage

The major differences between media in China and Western countries like the U.S. is that Chinese media is owned and completely controlled by the government and the U.S. media works as an independent agency seeking to deliver objective news to the public.

Even though there are Uighur militants fighting in Pakistan and Afghanistan and the ongoing violent attacks inside China were conducted by the Uighur, the obscure thing about the situation is the proportion of terrorists among all Uighurs and the Chinese government’s firm claims about those “premeditated terrorist attacks.”

Nick Holdstock wrote an article titled “What we talk about when we talk about the Uyghurs” based on his own experience in Xinjiang. He argued that the Chinese government tries to claim Han Chinese to be the target of radical Islamist organizations and promote “Three Evils” of “terrorism, separatism, and religious extremism” (66). And “by taking the terrorist attack in Kunming as license to reclassify previous, apparently unconnected incidents, the media is helping to legitimate repressive security policies in the region” (68). Thus, through rejecting independent reporters to enter Xinjiang, the Chinese media accused the Uighur to be terrorists without presenting “any credible evidence to support its claim that there has been a protracted terrorist campaign in Xinjiang over the last few decades” (66).

Influenced by Chinese media, “Xinjiang is no longer represented as an obscure, exotic district but as a ‘volatile’ and ‘restive’ region of ‘smouldering tensions’ where ‘scarcely a week passes without anti-government violence’” (Holdstock, 65).

What’s more, the Chinese communist party has been blaming for enforcing policies against basic human rights to the Uighurs for decades by groups such as Uyghur Human Right Project, Amnesty International, Radio Free Asia etc. However, these controversial policies supposed to use to fight terrorist. Why is there condemnation?

Defining Terrorism

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman has said that it is not understandable why suppressing terrorist movements in foreign countries is rightful; but when it turns to China, the government is accused for repressing ethnic minorities.

In this case, definition of terrorism is the key point to answer this question.

In general, according to Dr. Wallace, there are seven common elements of terrorism: the use or threat of violence, unpredictability or randomness, a symbolic target, publicity, political goals, no noncombatant immunity, and indiscriminate use of weapons.

However, in China, the terrorist movements seem to be different.

According to Human Rights in China (HRIC), a Chinese non-governmental organization founded in 1989 by overseas Chinese students and scientists, after analyzing multiple news reports, six major characteristics of terrorism in China are:

1. 1. Governmental agencies and the military are the chief targets of attacks—the majority of reports featured Uighurs attacking local police officers
2. 2. Crude tools are used—including dagger, axe, gasoline, matches
3. 3. There is no direct contact between localized and foreign-based terrorist organization—most local terrorist groups are loosely-organized and don’t have direct connections (receiving funds, weapons or trainings) with foreign organizations
4. 4. Not organized—namely, there are no structured terrorist organizations—a lack of a tight, central and top-down command structure
5. 5. In most cases, the number of attackers killed on the spot exceeds that of the attacked—except for Kunming Railway Station incident (1:7) and Urumqi Palace of Culture’s morning market (1:8), for example, in October 2013 car crash incident in Beijing Tianmen Square, three terrorists were shot dead by police versus two civilian causalities
6. 6. The perpetrators are always Uighurs—for most of the cases, only attacked perpetrated by Uighurs are called terrorist attack; those conducted by Han are not

Moreover, Omer Kanat, director of the Uighur Human Right Project, wrote a letter to the New York Times in response to an article about Trump’s cooperation with China in terrorism. Kanat said:

China has an expensive and unclear definition of terrorist action…The Chinese government refuses to allow independent reporters to investigate the situation in the Uighur homeland and indiscriminately treats the Uighur Muslim minority as terrorist suspects. The situation is not comparable to concerns about ISIS. China has produced no substantive evidence that militants have returned to China from the Middle East. The region is in the midst of a security crackdown and an expansion of arbitrary detention in re-education centers, including of Uighur students studying abroad forced to return home by threats to their families.

Even though it is still reasonable to guard against Uighurs due to the potential threats, there is a clear difference in definition of terrorism in general and by Chinese government. The ambiguous definition of terrorism gave Chinese officers ultimate power to persecute the Uighur.

This problematic definition opens up the potential for the Chinese government to indiscriminately attack Uighurs, which can be a strategy to distract people from its also-problematic domestic policies on the majority Han. According to Kilic Bugra Kanat in his article “‘War on Terror’ as a diversionary strategy:”

This is a classical forms of diversionary strategies, China’s domestic diversion also helped the Chinese government to gain legitimacy and unities its Han majority under its rule. There are many other possible diversionary strategies that leaders may use in order to stay in power, deflect the attention of their population from domestic economic, social, and political problems, and rally them around their national flags.

Condemnations

What are the condemnations the government received?

Chinese government has been claiming the movement of repressing Uighur separatist as part of the world’s effort of suppressing terrorist movements.

However, there are increasing blames on Chinese government for its harsh policies on Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang. For example, UHRP, Uighur Human Rights Project, founded by Uighur American Association (UAA) in 2004 with a supporting grant from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), accused the Chinese government for its misleading human right situation in East Turkestan. The report, titled “Freedom of Religious Brief in Xinjiang,” tried to emphasized material conditions and economic growth as the key evidence of human right improvement and meanwhile ignored the fact of restricting basic freedom of practicing religion. “The claims should be regarded with skepticism until independent media and UN Special Rapporteurs are allowed into the region to investigate them,” according to UHRP.

Also, according to Amnesty International report on China, in Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region:

Media report indicated that numerous detention facilities were set up within the XUAR, variously called “counter extremism centres”, “political study centres”, or “education and transformation centres”, in which people were arbitrarily detained for unspecified periods and forced to study Chinese laws and policies.

In addition, the government prohibited “extremist” behaviors like wearing burkas, having an “abnormal” beard, giving Islamic name to children etc. Some Uighur students studying abroad were forced to come back and reports were received saying “some who returned were tortured and imprisoned.”

Regardless of the criticism, details are unclear about China’s own war on terror—because the statements made by the officials are internally contradictory and foreign as well as domestic independent investigations are not able to verify due to censorship and police supervision.

In a nutshell, all the elements discussed above, including the subjugated history of Xinjiang, the activities of Uighur terrorists in central Asia, the nature of ETIM and TIP, the attacks in major Chinese cities, unclear definition of terrorism, different stance in state-run media and independent report, the condemnations from Amnesty and non-governmental organizations, demonstrated China’s contradictory tyranny towards the Uighurs. However, to the Chinese government, every Uighur has the potential to be terrorist and enforcing tight policies controlling all of their behaviors is the only way to take Xinjiang under complete control, even though the region is said to be autonomous.

Living Conditions

In fact, unlike the attackers, most Uighurs are innocent, well-behaved citizens but suffer from discrimination, threat, harassment, and even torture. Xinjiang is the homeland of the Uighurs, but they are treated as invaders.

Uighur economist Ilham Tohti identified unemployment as one of the biggest obstacles in developing healthy relations between Uighurs and Han Chinese in Xinjiang. The primary driver of the unemployment is ethnic discrimination.

According to “Uighurs in China say bias is growing,” “roughly half of the 161 positions advertised on the Civil Servant Examination Information Web site indicate that only ethnic Han Chinese or native Mandarin speakers will be considered.”

Furthermore, since Xinjiang is strategically pivotal to China, “top government positions as well as critical spots in the sprawling security apparatus are dominated by Han Chinese, many of them recruited from the eastern half of the country.”

Ilham Tohti said it was because Han do not trust the Uighur.

Furthermore, according to a New York Times article, police officers have been ordering residents to hand over their passports after October, 2016. Local government of Xinjiang, especially from the southern part, imposed restriction on passports. There were also officials in the airport prevented residents from boarding an international flight. It is generally difficult for Uighurs to obtain passports. But officials are still trying to confiscate these passports, which is technically against the Chinese Constitution, to cut any connections between Uighurs and foreign countries.

Chinese government not only sought to control people inside the country, but also Chinese communities overseas and even foreign citizens of Chinese origins, especially for ethnic minorities like the Uighur, hoping to control narrative of Chinese politics. Their major targets of this harassment include Uighur and Tibetan rights activists, Chinese democrats, Taiwanese independence advocates and Falun Gong practitioner; refers to as “Five Poisons” by the government. Chinese government will listen and hang up the phone calls from Uighurs overseas to their family in China. Uighur students studying abroad are sometimes forced to come back. Furthermore, Chinese government has been pushing foreign countries, including the U.S., to label Uighurs as “terrorists” in order to restrict Uighurs’ activities in foreign countries and eventually lock them all up in Xinjiang under the supervision of the police.

What’s more, Uighurs were also tortured by the security forces. According to reports from Uighur Human Rights Project, an 87-year-old Kazakh Muslim man from Yining, Xinjiang, passed away after coming back from the so-called “training center for religious extremist.” He reported that in the training center, Uighurs were tortured by the authority. They were forced to drink wine and eat pork, which was forbidden in Muslim doctrines. They were beaten, suffered from electric shock, loud noises and sleep deprivation every day.

In addition, Ilham Tohti, a respected economist and was awarded the prestigious Martin Ennals Award for human rights, has been advocating abuses against the Uighur. Unlike some Uighur nationalists, Tohti is a representative of the moderate and promotes non-violent resistance. He said that “the path I have pursued all along is honourable and peaceful. I have relied only on pen and paper,” according to Amnesty. However, in September, 2014, he was sentenced for being found guilty of separatism.

On the other hand, from the perspectives of ordinary Han citizens, the impressions of the Uighurs have changed from a vibrant ethnic minority group that was praised for their diligence, enthusiasm, and hospitality, to a gradually-forgotten group that people were afraid to talk about. However, even before the relationship between Han and Uighur was deteriorated, Han was always featured as the only ethnic group in China with technologically superior and liberalization, comparing to minorities in Xinjiang, who were people labeled with “having a special liking for all kinds of little caps” or “living a life full of songs and rhythms,” according to an article called “who is Chinese? The upper Han.”

Expansionism

China’s extreme tight control over the Uighur can be tracked back to expansionism. Expansionism is practiced throughout two thousand years of history in China; Chinese emperors for every dynasty occupied new lands for the sake of their authority and legitimacy. The essence of expansionism for every dynasty is to assimilate the natives—by changing “them” into “us”, changing “others” into “Han”, it ensured the legitimacy of the Han Chinese empire to a large extent because the emperors believed people belong to a non-Han ethnic group must be holding different beliefs. Therefore, if we understand the essence of expansionism for successive dynasties, it is not difficult to apply it to the policies that the communist party has enforced toward three of the five autonomous regions: Tibet, inner Mongolia, and XUAR.

The main purpose of these policies is to expand Han culture and simultaneously assimilate or eliminate non-Han culture in order to ensure the integrity of the Han regime.

These extreme policies include: restrict the ways Uighur Muslims practiced Islam; limit and even exclude the Turkish-based Uighur language; confiscate books written by Uighur politicians, scholars, writers and poets; arrest and sentence famous Uighur intellectuals, literary artists, journalists etc.; restrict clothes with religious patterns; force Uighurs to live under the supervision of Han; encourage Uighur men to find jobs in major cities in the east coast of China; encourage Uighur women that stay home to marry Han men; give Han privileges to live in Xinjiang; arrest and torture innocent Uighur people under the names of extremism, separatism, and terrorism.

These policies are the extreme version of expansionism and they imply that the communist party only cares about the land but not the people living on it.

Simulated Autonomy

It is almost impossible for autonomy to exist under this context.

Even it is called Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, the legitimacy is under Han. According to statistics, among all senior officials, 64% are Han and 20% are Uighurs, and the rest are spread among other ethnic minorities. However, according to census data from 2010, Han only takes up to 40% of the population while Uighurs takes up 46%.

With the achievement in technology, control over Uighurs became more advanced. A Uighur engineering students said police found his messages with a friend in Turkey. He also said that receiving an overseas phone call is “enough to warrant a visit from state security.” Additionally, Xinjiang authorities planned to order drones to inspect the “targets of terrorists.”

Xinjiang gradually became a surveillance state, with police officers scan the ID card, irises, and contents of phone. People’s bags and bodies are also scanned under X-rays. Uighurs’ DNA is collected in state-run medical checkups. Vehicles are equipped with GPS tracking system. All communication software except WeChat is banned, which make it easier for the police to access to people’s calls, texts, and shared content.

Furthermore, the government bans fasting during Ramadan in Xinjiang, requires Uighur shops to sell alcohol and prohibits Muslim parents from giving their children Islamic names. Financial aid will keep other Muslims from Pakistan to Turkey quiet for a while, but thousands of Uighur refugees in Turkey and Syria have already complicated the diplomacy. Despite of political persecution, Uighurs never stopped fighting. Also Xinjiang’s change make people wonder: how other vibrant minority cultures in China and even in the world can survive under this big-data police.

Religion

Michael Dillon, the author of Xinjiang: China’s Muslim Far Northwest, said that in long term, Uighurs have been desired to be independent; however, the majority don’t participate in any armed activities against the Han Chinese. To them, solving the conflicts in religion, education, language, and culture are more urgent and realistic than independence.

Even though the Chinese government has blaming outside agitators and believed these separatist movements were linked to global jihadists, most experts said “the threat from Islamic militants is far less potent and organized than that portrayed by Beijing” (Jacobs, 1).

However, it is still understandable for why Chinese government is so concerned about Xinjiang area. The repressive policies “are born out of concern that the radical Islam that has destabilized neighboring Afghanistan and Pakistan will take root in Xinjiang, a fear not entirely unfounded given the region’s proximity to lawless countries that have provided a haven for a kaleidoscope of jihadists from across the Muslim world, including some Uighurs” (Jacobs, 1).

Nonetheless, according to Nicholas Bequelin, a researcher for Human Rights Watch in Hong Kong, “the entire Uighur ethnicity feels asphyxiated, having become suspect as sympathetic to extremism. Xinjiang is trapped in a vicious circle of increased repression that only leads to more violence” (Jacobs, 1).

On the other hand, communism itself is antitheism. Carl Marx considered religion as “opium of the people.” In China, the Constitution listed that every citizen has the freedom of religion. Whereas, members of the communist party are not allowed to believe in any religions. Meanwhile, Xinjiang, comparing to major cities in the east, is often thought to be a laggard land of barbaric and truculent. Consequently, to ensure national stability, the government adopted high-pressure autocracy policies.

The discussion about religion is used to justify these policies. Reports by government-controlled media stir up hatred toward the Uighur and draw people’s attention to the connections between Uighur Muslims and foreign-based terrorist organizations, which was often made without reliable evidence. The talk on government’s problematic policies on ethnic minorities is often avoided or ignored. Both the radicals and moderates have to face the risk of being tortured behind bars for speaking up for the Uighurs without exception.

Resolution

The solution cannot be isolation, repression, or independence.

On one hand, Xinjiang has developed flourishing tourism to stimulate its economic growth. And there are plenty of Han living in there so independence is almost impossible.

On the other hand, Xinjiang is important to the communist party because of its strategic location. So the government will not give it up. Thus, to solve the ethnic protest, isolation and repression will not work out. If the communist government wants to keep the land, they need to be responsible, embrace the people on the land and treat them as a part of the family. The government should separate the terrorists, separatists and nationalists from ordinary citizens.

The ordinary Uighurs are already vulnerable under such injustices and marginalization within the economic, education, and political systems. Along with the severe security policies and supervision, the relationship between Han Chinese and the Uighur will only get worse and eventually lead to inevitable ethnic conflicts. They should not be forgotten by the government and their Uighur identity should not be taken away.

Therefore, autonomy needs be granted back to Uighurs. The government should allow Uighurs to freely establish their own educational institutions, media outlets, and non-governmental organization and permit them to participate in politics and state affairs. Also, the government needs to ensure the proper representation of the Uighur and create a more equitable distribution of the benefits of development.

Moreover, the state legislatures and security forces should not be granted the power to persecute Uighur freely. A completed law enforcement system needs to be established to distinguish terrorists and civilians, and the government should provide clear definitions of terms like terrorism, extreme behaviors, extreme languages, etc.

The facilities that used to educate and torture “extreme separatists” should be closed and rectified.

Meanwhile, the government should continue to keep an eye on the terrorists.

Philip Potter said that the concerns about terrorist attacks “need to be balanced against the Chinese government’s incentives to link attacks to foreign forces in order to shift international perceptions away from the sense that they are cracking down on separatists to the idea that force is justified as part of a global war on terrorism.”

Instead of accusing random people to be terrorists, the government should focus on the actual terrorist movements that is going on and actually contribute to the anti-terrorist effort. Otherwise, it will just be another repetition of the tragedy of Tiananmen massacre.

The ill-feeling between Han and the Uighur can be easily sensed with anyone who spends some time in Xinjiang. Terrorist attacks are intolerant. Many Uighurs and some Han have realized the importance and severity of the situation and they are speaking up for the minority Uighur. However, these freedom fighters are sentenced under the charge of “separatism” and “terrorism.” The Chinese government really needs to separate the innocent Uighur citizens from the Uighur terrorists. If the communist party wants to prove to its people that it is trustworthy and cares about the people not the legitimacy, it has to solve the ethnic conflicts, or it will fall from power soon.

Just like Holdstock said in his article:

If we want to talk about what’s happening in Xinjiang, and about Uighurs, we might start by remembering to qualify our statements with a ‘some’ or ‘many.’ When we talk about Xinjiang and the Uighurs, let us report what we actually know. There’s no need to exaggerate—the facts are probably bad enough (69).

Works Cited

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“Exploring the nature of Uighur nationalism: freedom fighters or terrorists?” Committee on Foreign Affairs, House of Representatives. U.S. Government Printing Office. June 16, 2009. Serial No. 111-30. Washington. Accessed April 22, 2018. https://permanent.access.gpo.gov/websites/archives.republicans.foreignaffairs.house.gov/111/50504.pdf

“Five facts about Ilham Tohti, award-winning activist jailed in China.” Amnesty.org. October 20, 2016. Accessed April 22, 2018. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2016/10/five-facts-about-ilham-tohti-uighur-activist-jailed-in-china/

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