Earlier in the week I wrote, "Perhaps the most significant long-term effect of the violence in Xinjiang will be to raise the profile of the Uighur cause in other Muslim countries". Al-Qaeda have since threatened retaliation against Chinese workers overseas, but this, an article in Arab News on "China's forgotten people", is more the kind of attitude I had in mind:
Xinjiang does not exist. For nearly a century, China has done everything to help the world forget about the existence of its large and once vibrant Muslim region. Like Arthur Conan Doyle’s “Lost World”, it had been conveniently forgotten by the world, including China’s numerous Muslim neighbors as well as the rest of the Muslim world.
While China has tried to suppress the Islamic identity of Xinjiang and its proud Muslims before and during the communist rule, what amazes one most is the willful and shameful role most Muslim countries have played in this systematic marginalization and obliteration of the distinct Islamic character and identity of the Uighurs. They may not have nodded in collusion but by looking the other way, with the rest of the world, they helped in the most ruthless purge of a great people and culture. So much so for years few in the next-door Pakistan, Afghanistan and beyond knew what had been going on in the red paradise. As for the Middle East, the less said the better. The Arabs have been so busy tending to the ever bleeding Palestinians and fighting their own little turf wars that they have had little time or patience to think about the poor Uighurs.
Even the Organization of the Islamic Conference, which over the years dutifully passed those perfunctory resolutions, on Palestine to Chechnya and on Kosovo to Kashmir, did not ever cast a cursory glance beyond the Karakoram toward Xinjiang.
Which is perhaps why the magnitude and intensity of the uprising in Xinjiang this month have come as a huge surprise to the world, reminding it of the existence of China’s forgotten Muslims.
And so on...
The spectacular protests in Xinjiang’s capital Urumqi this month go to prove that the brute force and tanks and endless indoctrination cannot crush a free-spirited people’s will to live life their own way. Freedom will find its way even in the remotest and most terrorized corners of the world. The massive government crackdown killing more than 140 people in Urumqi has been the biggest case of using state power against a civilian population since the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989. However, it got lukewarm response in the Western media that went delirious over the opposition protests in Iran last month, playing them over and over again. Interestingly, in both Iran and Xinjiang the protesters happened to be young Muslims demanding their rights and protesting injustice. Yet they received decidedly different treatment from the world media and global champions of democracy and human rights.
But this is not about the classic Western hypocrisy and dual standard....
It's hardly worth explaining the differences between Iran and Xinjiang. The author is up and running now:
In the global village where time and space have lost their meaning and borders are increasingly shrinking assailed by the 24/7 satellite television and Internet, you cannot keep a people locked away against their will forever. Like life and nature, freedom finds a way — to express itself. And when it does so, nothing can stop it. Not even the most fearsome armies, or their awesome weapons.
It’s all the more difficult to do so when those at the receiving end happen to be Muslims. Historically, Muslims have seldom given in to subjugation, wherever they are. Call them terrorists or what you will, but they just can’t come to terms with injustice and oppression and suffer in silence, whether it is in the sleepy Xinjiang or the cold climes of Chechnya.
Thanks to years of duplicitous colonial policies and America’s never-ending wars, localized sources of anger and conflict around the world are coalescing into a global movement of resistance. Like it or not, a new global Muslim consciousness is taking shape and this is not just confined to the Muslim heartlands but envelopes regions as diverse and dissimilar as Kosovo and Kashmir. Increasingly, Muslim resistance groups and movements are inspiring, influencing and responding to each other even as they defy all modern notions of borders and nation states.
After 9/11, the Arabs have increasingly reached out to China investing heavily in its exploding industries and markets. China’s direct trade with Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar and other Arab states has multiplied incredibly fast over the past couple of years. All this could change if China does not change its ways of treating its Muslims. And if festering wounds in Xinjiang are not treated soon, Beijing could have a problem on its hands that would make the Tiananmen Square carnage look like picnic.
It's a clash of two absolutist imperialisms - the PRC believes that all lands which ever acknowledged the sovereignty of Imperial China, no matter how long ago, must be reunited to the Motherland. And, as we all know, islamists, and many other muslims, believe that all lands that once were muslim must be reunited in the Caliphate. It's not a problem that is going to be solved by the usual nostrums.
Posted by: Martin Adamson | July 17, 2009 at 02:53 PM
And should have mentioned also - there's an iron law that when "moderate", long-isolated Muslim communities come back into contact with mainstream Islam as represented by Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan, etc they always become more radicalised - see Malaysia, Indonesia, Nigeria, Chechnya, Bosnia and so on.
Posted by: Martin Adamson | July 17, 2009 at 03:01 PM
Re Islamic ME countries "investing heavily" in China, they're doing so for their own benefit, not China's.
They could just as easily invest in establishing industries on their own home soil...oh wait, that'd mean their menfolk would actually have to put in an 8 hour day.
http://www.ccc.nps.navy.mil/si/2004/mar/looneyMar04.asp
Posted by: DaninVan | July 17, 2009 at 05:09 PM