A paranoiac reaction

Last week, violence in China's westernmost province bordering with India, took a new turn as Jume Tahir, the government-appointed imam of the 600-year-old, Id Kah mosque in the city of Kashgar, was found dead in a pool of blood outside the mosque’s prayer house. He was murdered after conducting morning prayers. Id Kah mosque is located in the city of Kashgar, which is an old oasis city that was part of the Silk Road trade route that ran from Europe to Asia. It is the largest mosque in the province of Xinjiang with a capacity of 20000 people.

The dead imam, Jume Tahir, was said to be deeply unpopular among local Uighurs who disliked the fact that he praised Communist Party policies while preaching in his mosque. According to some local Uighurs, Jume Tahir consistently cooperated with the government, aided the monitoring of religious activities, and used his position in the mosque to promote Chinese policies which are unacceptable to Uighurs, who believed that he had a special relationship with the Chinese ministry of security. Confirming this, US based Radio Free Asia (RFA) had earlier reported on its website, that Tahir had been critical of violence carried out by Uighurs.

Chinese media however expressed exactly contrary views. Chinese news agency Xinhua, who had earlier praised the Imam saying that he condemned terrorist violence carried out in the name of ethnicity and religion, now said in its dispatch that Tahir, 74, “enjoyed a high reputation among Muslims nationwide.” Chinese media were quick in responding that three thugs influenced by religious extremist ideology have killed the Imam and gave their names.

Killing of the Imam came within two days after violence broke out between Uighurs and security authorities, when an attack was launched on a police station in Yarkand county in the Kashgar region. Nearly 100 people were left dead or wounded. This attack has come as a latest episode in series of attacks launched by terrorists. A market attack in Urumqi, Xinjiang’s capital city, in May 1914 left 39 people dead, while a deadly rampage by knife-wielding assailants at a train station in Kunming in China’s southwest in March 1914 killed 29 people. These attacks have come after a fiery vehicle crash at Tiananmen Square, Beijing’s symbolic heart, in October last year. Though Chinese have been blaming terrorists for these attacks, fact remains that the cultural and religious repression by the Chinese Government is fueling the unrest in Xinjiang.

Another reaction that sounds almost comical has come from an another city in Xinjiang region, known as Karamay, about 400 km north of the region's capital Urumqi. The city officials say that persons wearing Islamic headscarves and with beards will not be allowed to use public transport in the city. The ban, which prohibits headscarves, partial face veils and burkas, would last until 20 August.

Karamay Daily, a newspaper published a list of "five types of people" who would be banned from public transport. These are the people wearing headscarves, veils, burkas, clothes with the crescent moon and star symbol, and "youths with long beards". "Passengers who do not co-operate, particularly the 'five types of people', will be reported to the police and all commuters would be subject to bag checks.

There is no doubt that situation in Xinjiang region is rather grave but this kind of reaction almost seems paranoiac, particularly because what is banned straight way hurts the religious beliefs of people. Such measures are only likely to add more fuel to the resentment among people. Chinese Internet users echoed these feelings in their comments on Weibo, China's microblogging service.

One user said: "So every bearded or burka-clad person is a terrorist? For goodness sake these are traditional customs," and another user added that "Having a beard definitely does not mean you are a terrorist. ” It is obvious that such comical orders are not likely to reduce the strif and tension in the region. They are likely to boost them.

9^th August 2014

Terrorism takes firm roots in China

It all began on 5^th July 2009, when there were series of violent riots over several days in Ürümqi, the capital city of the Xinjiang, in northwestern People's Republic of China. The first day's rioting, which involved at least 1,000 Uyghurs, began as a protest but escalated into violent attacks that mainly targeted Han ("ethnic Chinese") people. Two days later hundreds of Han people clashed with both police and Uyghurs. Though Chinese army managed to quench the unrest, it was just on surface, while uneasiness continued underneath with minor skirmishes happening all along.

In July 2013. another major incident happened when trouble brewed again in the township of Lukqun, Shanshan county, Turpan district in eastern Xinjiang, when police apprehended about nine suspects, most of whom are aged 18 or 19, including some Lukqun locals. Next day a mob attacked and set fire to a government building, a local police station, a nearby construction site and more than 10 government vehicles, and stabbed both police officers and civilians indiscriminately. The casualty figures reached 35, which included police officers and civilians. Police shot dead 11 attackers and caught four at the scene. Within few days of the incident, trouble flared again in the island city of Hotan, which is on the other side of Taklamakan desert and more than a 1000 Kms from Lukqum. A mob of more than a hundred people, riding motorbikes and wielding knifes, attacked a police station here after after gathering at local religious venues. In a separate incident, on the same day, some 200 people attempted to "incite trouble" at a major shopping area in Hotan.

The simmering tensions between Uighurs and Han Chinese have taken a heavy toll in last decade. History shows that such troubled situations soon allow the terrorism, funded and aided by external sources, to raise its ugly head and that is what is happening in China now. The first incident occurred in in October 2013, when a jeep veered into a crowd in Beijing’s iconic Tienanmen Square, and then crashed and burst into flames, killing five people.

Chinese declared immediately, that it was the work of terrorists from Xinjiang, and within 10 hours of the crash, authorities had arrested five suspects in a night raid, who were in possession of long knives and flags calling for “jihad.” This was followed by one of the worst kind of terrorist attacks on the night of March 1 2014, when a group of men carrying weapons burst into the Kunming train station plaza and the ticket hall. The armed assailants dressed in black, launched a blistering attack with long knives and started slashing indiscriminately, the innocent people queuing to buy Railway tickets. Police teams were called for and they started shooting the assailants. Police shot dead at least four attackers, but by the time assailants disappeared, 29 people were lying dead and more than 130 were wounded. Photos posted on Sina Weibo — a Chinese version of Twitter — showed blood spattered across the station floor and medical staff crouching over bodies lying on the ground along with images of spectacles, shoes and baggage strewn across the floor of the waiting room behind police tape. Chinese state media called the incident as China's 9/11.

Within few hours, The Kunming city government issued a statement saying that the attack was orchestrated by separatists from the northwest region of Xinjiang. The announcement was rather surprising because so far periodic violent clashes in Xinjiang have been between locals and security forces and civilians were never targeted, it was also not very logical that terrorists would strike in politically insignificant Yunnan, more than 1,600 kilometers from Xinjiang.

The terrorists have struck again this week as a bombing attack took place outside the Urumqi South Railway Station in Urumqi in northwest China's Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region around 7 PM on 30 April 2014. The explosion occurred at the passenger exit, just after tain K453 from Chengdu to Urumqi had arrived at the station. The explosion appeared to be centred around luggage left on the ground between the station exit and a bus stop. It however was not only a bomb attack. It was followed by the attackers using knives to stab people at the station exit. Attackers fled after Armed police officers intervened leaving behind 3 people dead and 79 seriously injured. The station was closed after the incident and services suspended but was reopened later. The terrorists had chosen the time well as it was a peak travel time with China's 1^st May, labour day holiday just ahead. A BBC report mentions Raffaello Pantucci, a senior research fellow with the military think-tank at the Royal United Services Institute as saying "We have seen attacks and problems in Urumqi before, but we haven't seen anything on this scale in quite a while I think the issue is that the problem [of attacks] in Xinjiang is getting worse."

From the news, it is becoming crystal clear that these attacks are no longer bursts of public anger and unrest. They are surely professional terrorist attacks aimed at larger targets. China has now joined the league of other nations like India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq and Yemen, where terrorists can strike any day and any time. China needs to rethink its Xinjiang policy if it really wants to see peace in the region. The region's Uighur Muslim minority, who number about nine million, have long complained of repression under Chinese rule. The terrorists are simply making use of this resentment in the minds of the people. to create instability in the region.

The blast occurred as China's President Xi Jinping had just completed a tour of the region. He has said that he would implement appropriate policies to improve ethnic harmony and common prosperity of all ethnic group in Xinjiang. It is to be hoped that this is not just lip service because now it is certain that terrorism has taken firm roots in China and mere harsh measures against the population would no longer help.

2^nd May 2014

p.s.

 Attackers killed at least 31 people Thursday when they ploughed two vehicles into a market and threw explosives in the capital of China’s Xinjiang region, in what authorities called the latest “severe terrorist incident” to hit the Muslim Uighur homeland.
More than 90 people were also wounded when two off-road vehicles drove into a crowd in Urumqi, with one of them exploding, the regional government’s Tianshan web portal said, in an attack with echoes of a fiery car crash in Tiananmen Square last year.

22nd May 2014 

A night of the long knives

There are regions in the world like Pakistani province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which remain politically unsettled and trouble can flare up there at any moment on any day. There are also some regions, which are politically stable, yet a turmoil can happen their at a slightest pretext. China's western autonomous region of Xinjiang is one such dangerous area. It is home to an ethnic Muslim minority called Uighurs, who are a Turkic-speaking people who regard themselves as culturally and ethnically close to central Asia, despite a long history of Chinese rule there. The Chinese Communist Party gained control over the region in 1949. In 1955, it was declared an autonomous region, giving it a status on the paper, similar to that of Tibet.

Politically, Xinjiang can be called as a cross road, because it shares borders with Mongolia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India. Over the decades, Chinese Government has encouraged large scale migration of Han Chinese migrants to the region, displacing Uighurs from their traditional lands and fueling tensions. There are more than eight million Han Chinese in Xinjiang against 10 million Uighurs. The newcomers take most of the new jobs, and unemployment among Uighurs is high. There is wide spread resentment against discrimination and harsh treatment by security forces, despite official promises of equal rights and ethnic harmony. Some of the Uighurs even want outright separation from China and want Xinjiang region to become an independent country called “East Turkestan.”

The simmering tensions between Uighurs and Han Chinese have erupted into riots in last decade. In July 2009, rioting killed some 200 people and injured 1,700. In July last year (2013), 35 people were killed in a town. Renewed protests last year also turned violent and are believed to have claimed more than 100 lives. Hundreds are believed to have died in recent years, but the violence has always been restricted to Xinjiang region only.

However in October last year, when a jeep veered into a crowd in Beijing’s iconic Tiananmen Square, and then crashed and burst into flames, killing five people, Chinese declared immediately, that it was work the work of terrorists from Xinjiang, and within 10 hours of the crash, authorities had arrested five suspects in a night raid who were in possession of long knives and flags calling for “jihad.” Many international analysts think that China has found it useful to blame ethnic tensions on any act of terrorism to gain sympathies at home though we shall never know the truth. Incidents involving Uighurs are always labelled as “terrorist attacks” by Chinese authorities, although the description is rarely used for incidents carried out by members of the Han majority, who may have some grievances against society or the state to settle and have resorted to violence.

Yunnan is the southwest province of China, bordering with Myanmar, Laos and Thailand. It is more of a tropical region with a lush green cover. It is also one of the most beautiful regions of China and is the home of the famous Chinese Tea, which is grown in the hilly region around state capital Kunming- also is a popular tourist destination in China. Yunnan is a peaceful region and has no history of any violent clashes between locals and security forces. Yunnan also happens to be 1600 Km away from troubled Xinjiang region.

On the night of March 1 2014, a group of men carrying weapons burst into the Kunming train station plaza and the ticket hall. The armed assailants dressed in black, launched a blistering attack with long knives and started slashing indiscriminately, the innocent people queuing to buy Railway tickets. Police teams were called for and they started shooting the assailants. Police shot dead at least four attackers, but by the time assailants disappeared, 29 people were lying dead and more than 130 were wounded. Photos posted on Sina Weibo — a Chinese version of Twitter — showed blood spattered across the station floor and medical staff crouching over bodies lying on the ground along with images of spectacles, shoes and baggage strewn across the floor of the waiting room behind police tape. Chinese state media are calling the incident as China's 9/11.

Within few hours, The Kunming city government issued a statement saying that the attack was orchestrated by separatists from the northwest region of Xinjiang. The announcement was rather surprising because so far periodic violent clashes in Xinjiang have been between locals and security forces and civilians were never targeted, it was also not very logical that terrorists would strike in politically insignificant Yunnan, more than 1,600 kilometers from Xinjiang.

Though some China analysts are raising a question mark about participation of Uighurs in Kunming attack because it is so far away, it must be noted that it is entirely possible. I am more inclined to call it China's, 26/11, comparing it with the carnage carried out by Pakistan based terrorist outfit in Mumbai in 2008. In this attack also, hundreds of innocent people were killed and terrorists had came all the way from Karachi, a place at least 900 Km away. Unfortunately, total lack of transparency in China, makes it rather difficult to comment and be sure about the real facts.

One thing that surely has come in as an aftereffect of this incident, is the widening of the rift between Han Chinese of Yunnan and Uighur, who would now always be watched with suspicion there, leading to their further isolation from mainstream politics. There is a fear that if the Chinese government starts using this threat of separatists to justify their heavy-handed security and policies in Xinjiang, such incidents might even recur frequently as a backlash.

4^th March 2014