BBC is reporting widespread violence in Xinjiang province in western China. This is the province with the Uyghurs and oil. The people who live here are not the same ethnicity as the dominant groups of Han Chinese who live in the more populated eastern coastal areas. Xinjiang is populated largely (there has certainly been significant Han migration to the region over the years) by various Turkic groups like the Uyghurs.
Monday, July 06, 2009
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It is an astonishing level of violence. It is so astonishing that I am pretty clear about one thing, that I do not understand it at all. We get pretty lame explanations about "ethnic violence." Sure, but that is just the background, not the reason for what's going on. It's like saying that the reason for a car crash is the combustibility of fuel in the engine. Sure, but it omits things like, say, who is driving it and where.
Yeah, this is really one of the most remote parts of the world. It is far from any sea coast and access to it is dependent on the good graces of the Chinese government.
I think this can be seen in the light of last year's erruption of violence in neighboring Tibet.
The Chinese government has been undertaking a steady policy of "Hanification" in the western provinces for some time. The locals have never really be on board with that. I suspect that these uprisings have been happening on a fairly regular basis but that we have not gotten wind of it until China started to open up a little 20 or 30 years ago.
Our news last night had a video clip of Uyghur workers being beaten/bludgeoned to death outside a factory by Han Chinese, saying that this clip had been spread and was the reason for the retaliatory violence - the Uyghurs apparently staged a protest march which rapidly degenerated into massive violence, with innocent* Han being grabbed and beaten, even as they fled.
*innocent in that they were nothing to do with the original video clip as far as anyone can tell.
I agree that these uprisings have probably been happening regularly - the phrasing on the news last night was something like "the most violent protests ever reported in this region" (italics mine). From what I've seen, it looks like the Chinese government are trying to get rid of the Uyghurs, and have been for a good while, in a sort of stealth ethnic cleansing kind of way, with the difference now being that we're hearing about it.
ps I just have to have a whinge about the LATimes (because I know you'll all agree that they're crap!): their article about all this, titled "Deadly riots in China highlight ethnic tensions", is linked to from the main page with the link text "156 die as Chinese police, Muslims clash".
Way to go with the religious intolerance and further entrenchment of anti-Muslim sentiment of the sort that takfiri such as AQ need for their recruitment campaigns. Sigh.
Sigh indeed Pombat. That LA Times headline is pretty bad.
The death toll suggests to me that the Chinese authorities are scared. They probably have no idea who is organizing this or how. Otherwise, we'd be seeing targeted arrests instead of just spraying bullets on unarmed crowds.
A leninist mindset can't understand what's going on out there is my guess. They think in terms of social action being dependent upon a "vanguard" elite to be meaningful. They are probably arresting dozens of people trying to identify and isolate the "leaders" of the unrest. But my guess is that this is just a spontaneous violent uprising against a profoundly unpopular regime.
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