Ethnic Uighurs are facing new police scrutiny in Beijing following Tiananmen attack

By Associated Press

Uighur jade vendors sell their wares at an outdoor curio market where Chinese police have been checking their IDs everyday since a vehicle attack in Beijing, China, Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2013. Members of China’s ethnic Uighur community in Beijing say they’re facing stepped-up scrutiny from police following Monday’s deadly vehicle attack at Tiananmen Square in Beijing that killed five people.

An SUV plowing into a crowd in Tiananmen Square, killing five

BEIJING — In a dusty outdoor curio market in China’s capital, traders from the minority Uighur community gathered Wednesday to swap stories about the omnipresent harassment they say they suffer at the hands of the police. 

That scrutiny has only intensified after this week’s deadly vehicle attack at Tiananmen Square in which Uighurs are the prime suspects.
Before the day ended, five suspects had been arrested on suspicion of involvement in Monday’s audacious attack, which a police statement described as carefully planned terrorism strike — Beijing’s first in recent history. 

Police also said knives, iron rods, gasoline and a flag with religious slogans were found in the vehicle used in the suicide attack.
Since the attack, police “come to search us every day. We don’t know why. Our IDs are checked every day, and we don’t know what is happening,” said Ali Rozi, 28, a Uighur (pronounced WEE-gur) trader at the sprawling Panijayuan market.
“We have trouble every day, but we haven’t done anything,” said Rozi, who is from Kashgar, the capital of Xinjiang province where most Uighurs live.
Militants from the Muslim Uighur community have been fighting a low-intensity insurgency against Chinese rule in Xinjiang for years. 

Recent clashes, including an attack on a police station, have left at least 56 people dead this year. 

The government typically calls the incidents terrorist attacks.
The police scrutiny of the Uighurs in Beijing highlights the years of discrimination that have fueled Uighur demands for independence for their northwestern homeland of Xinjiang. 

Many Uighurs say they face routine discrimination, irksome restrictions on their culture and Muslim religion, and economic disenfranchisement that has left them largely poor even as China’s economy booms.
In Monday’s incident, a sports utility vehicle barreled through crowds and burst into flames near the portrait of Mao Zedong on Tiananmen Gate. 

Three of the car’s occupants and two bystanders were killed, and dozens were injured in the strike at the capital’s political heart, where China’s Communist Party leaders live and work.
The incident is the first such attack outside Xinjiang in years, and among the most ambitious given the high-profile target.
An attack in one of the eastern population centers is “something that the Chinese authorities have been worried about for a long time,” said University of Michigan expert Philip Potter.
“Once this threshold has been crossed, it is a difficult thing to constrain,” Potter said, predicting tighter surveillance and scrutiny of Uighurs in eastern cities.
Rozi Ura Imu, a 48-year-old trader in jade and other precious stones from the ancient Silk Road city of Kashgar, condemned the attack, but said it didn’t justify the harsher treatment by authorities.
“I am also upset. They crashed a car, and we end up being harassed by police every day now, saying that we Xinjiang people are like that,” Rozi said, standing at the gate of the Panijayuan market, which has thousands of stalls featuring crafts from regions throughout China: rows of statues and furniture, bins of beads and trinkets, cases of books and scrolls.
Uighurs are a Turkic Central Asian people related to Uzbeks, Khazaks and other groups. 

With their slightly European features and heavy accents, most are immediately recognizable as distinct from China’s ethnic Han majority.
The 9 million Uighurs now make up about 43 percent of the population in Xinjiang, a region more than twice the size of Texas where they used to dominate.
Many complain of strict government controls not seen in other parts of China, including a ban on religious observance by minors and injunctions against traditional male cultural gatherings called meshreps. 

Recent moves to mainly use Chinese in Xinjiang schools have raised fears of the further erosion of Uighur language and culture, as well as job losses for Uighur teachers.
Uighurs also say they’ve seen little benefit from the exploitation of Xinjiang’s natural resources while good jobs tend to flow to ethnic Han migrants.
Uighurs frequently say they’re made to feel like second-class citizens, facing difficulties obtaining passports or even traveling outside Xinjiang. 

Hotels and airlines are reported to have unofficial bans on catering to Uighurs, and many employers refuse to hire them.
“Hotels won’t take us and you can’t rent if your ID shows a Xinjiang residence. People look at us with a lot of prejudice,” said Yusuf Mahmati, 33, a fur trader plying his wares on a busy sidewalk opposite the Panijayuan market, a gathering place for traders from several regional ethnic groups.

The Beijing police statement said the five detained suspects had helped plan and execute the attack, and were caught 10 hours after it was carried out. 

It said they had been on the run and were tracked down with the help of police in Xinjiang and elsewhere. 

It didn’t say where they were captured, but said police had found jihadi flags and long knives inside their temporary lodgings.
“The initial understanding of the police is that the Oct. 28 incident is a case of a violent terrorist attack that was carefully planned, organized and plotted,” the statement said.
The overseas advocacy group World Uyghur Congress on Tuesday urged caution and expressed concerns that Beijing could use the incident to demonize Uighurs as a group.
Beijing-based Uighur economist Ilham Tohti urged the government to make public its findings if it indeed has evidence that Uighurs were involved in a terrorist attack. 

He said repression against Uighurs would only get harsher.
“Most certainly, this incident will worsen the situation for Uighurs,” Tohti said.
Tohti has faced frequent police harassment for his activism. 

He was placed under house arrest numerous times in the wake of deadly ethnic rioting in Xinjiang’s capital, Urumqi, in 2009 that sparked a nationwide crackdown on Uighur activists.
The Urumqi violence, which left nearly 200 dead, most of them Han, had strong ethnic overtones, beginning with a protest over the killing of Uighur workers at a south China toy factory over false rumors of sexual assaults on Chinese women. 

China termed the bloodshed a terrorist attack planned by overseas-based Uighur rights advocates and heavily increased its security presence in Xinjiang.
Chinese authorities rarely provide direct evidence to back up terrorism claims, and critics say ordinary crimes or cases of civil unrest are often labeled as organized acts of terror.
However, Xinjiang borders Afghanistan and unstable Central Asian states with militant Islamic groups, and Uighurs are believed to be among militants sheltering in Pakistan’s lawless northwestern region.
Uighurs were also captured by U.S. forces following the fall of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, and 22 were held as enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. 

All but three have since been released and now reside in Albania, Bermuda and elsewhere.
China has largely been successful at limiting both the volume and effectiveness of domestic terrorist attacks, while containing them mainly to Xinjiang.
However, the Chinese government has warned that radicals were planning attacks outside of Xinjiang and launching strikes in China’s eastern population centers offers “easy access to soft, high-profile targets as well as an information and media environment that is increasingly ripe for terrorist exploitation,” Potter said.

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Uighur group scorns China Tiananmen 'terrorist' claim

Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer (L) and Alim Seytoff, pictured on December 10, 2010 being greeted by Nancy Pelosi in Oslo
Beijing (AFP) — A Uighur group dismissed Beijing's account of a "terrorist attack" in Tiananmen Square as a dubious pretext to repress the ethnic minority Thursday, even as state-run media hinted at potential repercussions.
Beijing police said on Wednesday that Usmen Hasan -- in an SUV carrying his mother and wife, jihadist banners and machetes -- sped onto the pavement, crashed in Tiananmen Square and set the car alight.
The crash in the symbolic heart of the Chinese state killed all three people in the car and two tourists, with 40 others injured.
Five other suspects with Uighur-sounding names were captured within 10 hours, although police only announced their detention two days later.
The mostly Muslim Uighur minority are concentrated in China's far western region of Xinjiang, where ethnic tensions and discontent with the government periodically burst out into violence.
Beijing regularly calls such incidents "terrorism", but Uighur organisations dismiss that as an excuse to justify religious and security restrictions, and information in the area is tightly controlled.
Alim Seytoff, a US-based spokesman for the overseas World Uyghur Congress (WUC), said the official narrative of the Tiananmen event was full of holes and discriminatory.
"The Chinese claim is in a way very unbelievable, to some extent outrageous," he told AFP.
"The only reason this is labelled as a terrorist incident is because the passengers happened to be Uighurs."
Seytoff questioned why an attacker would kill his own family, and how religious material could survive in a car engulfed in flames.
"If he were a terrorist, why would he bring his mother and his wife?" Seytoff said.
"The car was burned almost to the ground, the three people were burned to death, and the flag wasn't burned -- in the car?"
The account fit what Seytoff called a pattern of authorities labelling Uighurs as terrorists based on "thin evidence".
"We do not believe there is any kind of organised resistance against Chinese rule," he said.
"Some of the violence by Uighurs -- they are more sporadic, individualistic, out of desperation."
According to Chinese state-run media a "terrorist attack" in Xinjiang left 35 people dead in June, and 139 people have been arrested in recent months for spreading jihadist ideology.
Ethnic tensions have risen in Xinjiang since millions of members of China's Han majority have moved to the resource-rich region, where they largely control the economy. 

Rioting in the capital Urumqi involving both ethnic groups in 2009 left 200 people dead.
Seytoff warned Uighurs could face tighter repression after Monday's incident, particularly in the capital, where the WUC said 93 people have been rounded up.
Security has been bolstered across Xinjiang, where officers already maintain checkpoints, break up small gatherings and raid homes, he added.
State-run media warned Thursday that Uighurs would be the "biggest victims" of the Tiananmen Square attack.
Police had refrained from stating the attackers' ethnicity but the Global Times, which is close to the ruling Communist party, said that all those involved were Uighurs.
The paper, which often strikes a nationalist tone, called for a "united front against terrorism".
"People from Xinjiang, especially the Uighurs, will be the biggest victims," it said. 

"The ordinary work and study of Xinjiang people in inland regions may be affected."
It urged people in Xinjiang to "understand the negative effects and overcome them by cooperating with their inland counterparts".
At the same time it called on Han Chinese to reach out to the minority group and "make the Uighurs feel our sincerity".
An editorial in the state-run China Daily also suggested Uighurs might feel repercussions after Monday's incident.
"What they have done is against the interests and will of the majority of Uighurs, who have benefited from the unity of the country, from the reform and opening-up, and from the country's preferential policies for non-Han ethnic groups," it said.

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Tibetans Call China’s Policies at Tourist Spot Stifling

   

By DAN LEVIN

 XIAHE, China — Buddhist monks in flowing burgundy robes hurried along the dirt paths of the Labrang Monastery, trying their best to ignore the scrum of Chinese tourists following their every move, many with cameras fit for paparazzi.
Pilgrims and those less spiritually inclined wandered through the ornate complex here in the mountain town of Xiahe to gaze upon towering Buddha statues bathed in incense.
Some tourists held back to indulge in distinctly unenlightened pursuits, smoking cigarettes and pouting at smartphones in the high-tech vanity ritual known as the selfie.

A Tibetan monk and pilgrims in prayer at a Buddhist temple near the Labrang Monastery in Xiahe.
Chinese tourists on the Qinghai grasslands near Xiahe.
Tourists watch Tibetan monks emerging from a hall at Labrang Monastery.

One of the most important sites in Tibetan Buddhism, Labrang presents an idyllic picture of sacred devotion that is carefully curated by the Chinese government, which hopes to convince visitors that Tibetan religion and culture are swaddled in the Communist Party’s benevolent embrace.
But behind closed doors, many of the monastery’s resident monks complain about intrusive government policies, invisible to tourists, that they say are strangling their culture and identity.
“Even if we’re just praying, the government treats us as criminals,” said a young monk, who like others interviewed recently spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid government repercussions.
Such frustrations, many monks say, are what have driven more than 120 Tibetans to set fire to themselves since 2009, including 13 in the Labrang area, in a wave of protests that has gone largely unreported in Chinese news media.
International human rights advocates say that rather than address the underlying grievances — including Beijing’s deeply unpopular campaign to demonize the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader — Chinese authorities have responded with even harsher policies that punish the relatives of those who self-immolate and imprison those who disseminate news of the protests to the outside world.
Exile groups and analysts say Labrang and a handful of other monasteries across the vast Tibetan plateau in Central Asia have become showcases for Beijing’s strategy, which seeks to stifle dissent in well-trafficked tourist sites without scaring away visitors.
Monks here describe a largely unseen web of controls that keep potential troublemakers in line: ubiquitous surveillance cameras, paid informers and plainclothes security agents who mingle among the busloads of tourists.
Hidden from the throngs are the political education sessions during which monks are forced to denounce the Dalai Lama.
Stiff jail sentences await those who step out of line.
“If we don’t obey, it will be terrible for us,” the monk said.
Founded in the early 18th century, the Labrang Monastery is tucked into the dusky hills of northwestern Gansu Province.
Each day, hundreds of Chinese tourists arrive to spin colorful prayer wheels lining the monastery perimeter and sip tea at hotels designed to resemble Tibetan nomadic tents.
Along the town’s main street, they buy turquoise-encrusted amulets, dress up in monks’ robes and take turns trying on the ceremonial yellow hats that resemble mohawk-style haircuts.
Officials hope that a recently completed airport will draw even bigger crowds.
In a monastery courtyard surrounded by whitewashed mud walls, a Chinese family from the provincial capital, Lanzhou, knelt down to pray to Buddha.
“If you ask nicely, he’ll make your wish come true,” said the mother, Ming Yang, who acknowledged that her understanding of Buddhism ended there.
With an eye on the lucrative prestige of a Unesco World Heritage listing, the central government is giving the monastery a $26 million face-lift.
Around 1,000 monks and 65,000 volumes of Buddhist scripture are housed in the sprawling complex, which local officials say is in dire need of structural improvements.
Yet locals complain that much of the construction is aimed at increasing tourism, rather than benefiting Tibetans.
“It looks fancy, but in reality all the improvements are for Chinese people,” one said.
Tourism is rapidly reshaping much of the Tibetan plateau.
According to the Xinhua state news agency, six million tourists visited Lhasa, the capital of the Tibetan Autonomous Region, in the first eight months of this year, a 20 percent increase over the same period in 2012.
The boom has attracted several international hotel chains to the city, which is under de facto martial law.
In May, Tibetan exile groups started a boycott campaign against the InterContinental Hotels Group, which is building a 2,000-room luxury resort next to the historic residence once occupied by the Dalai Lama.
In the wake of violent anti-Chinese protests that swept Tibet in 2008 and the wave of self-immolations that followed, security forces have tightened their grip.
The crackdown reaches deep into the folds of Tibetan spirituality.
According to the International Campaign for Tibet, officials have posted notices in Tibetan areas declaring it illegal to pray for self-immolators or to show solidarity “by burning incense, chanting religious scriptures, releasing animals from killing and lighting candles.”
At least two monks have been jailed for praying on behalf of self-immolators, the group said.
Exile groups say such tactics only alienate Tibetans further.
“Even lighting a butter lamp or incense stick becomes an act against the state,” Kate Saunders, communications director for the organization, said from London.
Yet local enforcement has been erratic.
Nowhere is this more clear than at Labrang, where a framed photo of the Dalai Lama sits on an altar beside a large golden Buddha.
For years, the government has banned photos of the Dalai Lama and forbidden Tibetans to worship him as a religious figure.
Monks at Labrang said they believed that local officials had decided to quietly tolerate such photos in an effort to head off further unrest.
On the tour, few of the Chinese day-trippers seemed to recognize the older, bespectacled man Beijing has called “a wolf in sheep’s clothing.”
The monk guiding the group made no mention of his identity, lest it threaten the ticket sales and donations needed to cover operating costs.
But being the main attraction on a Buddhist safari has spiritual drawbacks.
“Chinese tourists just barge in when we’re studying,” a middle-aged monk said as he fingered a set of prayer beads.
“It knocks on our minds, but they don’t care.”
Such complaints appear to be falling on deaf ears.
During a tour of the region in July, China’s top official in charge of ethnic minorities, Yu Zhengsheng, insisted that economic development was the panacea for what ailed Tibetans.
In the same breath, he condemned the Dalai Lama’s “middle way,” which calls for genuine autonomy in Tibet but not independence, saying it conflicts with China’s political system.
“Only when people’s lives have been improved can they be better united with the Chinese Communist Party and become a reliable basis for maintaining stability,” he said, according to Xinhua.
But local Tibetans seethe at China’s refusal to recognize their most basic aspirations.
“Our hope is that the Dalai Lama can return,” said a monk, looking out for eavesdroppers while sitting at a cafe.
“Without him, there is no chance our religion and culture will survive.”

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