Why the Carrot Isn't Working, Either

The Chinese government thinks it can thwart unrest among ethnic minorities by raising their incomes. But prosperity doesn't buy loyalty.
BY SCOTT RADNITZ, SEAN ROBERTS

Uighurs living in Turkey burn a Chinese flag to commemorate the July 5 incident.


On Oct. 28, a car crashed in Beijing's Tiananmen Square, killing two innocent bystanders and injuring about 40 others. 

The incident appears to have been an act of terrorism, albeit quite an unsophisticated one, perpetrated by ethnic Uighurs, a Turkic Muslim population mostly living in China's Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (XUAR). 

This is the first time in recent history that Uighurs have engaged in political violence outside the XUAR. 

The incident seems to be a product of the substantially escalating tension between Uighurs and the Chinese state.
The Uighurs view the XUAR as their homeland, an assertion that has long fueled tensions between them and the Chinese state. 

This tension has been on the rise over the last twenty years as the People's Republic of China rolled out controversial policies that emphasize integrating Uighurs into the Chinese state.

The government has used heavy-handed measures to impose this integration (sticks), but it has placed its largest bets on the hope that rising prosperity will encourage loyalty among Uighurs (carrots). 

Unfortunately, China is guided by an outdated development strategy, and it's only generating more instability.
China's most controversial integration measures suppress the Uighur culture and violate the group's human rights. 

Since the mid-1990s, the Chinese state has pursued policies that limit the Uighurs' ability to freely practice Islam and prevent all forms of political organization and expression in the XUAR. 

This has led to hundreds of arrests on political charges of "illegal religious activity," "separatism," and "terrorism," scores of which have ended in executions. 

More recently, the Chinese government has adopted education policies that force all students to study in Mandarin Chinese while limiting access to education in the Uighur language and reducing the publication and broadcasting of materials in Uighur.
But these heavy-handed cultural transformation measures tell only part of the story. 

The Chinese government has also undertaken a gigantic economic development plan for the XUAR, and has targeted rural Uighurs to partake in education and industrial work projects at institutions and factories in China's interior. 

These "softer" efforts to integrate Uighurs have not only failed to ease tensions between Uighurs and the state, but indeed appear to have exacerbated them.
This has caused frustration among Chinese policymakers and citizens, who view these efforts as a benevolent program to provide Uighurs with new opportunities and better livelihoods. 

But the Uighurs' resistance should not be surprising. 

In fact, in the modern era, many states have attempted to pacify restive minority populations through economic development, only to bear similar results.
The idea of modernization as a way to unify nations goes back several centuries. 

The nation-states of Europe we know today -- Germany, England, France -- emerged as unified entities from their fragmented forbears through the advance of communication and transportation technology, along with concerted efforts by state leaders. 

Modern states not only began to collect taxes and raise armies, but also sponsored national systems of education that propagated state ideology and instructed pupils in a single national dialect. 

Economic development birthed loyalty to the state and fellow-feeling among citizens. 

As suggested by both Marxist and free market modernization theorists, economic stability and prosperity was thought to yield harmonious, unified states.
In the 20th century, would-be state builders sought to accomplish in a few decades what took centuries to take hold in Europe, using top-down planning and industrialization. 

This approach was effective in achieving rapid growth, but it was less successful in establishing a unified body politic. 

In Turkey, leaders attempted to use a strategy of economic development through education and infrastructure to integrate minority Kurds into the new state, even as they banned the Kurdish language and suppressed its culture. 

This strategy only generated a violent movement for secession. 

Today, the Turkish government has been pressed to accommodate the still-strong Kurdish identity through new reforms.
The Soviet Union also relied on development to integrate the many peoples of its far-flung empire. 

After the Russian Revolution, the Bolsheviks sought to eliminate national identity altogether -- and with it the threat of anti-Soviet nationalism -- by delivering material progress. 

Increased well-being would bind people to the Soviet regime, while macroeconomic growth would eliminate differences between nations, ultimately transforming Latvians and Uzbeks into exclusively Soviet subjects. 

As we now know, this did not work out as planned: 70 years of development led to remarkable improvements in living standards, but it did not stifle nationalism. 

It was the wealthiest inhabitants who were the most vehement in opposing the Soviet Union.
Why doesn't prosperity buy loyalty?
First, economic development, rather than causing political passivity, tends to result in greater political engagement. 

Scholars of modernization theory recognized decades ago that urbanization, literacy, and rising incomes gave people greater means to develop their own interests and to advocate for them. 

Rather than expressing gratitude to the state that made their political consciousness possible, newly empowered classes would demand more accountable governments and sometimes overthrow them. 

In simplified form, this is the story of democratization in Europe in the 19th century. 

It is also the story of anti-colonial liberation movements, whose leaders emerged from the middle classes that were educated under colonial systems of rule.
A second reason development fails to quell nationalism is that it occurs unevenly, especially when it is rapid and state-led. 

The benefits of centralized investment, even if nominally intended for the minority masses, often fail to reach their targets. 

Instead, state largesse tends to fall disproportionately into the hands of well-connected elites (who may be settlers in minority regions rather than minority representatives themselves) or to benefit certain (usually urban) areas over others, which can increase overall inequality between majority and minority ethnic groups and exacerbate resentments. 

Prosperity and development lead more citizens of the majority group to settle in minority regions, often marginalizing minority groups in areas where they were once the primary inhabitants. 

When people are marginalized both economically and culturally, their exclusion heightens their awareness of difference from the majority and provides a unifying cause around which they can rally.
A third reason for the failure of the modernization strategy is that human beings tend to value certain ideals in addition to, and often above, material well-being. 

Money is nice, but the desire for justice, fairness, self-determination, or dignity can be a stronger driver of human behavior. 

Although the protests of the Arab uprisings were partly about unemployment and frustration with elite corruption, the demonstrators' slogans appealed to more abstract virtues in pursuit of a better society. "Bread, freedom and dignity" became a rallying cry in Egypt's Tahrir Square. 

Expression of these values is usually even more pronounced in movements involving culturally marginalized groups, who react to official suppression by asserting their language, culture, and traditions.
This brings us back to the Uighurs. 

The Chinese government's intensive development plan has only inspired conflict in the XUAR as Uighurs become increasingly marginalized in their own homeland. 

Development has in many cases displaced traditional Uighur communities, the most well known example being the destruction of the culturally significant, medieval city of Kashgar. 

In other cases the government has forcibly relocated Uighurs to accommodate large development projects. Additionally, China's policies have encouraged an influx of Han Chinese migrants into the region in pursuit of economic opportunity, reducing the Uighur share of the population. 

Finally, Uighurs are increasingly discriminated against for employment in urban areas, as the economic benefits of the region's development flow mostly to Han Chinese.
China's development efforts in the XUAR utilize an outdated top-down model of development that betters the region's GDP, but not the lives of its average citizens. 

As a result, many Uighurs perceive China's development plan as an attack on their very existence.
The failure of state-led development to ease ethnic tensions in the XUAR should not be taken as evidence that development can never mitigate conflict and unrest. 

However, when the politics of identity are involved, development planning must include all ethnic groups and communities and promote a fair distribution of wealth. 

In the absence of these considerations, China will continue to be confronted by the perverse consequences of its development policies. 

Attacks like the one in Tiananmen Square may become all too common.

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Tiananmen crash: Terrorism or cry of desperation?

• Chinese government has created a police state within Xinjiang
• Crude instruments used in attack suggest not work of well-organized group
• No evidence Uyghurs involved substantively in a global Muslim militant movement.
• Claims of a Uyghur terrorist threat maybe becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.

By Sean R. Roberts

Oppressive occupiers: Chinese anti-terrorism force holds exercises in Hami, in northwest China's Xinjiang region in July.

The events on Beijing's Tiananmen Square that resulted in the death of five people and the injury of dozens more were tragic, but are they representative of a serious terrorist threat to the Chinese state as is now being suggested by official sources?
According to Chinese security organs, this act of driving a jeep into a crowd of people and setting it on fire was a "carefully planned, organized, and premeditated" terrorist attack carried out by a group of Uyghur Islamic extremists from Xinjiang Province.
Unfortunately, given the lack of transparency historically in the Chinese state's conviction of Uyghurs on charges of political violence, we may never know whether this characterization of Monday's events is accurate.
What we do know is that Chinese security organs claim that the attackers in the truck, all of whom died, were a Uyghur man, his wife, and his mother. 

Additionally, Chinese state sources claim to have arrested an additional five suspects in connection with the alleged plot.
Were these alleged attackers members of a cell belonging to a large transnational Jihadist network like Al-Qaeda? 

Are they representatives of a well-organized militant movement like Al-Shabaab, which recently led an armed hostage-taking operation at a mall in Kenya?
Looking at the crude instruments allegedly used by these people -- gasoline, knives, iron rods, and an SUV, it is difficult to argue that this was the work of any highly organized and well-armed militant group or terrorist network.
There were no sophisticated explosives used in the attacks, and the alleged attackers did not even possess guns. 

Furthermore, although Uyghurs are Muslims, there is no evidence that they have ever been involved substantively in a global Muslim militant movement.
So, how do we understand this act of violence if it was indeed carried out by a family of Uyghurs?
The obvious answer is to look at what is happening in the Xinjiang itself where such violent acts have been occurring with increasing frequency ever since the ethnic violence between Uyghurs and Han Chinese that spread throughout the regional capitol of Urumqi during the summer of 2009.
Life for Uyghurs inside Xinjiang is not like that of most people in the People's Republic of China (PRC).
For the last decade, the Chinese government has created a virtual police state within Xinjiang, employing enhanced surveillance of Uyghur citizens, actively repressing Uyghurs' political voices, and greatly curtailing Uyghur religious practices.
It has also vastly reduced Uyghurs' access to education in their own language and has limited Uyghur language publications of original reading materials.
Officially, the Chinese state explains most of these measures as part of its anti-terrorism measures to protect national security.
These measures also regularly include arresting large numbers of Uyghurs on charges of engaging in "illegal religious activity" or of having ties to terrorist organizations.
In fact, during this month alone, security organs in Xinjiang were involved in the fatal shooting of suspected Uyghur militants on several separate occasions and arrested at least one hundred more they suspected of trying to flee the country.
Although the government characterizes its ongoing and expansive confrontation with Uyghurs in Xinjiang as anti-terrorism, it is equally related to the PRC's larger plans for Xinjiang.
The region is of critical strategic importance to the state as it is China's primary gateway to the west, both in accessing western markets for Chinese goods and in securing natural resources, such as oil, gas, and uranium from Central Asia and locations further west and south.
In this context, the PRC is presently funding enormous development projects in Xinjiang that are also bringing a large influx of Han Chinese migrants and are uprooting Uyghur communities and displacing them from traditional lands.
The state may not care to rid Xinjiang of Uyghurs, but it would like the Uyghurs living there to willingly yield their homeland to a Han-dominant state culture.

As a result, the future of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region appears destined to be neither Uyghur nor autonomous.
With these events unfolding in the region that Uyghurs view as their historical homeland, one feels compelled to question whether Monday's alleged attack was a well-prepared terrorist act or a hastily assembled cry of desperation from a people on the extreme margins of the Chinese state's monstrous development machine.
However, given that this is allegedly the first instance that Uyghurs have carried out such desperate acts outside Xinjiang, and in this case in the very symbolic seat of central power, we may also be witnessing a sharp escalation in the Chinese state's confrontation with the Uyghurs.
In the midst of this escalation, it is also possible that the PRC's long-maintained, but largely unsubstantiated, claims of a Uyghur terrorist threat are perhaps becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.

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In Xinjiang, Poverty, Exclusion Greater Threat Than Islam

by Reuters
Two ethnic Uighur men walk in a clothing market in downtown Urumqi, Xinjiang province, Nov. 1, 2013.

A Chinese policeman of the Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) team stands guard on a main street next to Tiananmen Square in Beijing, Oct. 31, 2013.

Smoke raises in front of a portrait of Mao Zedong at Tiananmen Square in Beijing, Oct. 28, 2013.

URUMQI, CHINA — In the dirty backstreets of the Uighur old quarter of Xinjiang's capital Urumqi in China's far west, Abuduwahapu frowns when asked what he thinks is the root cause of the region's festering problem with violence and unrest.
“The Han Chinese don't have faith, and the Uighurs do. So they don't really understand each other,” he said, referring to the Muslim religion the Turkic-speaking Uighur people follow, in contrast to the official atheism of the ruling Communist Party.
​​But for the teenage bread delivery boy, it's not Islam that's driving people to commit acts of violence, such as last week's deadly car crash in Beijing's Tiananmen Square -- blamed by the government on Uighur Islamist extremists who want independence.
“Some people there support independence and some do not. Mostly, those who support it are unsatisfied because they are poor,” said Abuduwahapu, who came to Urumqi two years ago from the heavily Uighur old Silk Road city of Kashgar in Xinjiang's southwest, near the Pakistani and Afghan border.
“The Han are afraid of Uighers. They are afraid if we had guns, we would kill them,” he said, standing next to piles of smoldering garbage on plots of land where buildings have been demolished.
China's claims that it is fighting an Islamist insurgency in energy-rich Xinjiang -- a vast area of deserts, mountains and forests geographically located in central Asia -- are not new.
A decade ago, China used the 9/11 attacks in the United States to justify getting tough with what it said were al-Qaida-backed extremists who wanted to bring similar carnage to Xinjiang.
For many Chinese, the rather benign view of Xinjiang which existed in China pre-Sept. 11, 2001 -- as an exotic frontier with colorful minorities who love dancing and singing -- has been replaced with suspicion.
​​China says al-Qaida and others work with the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, in Beijing's eyes the foremost terror group in Xinjiang, and spraypaints warnings on walls against Hizb ut-Tahrir, a supranational group that says its goal is to establish a pan-national Muslim state.
​The incident on Tiananmen Square has only added to China's unease.
“The Han seem to be afraid of us. I don't know why. They won't tell us,” said a 22-year-old Uighur man who runs a shoe and clothing shop a stone's throw from an armed police training ground in Urumqi.

Security Crackdown
Since 2001 -- a process that started arguably even before -- China has conducted a sweeping security crackdown in Xinjiang, further repressing Uighur culture, religious tradition and language, rights groups say, despite strong government denials of offering the Uighurs anything but wide-ranging freedoms.
Some Uighurs believe their only alternative may be to draw closer to Islam, and by doing so, further the distance between themselves and the Communist Party and the Han Chinese.
While many Uighur women in Urumqi dress in much the same casual fashions as their Han counterparts, others have begun to wear full veils, something more common in Pakistan or Afghanistan than Xinjiang.
“It's only since the state has been repressing religious practices in Xinjiang so hard, that ironically it has caused Uighur Muslims to re-traditionalize, to re-Islamize at a very rapid rate now,” said Joanne Smith Finley, a lecturer in Chinese studies at Britain's Newcastle University who studies Xinjiang.
“There is no tradition in Xinjiang of any kind of radical Islamism,” she added.
The government has recognized the economic roots of some of the problems, and has poured money into development in the form of schools, hospitals and roads. 

To be sure, incomes have risen, especially in the countryside where many Uighurs live.
Annual rural incomes averaged a little under 6,400 yuan ($1,000) a year in 2012, up some 15 percent on the previous year, though this is still 1,500 yuan less than the national average and more than 11,000 yuan less than Shanghai's rural residents, the country's richest.
Discrimination against Uighurs in the job market -- including employment advertisements saying “no Uighurs accepted” -- is another issue, despite government attempts to end this.
Ilham Tohti, an ethnic Uighur economist based in China and a longtime critic of Chinese policy toward Xinjiang, told Reuters he feared the Tiananmen incident would only lead to more repression and discrimination, further fanning the flames.
“Whatever happens, this will have a long-term and far-reaching impact on Uighurs, and will cause great harm. It will only worsen the obstacles Uighurs face in Han-dominated society,” he said.

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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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China Says 5 Jihadis Are Arrested in Beijing Attack

By ANDREW JACOBS
Three people were killed when an SUV vehicle crashed into a crowd in Beijing's Tiananmen Square and burst into flames, state media said, as pictures showed a tower of smoke rising before the Forbidden City.

BEIJING — The Chinese authorities announced on Wednesday the arrests of five people described as Islamic jihadists who they say helped orchestrate an audacious attack near Tiananmen Square, the political heart of the nation, that left five people dead.
In a brief message posted on its microblog account, the Beijing Public Security Bureau said the arrested men, all ethnic Uighurs from China’s western Xinjiang region, had enlisted a family of three to drive a vehicle across a crowded sidewalk on Monday and then ignite the car at the foot of the Tiananmen Gate. 

Two tourists were killed and 40 people were injured as the vehicle sped toward the entrance to the Forbidden City, just yards from the iconic portrait of Chairman Mao.
The occupants of the car — identified by the police as Usmen Hasan, his wife and his mother, also Uighurs — died as it went up in flames. 

The police say that in addition to gasoline and a gas canister, investigators recovered from the vehicle two axes, metal clubs and a banner bearing “religious extremist messages.” 

The police did not disclose the content of those messages.
“This was a violent terrorist act that was carefully planned and organized,” the statement said.
The police said the five men were arrested at an undisclosed location on Monday, 10 hours after the attack, and had confessed their involvement. 

They said investigators had discovered long knives and a “jihadist” flag in the temporary residence where the suspects were staying. 

It is unclear why the authorities delayed the announcement of the arrests by more than a day.
The news was released after work hours, and the police did not immediately respond to a faxed request for comment.
Like the event itself, news of the arrests was played down in the Chinese media and most outlets carried only a brief statement from the official Xinhua news agency, reflecting in part the government’s skittishness over an incident that exposed security lapses at one of the most heavily guarded locations in the country.
The attack is likely to prompt heightened security in Xinjiang, home to most of China’s ethnic Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking people who subscribe to a moderate brand of Sunni Islam. 

Concentrated in oasis towns in an arid stretch of western China, Uighurs have long had an uneasy coexistence with the ruling Han Chinese majority. 

But tensions have increased in recent years, fueled by a surge in Han migration to the region, a widening income gap and anger over policies that many locals say marginalize Uighur culture and traditions.
The Chinese government often paints any resistance to its policies in Xinjiang as acts of separatism. 

Violent clashes between protesters and the police are invariably described as terrorism, and in recent years, Beijing has sought to blame outside agitators and Islamic extremists for fomenting bloodshed in the region. Exile groups say that much of the violence is a response to increasingly harsh policies that restrict religious practices and favor Mandarin over the Uighur language in schools.
But until the Tiananmen attack, most of the violence had been confined to Xinjiang, nearly 2,000 miles from the Chinese capital.
Rohan Gunaratna, an international terrorism expert at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, said the attack would help bolster Beijing’s contention that Uighur Islamists have allied with a terrorist group known as the East Turkestan Islamist Movement and pose a serious threat to the nation.
The United States has designated that group a terrorist organization, but many Western analysts have played down its size and its ability to wage attacks within China. 

Although the authorities did not immediately link the attack to the group, Mr. Gunaratna said he thought the episode would serve as a warning to those who have questioned its prowess. 

“It demonstrates that whoever carried out this attack meticulously planned the operation,” he said. 

“It is likely to be the future of terror operations. These kinds of attacks are designed to inspire other groups.”
But Ilham Tohti, a Uighur scholar in Beijing, said he worried that the authorities would use the event to increase repression in Xinjiang. 

“I’m very concerned for what comes next,” he said.
A vocal advocate for Uighur rights who is frequently confined to his home by security personnel, Mr. Tohti questioned the sparse narrative issued by the police, noting that media restrictions have in the past prevented independent reporting on violent incidents involving Uighurs.
“I have a lot of questions about what happened,” he said in a telephone interview.

“It’s easy to point to a banner, but we’re only getting one side of the story.”

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