Uighur uprising in China.
As with military coups, not all protests are created equal. Chinese officials have begun to blame foreign agitators for fomenting the violence in Urumqi and throughout the Xinjiang region, as did Iran with their unrest over the rigged presidential election. Unlike Iran, however, China has some factual basis for this claim. Al-Qaeda has recruited and trained Uighur radical Islamists, who want independence for Xinjiang in order to establish a Turkic theocratic state, just as the Taliban created in Afghanistan.
That doesn’t mean that other Uighurs don’t have legitimate claims on democratic reform and independence for better reasons, of course. The AQ-Taliban connection to the Uighurs makes it difficult to determine which forces are in play in Xinjiang at the moment, though. Broad assumptions in either direction would be a mistake, especially since the “freedom fighters” causing most of the trouble in that region don’t support freedom at all — just a change of tyrants.
Several e-mailers suggested that the Obama administration needs to get more vocal about this uprising in Xinjiang. In this case, “meddling” would be a mistake, and the silence of the White House is probably the best policy for the moment until the protest leaders — and their goals — become more clear.
Kate Mackenzie in the Financial Times on an oil and gas connection:
Xinjiang in western China is a province rich in natural resources – a fact not unconnected with the unrest in which 140 people have died in the past few days. The region’s oil and gas riches have been a growing source of tension between the province’s original Uighur residents and the mostly Han migrants from the east, who now make up the majority of the population.
Last year the FT’s Jamil Anderlini visited the region and described the desert surrounding the city “punctuated every kilometre or two by oil and gas derricks, each of them topped with the red Chinese national flag, an assertion of sovereignty over every inch of the energy-rich ground”.
One resident described how the state’s attitude to cultural and religious freedom changed with the oil boom:
“The Chinese didn’t want to let Xinjiang be independent before, but after they built all the oilfields, it became absolutely impossible,” said one Muslim resident in Korla, who asked not to be named for fear of retribution by government security agents.
Marty Peretz in TNR:
Han Chinese had been moved in and Muslim Uighurs had been moved out. Beijing is in the middle of shifting a half million Uighur women to a remote and distant locale. Is this also a form of population control?
Beijing has credited the riots to a Uighur billionairess living in Washington. But her influence in D.C. seems to be paltry. It is odd for me to be cheering on people shouting “God is great” in the streets.
But Tiananmen Square is still in my mind.
Andy McCarthy in NRO:
The Wall Street Journal (as flagged in the NRO web briefing) reports on rioting in China by Uighur “students” that has left scores dead and hundreds wounded. The “students,” described elsewhere in the story as from a “predominantly Muslim ethnic group[, which has] long chafed at restrictions on their civil liberties and religious practices imposed by a Chinese government fearful of political dissent,” expressed their dissent by torching cars and buses, as well as — according to accounts of some witnesses to state-controlled media — rampaging “with big knives stabbing people” on the street.
No reason for non-Muslims in Bermuda, Palau, or the United States to worry, though. The lovable Uighurs are merely trying to address “economic and social discrimination.” Once they get social justice, I’m sure they’ll stop.
Some reactions to McCarthy’s post. Radley Balko in Reason:
Over at The Corner, National Review’s Andy McCarthy sees the Uighur uprising in China as vindication of the Bush administration’s detainment of several Uighur Muslims in Guantanamo:
[...] There was once a time when, if an ethnic minority was rising up against an oppressive communist regime, you could count on National Review to side with the rabble-rousers fighting for political freedom, not the commies. But I guess that was pre-September 11. Now it’s apparently all about siding with whoever is killing Muslims.
McCarthy might want to look over this FBI report (PDF, via Obsidian Wings) about the Uighurs at Gitmo, whom even the Bush administration conceded were captured by mistake and never posed a threat to the United States.
It’s hard to figure out where to start… for one, there was a time at which movement conservatives were mildly skeptical of the claims made in Chinese state media. Apparently this is no longer the case. There was also a time at which conservatives would have celebrated a provincial rebellion against our communist superpower existential foe*, but apparently there was a memo or something to the effect that “Anyone from any ethnic group that has members who have ever been incarcerated in Guantanamo deserves the swift, brutal justice of the Chinese state. Pass it on.” I also like how McCarthy has tossed aside the values of democracy and self-determination just to score points against liberals; this doesn’t even rise to the level of coherence displayed by Chucky “Bring back the Shah” Krauthammer.
The rest of the Corner crew, it appears, has tactfully declined comment.
David Rothkopf in Foreign Policy:
At the same time, roughly the same number of protestors was likely killed in Western China as in Iran a couple weeks ago, and the global outrage-o-meter is barely stirring. Apparently Muslims killing Muslims is worse than Muslims and Han Chinese killing each other which proves what? The media believes in the multiplicative power of Muslims in weighing the value of a story? Or could it be that China is too big and important to too many people to be called out on its abuses? When will we realize that we can’t actually have a strong relationship with a country and a spineless one at the same time? For the United States, for example, our shared interests with China and the strengths of the relationship need to be strong enough to endure the airing of our differences or they are meaningless and the relationship will ultimately be doomed by the tensions that are not aired.
TPM has the AP report on the latest.
UPDATE: Matthew Yglesias
Reihan Salam and Chris Hayes on Bloggingheads
Peter Worthington in New Majority
1 Comment
July 9, 2009 at 10:26 pm
[...] “China’s Under Martial Law, Rock And Roller, Cola Wars, I Can’t Take It Anymore!&#… [...]