The Uyghur Civil Rights Movement: No Uyghurs in our Hotel

The Uyghur Civil Rights Movement: No Uyghurs in our Hotel

Terrorists squirreled away in mountain hideouts, the Uyghur chairman spouting fire and brimstone at the podium, a teenaged, female mujahideen attempting to start a blaze as intense as her own fanatic fervor in an airplane lavatory, a fragmented Uyghur diaspora desperate for a means to bring about momentous change - Xinjiang, from its history to its current events to its very geography is a place of extremes, and when you get caught in the whirlwind it becomes a little too easy to forget and overlook some of the more discrete activities whirring in the background that may, in the end, bring about more change than the sensational headliners. It is with that sort of understanding that The New Dominion has occasionally in the past focused on the thoughts and comments scattered throughout the web, in English, Uyghur, and Chinese, of “people on the ground,” or as the Chinese put it, the 老百姓, the hundred old names. Sometimes we’re tempted away (justifiably!) by really hard-hitting stuff which came in batches before, during, and right after the Olympics, but recently an extremely intriguing article has been brought to my attention which hopefully will put things a little more into perspective as the Olympic Heat gets subsumed by the coming winter. It starts simply, with a notice posted on a hotel wall in Beijing, which was photographed and posted online.

Notice for hotels to register Uyghur and Tibetan lodgers with the police

Urgent Notice

To all inns and bathhouses of the administrative district:

In compliance with a request from the local PSB substation, starting today, investigations will be carried out on the lodging circumstances of all individuals of “Tibetan” and “Uyghur” ethnicity residing at inns and bathhouses of the Haidian District. Reinforce inspection and verification of any lodger matching the description above and report all cases to the local dispatch station.

Furthermore: every inn and bathhouse, when registering travelers, must double-check and accurately fill out the registration form.

All who receive Tibetan or Uyghur individuals for lodging must immediately report to the local dispatch station.

Officer to Contact: Wu Hu Cell Phone: 13801093916

Huayuan Dispatch Station On-Call Phone Numbers: 62014692 62032656

Minority individuals from “sensitive” regions being monitored in hotels is not something new - as far back as July, before the Olympics, there was a news report by Globe and Mail about how the unfortunate parties to a forced, mass Uyghur exodus from Beijing were invariably denied access to an inn or hotel after pulling out their ID cards identifying them as Uyghurs. And while the link above with the photograph of the notice was published on the 3rd of October, it’s unclear whether or not the picture itself was taken recently or long ago. Nonetheless, standing on its own the picture does at least constitute a form of evidence for this type of ethnic discrimination a tad more concrete than word of mouth.

But the notice does remind us that one often overlooked aspect of “being a Uyghur in the PRC” is the civil rights component. I identify this in contrast to aspects that gain greater coverage on media outlets, things like terrorism and separatism, or, the “humanitarian crisis” which I feel overlaps with civil rights issues but are usually more egregious yet more targeted violations of minority rights - for example, religious restrictions during Ramadan, or forced deportation of young Uyghur girls to Eastern industrial areas for labor. While these crises are absolutely worth knowing and analyzing, it’s also worth recalling that sometimes its the smaller troubles with a wider range that trigger greater consequences - the uncalled for nuisances that are capable of affecting all Uyghurs, regardless of whether or not they are man or woman, religious or secular, rich or poor, young or old. Something inexplicably, illogically, and absolutely tied to something as inconsequential as the way you look or a character on your ID card. Like these hotel restrictions.

I can’t help but consider the a similar situation that I became familiar with as a child of the US - namely, the American Civil Rights movement. Just for all you internet critics out there, I underline similar and do not say analagous, because they are not. But I think that on a generalized level there are some comparisons that can be made. For example, while during that time there were frequent and brazen acts of terrorism perpetuated against blacks in the South, most notably and gruesomely vigilante lynching, it was an act of resistance against a far more mundane yet more ubiquitous injustice that today represents the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement - Rosa Parks refusing to sit at the back of the bus.

Rosa Parks also reminds us that offenses against an individual’s civil rights does not a Civil Rights Movement make. It takes two other things: one, an understanding by the minority community of what these violations are, how they operate, and where they come from, and, two, a willingness to speak and act out against those violations.

And so I was a little surprised and intrigued that in the link posted above, the one publishing the photograph of the police notice, there also were some reactions and commentary written in Mandarin by other Uyghur members of the Uighur Biz online community. I say surprised because Uighur Biz is a site based in China, written in Mandarin, and, like all sites in China, has registered an ICP license with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. Despite this, community members have voiced some insightful, penetrating, and surprisingly frank comments on the discriminatory hotel policy, its implications, and its origins, to which I turn to in an article that will be posted shortly.
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