China's hidden night of state bloodshed
(Diego Azubel)
Chinese soldiers patrol the streets of a Uighur neighborhood after an incident between ethnic Uighurs and Chinese security forces along the streets in Urumqi, Xinjiang province
Michael Sheridan
POSTERS went up on lampposts and walls all around drab neighbourhoods in the northwestern area of China last week, announcing a series of executions.
They proclaimed the deaths of nine men convicted of murdering people during the racial violence that convulsed the remote city of Urumqi in July. No details were released of the condemned men’s last moments and few dared to mourn them.
The executions marked the culmination of the Chinese authorities’ response to a revolt by native Uighur Muslims in the city on July 5.
The revolt triggered violent clashes with Han Chinese settlers before being put down by security forces that night. Chinese civilians later turned on the Uighurs.
Since the clashes ended on July 7, the Chinese and the Uighurs have traded acrimonious claims about what happened and how many died.
The government said that of the 197 people killed, only 46 were Uighurs. A local official put the number of rioters shot dead by the security forces at just 12.
Exiles, however, alleged that hundreds of Uighur men had died and thousands had disappeared after a police and army sweep through the rough district of Sai Ma Chang.
Last week The Sunday Times conducted dozens of interviews in an investigation to discover what had happened. We found a city with soldiers on every street, full of rumours and fear, cut off from communications with the outside world. But some facts became clear.
The trouble began thousands of miles away in June when workers at a factory in southern China ran amok on hearing dubious claims that a girl had been raped by migrant workers. Two Uighurs were beaten to death.
When news of this reached the Uighur region of Xinjiang by text message and mobile phone video, there was ferment. Students asked permission to hold a protest in People’s Square at the heart of Urumqi, the region’s capital.
They were turned down by Wang Lequan, the Communist party secretary, a hardliner who is the most powerful man in Xinjiang and also the architect of Chinese policy in neighbouring Tibet, but the authorities failed to defuse the tension.
In the late afternoon of Sunday, July 5, gangs of Uighur youths began attacking the police around People’s Square. They hurled rocks, smashed vehicles and set upon ordinary passers-by
Repulsed, they gathered near the great bazaar and by 6pm a crowd of more than 1,000 was turning on the Han Chinese merchants. Shops were ransacked and traders were killed where they worked. Their goods were looted.
By 8.30pm a reign of terror prevailed in the mixed ethnic districts that separate the poor Uighur districts in the south from the prosperous Chinese areas in the north. The mobs bludgeoned and butchered their victims, women and men alike. Cars were burnt. Corpses lay in the streets.
All this time — in a strange echo of the official paralysis when riots broke out in Tibet last year — there was no sign of forceful measures to end the riot, even though Wang had thousands of troops and police at his disposal.
“Everybody knows Wang was getting drunk at his villa,” spat a local businesswoman, repeating a rumour widespread among everyone from taxi drivers to policemen. The sophisticated version holds that the unrest suited the hardline agenda of repressive politics. “I believe they wanted it to happen,” claimed one well connected resident, “but it went out of control.”
After midnight, events took a decisive turn. First, a big force of army and special police units sealed off Sai Ma Chang. Then the power was cut off and a night of reciprocal terror began.
Numerous local witnesses, both Han and Uighur, confirmed hearing bursts of gunfire in Sai Ma Chang until dawn on Monday, July 6.
A man of 35, who gave his name as Shevket, said: “I know the difference between fireworks and machineguns. I heard shooting all night long. But we will never know how many of our brothers were taken and killed. Only God knows how many died.”
A Chinese woman who had stood and watched added: “They cut off the whole area and then they went in and got them. There was firing all night. But you couldn’t see much in the dark because the electricity was off.”
Around the bazaars there is talk that corpses were dragged away and buried in anonymous desert graves, but nobody has produced evidence.
A day later, Chinese mobs went on a reprisal rampage that was curbed quickly by the army but claimed an unknown number of casualties.
Raids and clashes persisted: in one, caught on video, three Uighurs with knives attacked eight armed police. They fought until all three had been shot, two fatally.
Every witness interviewed believed the number of Uighurs shot dead was many more than 12 but far fewer than the 400 to 800 claimed by the exiles. In China, all such information is a state secret.
The posters that went up last week showed the state making its case. The posters emphasised that the judges who had pronounced the death sentences were themselves Uighurs. So were the prosecutors and defence lawyers. The cases were conducted in the Uighur language. The trials were therefore “just and fair”.
Some detected in these pronouncements the strains of an empire that has subdued its minority peoples but is deeply troubled by its failure to integrate them into one nation.
As for the executed men, only one set of footprints led across the fresh snow that had fallen last Thursday on the newest graves in the Muslim cemetery in the foothills of the Tien Shan, the “heavenly mountains”. A lone mourner had crept past the army checkpoints and toiled up the slopes to place bunches of crimson flowers at the head of each unmarked heap of earth.
The fate of the condemned — all but one of them Uighurs — was stark, but Human Rights Watch has documented 43 missing Uighur men and boys aged from 14 to 35. It said hundreds had been detained and dozens remained unaccounted for.
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There is no doubt that harsh punishments were thought necessary to repress rebellion and placate the dominant Han Chinese, who enjoy a privileged status and whose fury at becoming victims has rebounded on the regime.
The Chinese government rushed to blame a “plot” led by the most famous Uighur exile, a businesswoman named Rebiya Kadeer who, in this script, plays the role of villain usually reserved for the Dalai Lama by the Chinese. Two local government officials, both Uighurs, laughed at the claim of a conspiracy, however. “I can’t believe this,” said one.
It is, of course, easier to blame a plot than to admit that the hardline policy towards China’s minorities is a failure.Yet that is the conclusion of an article published in September by the Xinjiang Social Research Review, a journal restricted to elite officials and academics.
It revealed that 97% of Chinese officials who come from minorities, such as Uighurs, Tibetans and Mongolians, feel “unease in their hearts” about the gap in wealth and power.
The direst finding of all was that 12% of these trusted officials believed the policy would, in the end, lead to the breakup of China. “We have to admit there have been mistakes,” wrote Professor Tian Zhongfu, of the Xinjiang Socialism University, in a commentary on the figures.
The silent and snow-shrouded graves on the slopes of the heavenly mountains testify to that.
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Amnesty fears more Xinjiang executions
Amnesty fears more Xinjiang executions
By Simon Lauder for PM
The recent execution of nine people over their role in violent ethnic clashes in north-west China in July has raised concerns for hundreds of others who were detained after the riots.
The executions were expected but Amnesty International says there was more secrecy surrounding them than usual.
Little detail was provided when the executions were announced yesterday by the state-owned China News Service.
It was reported that the men were convicted of violent crimes including arson and murder.
Violence in the provincial capital Urumqi erupted in July when protests by Uighurs and retaliatory attacks by Han Chinese led to about 200 deaths on the official count.
Dr Michael Clarke from Griffith University has studied separatist movements in China and says most of those executed were Uighurs while one was Han Chinese.
"Those charges of being convicted of arson and so forth, they're fairly ambiguous if you look at the Chinese criminal law," he said.
"It suggests a fairly political approach to dealing with what happened in July.
"It's interesting that some Chinese have been caught up in this, given that there was a wave of retaliatory violence by Han Chinese in the days that followed the unrest.
"That suggests the Chinese are at least attempting to appear to be even handed in their crackdown."
'Strike hard' campaign
The July clashes were sparked by the deaths of two Uighur factory workers but was underpinned by tensions over the distribution of wealth and labour in the resource-rich Xinjiang province.
The executions are just one element of a crackdown designed to prevent a repeat of the clashes.
University of Melbourne postgraduate student Tyler Harlan, who has travelled to Xinjiang a number of times, says the province is now the target of what's known as a "strike hard" campaign.
"I think that we will see perhaps not as much tension but a lot of Government involvement and perhaps raids in certain areas on certain groups," Mr Harlan said.
"[The campaign's] words mean a particular type of crackdown on religious extremism, on terrorism, on splitism, which are words that the provincial and central government have used to crack down on particular groups.
"For instance, they sometimes to go into mosques and close mosques at certain stages to limit groups that can organise."
The executions come just days ahead of the first trip to China by US President Barack Obama.
The White House has reacted to the news by urging China to ensure the legal rights of citizens are respected in accordance with international standards.
Closed process
Amnesty International's Asia-Pacific deputy director, Roseann Rife, says the executions and the trials that led to them have taken place in secrecy.
"We got a notice on October 30 that an appeal had been approved and the process then should have gone to the Supreme Court for a final review," she said.
"And it seems that in less than 10 days the review and the executions were both carried out. That is faster than usual."
Ms Rife says Amnesty is particularly concerned about reports that the trials were not open.
"Families were not notified. In fact we received reports that authorities told human rights lawyers in Beijing not to take up cases of anyone involved with the unrest in the Xinjiang Uighur autonomous region in July," he said.
"So we have serious concerns that these trials were fair and that they were not transparent and didn't meet international standards."
The executions are the first to take place over July's ethnic violence but Ms Rife says they are unlikely to be the last.
"The official numbers have varied but it could be up to several hundred people who still could remain in detention for activities surrounding this unrest," she said.
"And we're concerned that this may only be the beginning of the executions."
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/11/11/2739034.htm?section=world
By Simon Lauder for PM
The recent execution of nine people over their role in violent ethnic clashes in north-west China in July has raised concerns for hundreds of others who were detained after the riots.
The executions were expected but Amnesty International says there was more secrecy surrounding them than usual.
Little detail was provided when the executions were announced yesterday by the state-owned China News Service.
It was reported that the men were convicted of violent crimes including arson and murder.
Violence in the provincial capital Urumqi erupted in July when protests by Uighurs and retaliatory attacks by Han Chinese led to about 200 deaths on the official count.
Dr Michael Clarke from Griffith University has studied separatist movements in China and says most of those executed were Uighurs while one was Han Chinese.
"Those charges of being convicted of arson and so forth, they're fairly ambiguous if you look at the Chinese criminal law," he said.
"It suggests a fairly political approach to dealing with what happened in July.
"It's interesting that some Chinese have been caught up in this, given that there was a wave of retaliatory violence by Han Chinese in the days that followed the unrest.
"That suggests the Chinese are at least attempting to appear to be even handed in their crackdown."
'Strike hard' campaign
The July clashes were sparked by the deaths of two Uighur factory workers but was underpinned by tensions over the distribution of wealth and labour in the resource-rich Xinjiang province.
The executions are just one element of a crackdown designed to prevent a repeat of the clashes.
University of Melbourne postgraduate student Tyler Harlan, who has travelled to Xinjiang a number of times, says the province is now the target of what's known as a "strike hard" campaign.
"I think that we will see perhaps not as much tension but a lot of Government involvement and perhaps raids in certain areas on certain groups," Mr Harlan said.
"[The campaign's] words mean a particular type of crackdown on religious extremism, on terrorism, on splitism, which are words that the provincial and central government have used to crack down on particular groups.
"For instance, they sometimes to go into mosques and close mosques at certain stages to limit groups that can organise."
The executions come just days ahead of the first trip to China by US President Barack Obama.
The White House has reacted to the news by urging China to ensure the legal rights of citizens are respected in accordance with international standards.
Closed process
Amnesty International's Asia-Pacific deputy director, Roseann Rife, says the executions and the trials that led to them have taken place in secrecy.
"We got a notice on October 30 that an appeal had been approved and the process then should have gone to the Supreme Court for a final review," she said.
"And it seems that in less than 10 days the review and the executions were both carried out. That is faster than usual."
Ms Rife says Amnesty is particularly concerned about reports that the trials were not open.
"Families were not notified. In fact we received reports that authorities told human rights lawyers in Beijing not to take up cases of anyone involved with the unrest in the Xinjiang Uighur autonomous region in July," he said.
"So we have serious concerns that these trials were fair and that they were not transparent and didn't meet international standards."
The executions are the first to take place over July's ethnic violence but Ms Rife says they are unlikely to be the last.
"The official numbers have varied but it could be up to several hundred people who still could remain in detention for activities surrounding this unrest," she said.
"And we're concerned that this may only be the beginning of the executions."
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/11/11/2739034.htm?section=world
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