Gross Violations of Human Rights in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region
“All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.” [Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 1].
INTRODUCTION
In 1949 muslims constituted 97% of population, today they have been relegated to minority status of less than 40% with Government encouraged Han Chinese settlement from inland China. Today, Islam faces persecution: Many muslims have been executed or imprisoned; Mosques are routinely searched; new constructions stopped and study of Koran & religion discouraged.
HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATION
Gross violations of human rights are being perpetrated in the Uighur Autonomous Region of Xinjiang, in the west of China, with little about it being known to the international community. The main victims of these violations are the Uighurs, the majority ethnic group among the predominantly Muslim local population.
Thousands of people have been arbitrarily detained in the region over the past few years and arbitrary arrests continue. Thousands of political prisoners, arrested at various times during the 1990s, are reported to remain imprisoned, some having been sentenced to long prison terms after unfair trials, others still detained without charge or trial after months or years in jail.
Many of those detained are reported to have been tortured, some with particularly cruel methods which, to Amnesty International’s knowledge, are not being used elsewhere in the People’s Republic of China. Political prisoners held in prisons or labour camps are reported to be frequently subjected to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment. Some have reportedly died of ill-treatment or neglect in detention.
Scores of Uighurs, many of them political prisoners, have been sentenced to death and executed in the past two years. Others, including women, are alleged to have been killed by the security forces in circumstances which appear to constitute extra-judicial executions.
These gross violations of human rights are occurring amidst growing ethnic unrest fuelled by unemployment, discrimination and curbs on fundamental freedoms. Over the past ten years the local ethnic population has witnessed a steady erosion of its social, economic and cultural rights. Economic development in the region has largely bypassed the local ethnic population and they have faced increased restrictions.
A growing number of violent incidents have been reported in the region. They include violent clashes between small groups of Uighurs and the security forces, as well as attacks against government officials and bombings by underground opposition groups.
The government has blamed the unrest and violence on a “small number” of “separatists”, “terrorists” and “religious extremists” who are accused of having links with “foreign hostile forces” whose aim is to “split the motherland”. The government’s response has been harsh repression. Since 1996, the government has launched an extensive campaign against “ethnic separatists”, imposing new restrictions on religious and cultural rights and resorting increasingly to executions, show trials and arbitrary detention to silence real and suspected opponents.
The official reports about “separatists and terrorists” obscure a more complex reality in which many people who are not involved in violence have become the victims of human rights violations. Over the years, attempts by Uighurs to air their views or grievances and peacefully exercise their most fundamental human rights have been met with repression. The denial of legitimate channels for expressing grievances and discontent has led to outbursts of violence, including by people who are not involved in political opposition activities.
The Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (XUAR) is one of the five autonomous regions of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), the region is rich in natural resources and has been an important target for population resettlement from inland China since 1949.
With the massive influx of Han Chinese in the XUAR since 1949, the indigenous population has felt increasingly marginalised in what they regard as their ancestral land.
In 1949, the local Turkic population, in majority Uighur, accounted for at least 93% of the region’s population, while ethnic Chinese in the region amounted to about 6 or 7% of the population. Today, they are a minority of less than 40% and fast shrinking. According to some foreign experts, the number of ethnic Chinese in the region was already equal to that of other ethnic groups by the late 1970s. Since then, many Han Chinese have continued to migrate to the region.
Despite the economic development in the XUAR since the 1980s, unemployment is high among Uighurs. Many Uighurs complain that racial abuse and discrimination against ethnic minorities is common, and that they have no equal opportunity in education, health care and employment. Unlike their Chinese counterparts, for example, many Uighur schools and hospitals are poorly equipped, and some Uighur village schools are reported to be so poor and totally deprived of equipment that the pupils have to sit and write on the earthen floor. Many hospitals reportedly have discriminatory practices, giving preferential treatment to Han Chinese patients and top jobs to Chinese doctors at the expense of their Uighur counterparts.
Since the 1980s, the opportunities afforded by the economic development have benefited mainly Han Chinese. In the agricultural sector, many Uighur farmers have become impoverished due to new policies, the multiplication of taxes, and corrupt or discriminatory practices. In some areas, Uighur farmers have to sell their crops to state agencies at lower prices than those of the free market, whereas Chinese farmers are reportedly allowed to trade on the market. Some Uighur farmers have had to sell their land and joined the ranks of the unemployed and vagrants. In industry, the vast majority of workers employed in the new oil fields and other enterprises in the north, which are key to the region’s development, are Han Chinese. In the south, according to some sources, many enterprises which have been privatized have come under Chinese management and increasingly hired Han Chinese workers instead of Uighurs. This has reportedly extended to some factories producing local carpets and silk which were the traditional craft of Uighurs. With the economic and social changes during the past two decades, crime has substantially risen in the region, as in the rest of the PRC. In some areas, drug addiction and prostitution have become widespread among the unemployed.
ISLAM UNDER ATTACK
In the late 1980s government reverted to restrictive policies, amidst fears that Islam might provide a rallying point for ethnic nationalism and that Islamist movements abroad might inspire young Uighurs who had gone to study in foreign Islamic schools. These fears were apparently reinforced by an incident in Baren, near Kashgar, in April 1990, when protests and rioting, reportedly led by members of an Islamic nationalist group, resulted in many deaths.
Since then, many mosques and Koranic schools have been closed down, the use of the Arabic script has been stopped, tight controls have been imposed on the Islamic clergy, and religious leaders who are deemed to be too independent or “subversive” have been dismissed or arrested. Muslims working in government offices and other official institutions are prohibited from practising their religion, failing which they lose their jobs. Since 1996, the government has intensified its campaign against “national separatists”, “religious extremists” and “illegal religious activities”, launching at the same time an “in-depth atheist education” campaign to purge grassroots communist party committees and other institutions of Muslim believers.
In June 1997, the same newspaper reported on the crackdown on “illegal” religious activities in Ili Prefecture following ethnic unrest there in February 1997. It said: “Illegal religious activities were cleaned up in Ili, village by village, hamlet by hamlet.” The newspaper also reported that 40 “core participants in illegal religious activities” had been arrested, 35 communist party leaders in villages and towns and 19 village mayors or factory owners had been sacked, and the unauthorised construction or renovation of 133 mosques had been stopped in the area.
On 17 April 1998, the Urumqi Evening News reported on police searches carried out in the 56 mosques of Egarqi, in Aksu district: “Recently, the police has searched these mosques and tightly controlled their activities, their Imams and Muezzins. Activities not seen as normal have been halted.”
Unofficial sources report that many secret Koranic classes and religious groups were founded during the 1990s when the authorities started closing down the religious schools which they had initially encouraged to open. Some religious leaders then started religious classes to teach the Koran in people’s homes. Many such private classes were formed in the south, where Islamic traditions remain strong. These classes were periodically discovered by police and closed down. According to unofficial sources, the Mullahs (religious teachers) - and sometimes also the religious students - were taken into police custody, detained for two or three months, and usually then released on condition of paying a fine. Some were detained repeatedly. Others, whether leaders or participants in these groups, were kept in detention. In recent years, some have been sent to “re-education through labour” camps or sentenced to prison terms.
Recommendations made in 1996 by the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has been ignored by China.
[This message has been edited by Adbulmalick (edited May 28, 1999).]