Published by: THE WORLD UYGHUR NETWORK NEWS November 20, 1997

11/16/97, CNN, Reuters

"Human rights activists say there is little evidence of tolerance for its religious and ethnic minorities in the so-called autonomous Xinjiang region"

XINJIANG, China (CNN) -- China says its policy of reating a strong, united nation includes tolerance for its religious and ethnic minorities. But human rights activists say there is little evidence of that tolerance in the so-called autonomous Xinjiang region, nested between Tibet, Mongolia and Kazakhstan.

A defiant region for 22 centuries, Xinjiang is home to 18 million people, half of them Uighurs (pronounced wee'-gers). The Arab descendants speak Turkic, use the Arabic script, and many appear more Western than their Chinese Han counterparts. The Uighurs practice Islam, and are the legacy of the Arab traders who worked the Silk Road that provided China with its first trade link with the West, dating back to about 100 B.C.

QUEST FOR INDEPENDENCE

Before China's Communists came to power in 1949, Xinjiang was an independent country called the Eastern Turkestan Republic. Today, a growing number of Uighurs want to win back their independence.

Earlier this year in Beijing, a group of Uighur separatists bombed a bus, killing two people. In June, in Xinjiang, five people were publicly executed after hanging the banned flag of Eastern Turkestan from the statue of Communist China's founder, Mao Tse-tung, in Kashgar's main square.

In the last 12 months alone, more than 1,000 ethnic Uighurs have been executed and more than 10,000 people have been arrested for political reasons, human rights activists say. Those reports are unconfirmed.

It is perhaps China's ever increasing dependency on Xinjiang that leads Beijing to flex its muscle in the province. Oil is plentiful beneath the sands of Xinjiang's many deserts. And, China recently struck a deal with Kazakhstan to build pipelines connecting the former Soviet Republic with China's east.

CULTURE ATTACK

For decades, Beijing has tried to undermine the Uighur presence by watering down the group's culture. Roughly 30 years ago, there were about 200,000 Han Chinese in Xinjiang. Today there are more than 6 million, and an estimated 5,000 arrive daily. The migrants bring new farming practices into the agri-rich region, and the Uighurs, reluctant to change their centuries-old ways, find themselves out of work and homeless.

The Uighur children are schooled in Mandarin, and in the teachings of Karl Marx and Chairman Mao. From a young age, they are taught to remain loyal to China, and to expose those who are not. Beijing also views the province as a dumping ground for China's undesirables. In the last three years, 40,000 convicted criminals have been "re-educated" in labor camps, then forced to settle in Xinjiang as reformed laborers and farmers -- taking even more work away from the Uighurs.

The Chinese have also moved to close off the Uighurs religious worship. For more than 300 years, daily prayers echoed through Kashgar's most important mosque. But the Chinese have shut it down, now allowing worshippers to pray there twice a year. About 1,500 other mosques have been closed in the last six years, shutting down not only places of worship, but also places for possible political gatherings.

Muslim clerics deny that anything other than religious work goes on inside their mosques, and say they do not interfere with politics. But clergymen are also vague when asked to describe what China deems as illegal religious work. "I can say what I can say, what I should not say I will not say," said one religious leader.