China: Mummies and the fight for Uighur sovereignty
A fascinating piece by Ed Wong in today's NYT on the role archaeology -- specifically, a set of mummified human remains -- plays in the conflict over independence for one of China's ethnic minorities. Snip:
“Xinjiang has been an inalienable part of the territory of China,” says one prominent sign. But walk upstairs to the second floor, and the ancient corpses on display seem to tell a different story. One called the Loulan Beauty lies on her back with her shoulder-length hair matted down, her lips pursed in death, her high cheekbones and long nose the most obvious signs that she is not what one thinks of as Chinese.The Dead Tell a Tale China Doesn’t Care to Listen To (NYT)The Loulan Beauty is one of more than 200 remarkably well-preserved mummies discovered in the western deserts here over the last few decades. The ancient bodies have become protagonists in a very contemporary political dispute over who should control the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region.
The Chinese authorities here face an intermittent separatist movement of nationalist Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking Muslim people who number nine million in Xinjiang. At the heart of the matter lie these questions: Who first settled this inhospitable part of western China? And for how long has the oil-rich region been part of the Chinese empire?
the latest
latest episodes
Gitmo.
OK then, that out of the way, there are similar parallels in Japanese anthropology/archaeology where finding evidence of Korean roots is hazardous to the health. Whatever became of Kennewick Man by the way?
Ask the Japanes about the Ainu.
never could understand why the Chinese government feels the need to lie and rewrite history. No one is fooled, it is all about guns and power in the end. They should just admit they have no morality and be done with it.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/03/world/asia/03ainu.html
are you saying morality is a western thing?
see #1
are you saying you miss the olympics?
Sssssss.
funny how no one seems to even remember the olympics now, who was it for?
Whoever it was, his middle name was probably 'hussein'.
I think the nature of the Chinese government is pretty transparent, and have nothing to add to that part of the argument.
What I do find interesting is the anthropology: mummies found in western China with European features including in some cases red hair. Knowing how far and wide the Vikings traveled, it wouldn't surprise me if they made it that far East
that's why I really wish the idiot politicos would stay out of the science and let us all know our genetic birthright as freely and fully as our minds can discover. Let them make up whatever lies they need to justify their wars and grabbing - they will anyway. There was never any need to sacrifice the truth of our origins and heritage.
Having been in China for 6 months now and discussing Xinjiang many times with Chinese people in their native language, I think that Xinjiang will never have sovereignty. The question of whether it "should" or "shouldn't" is just a matter of popular opinion, not objective morality. It's all trumped by the fact that China has the military might to hold on to it and therefore will.
how about no genocide then?
Genocide? Where have you heard that? If your referring to the 上山下乡 movement by which young Han Chinese were relocated all over the country in the 60's, then I think your are exaggerating. I suppose that could be considered diluting these minority populations, but genocide it was not.
http://uyghuramerican.org/articles/1682/1/Chinese-Uighur-exile-urges-Olympic-boycott-over-genocide/index.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjHXz2Vm5Yg
I'll have to get back to you on those... They're both blocked here. That said, do you believe in Native American sovereignty as compensation for their widespread genocide?
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/06/12/america/canada.php
http://www.airpi.org/pubs/indinsov.html
is this blocked too?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/nov/01/guantanamo-china
Apologies and token "sovereignty" are cheap. What exactly are you calling for in Xinjiang SAR?
No that link is ok, it's mostly the dedicated anti-Chinese sites that get blocked out. Either way, I'm not going to say that the people here are unbiased, but neither is the Western media or Xinjiang Independence organizations.
an excerpt from the blocked first item:
"Beijing has labelled Uighur activists as terrorists and said this year that it had foiled a planned attack by Uighurs on a Chinese plane as well as plans to kidnap foreigners during the Olympics.
But rights groups have alleged that China is trying to stoke fears about attacks as an excuse to silence dissent and justify tight control in Xinjiang ahead of the Games.
Isa said a "peaceful demonstration" on March 23 by Uighur women calling for religious freedom resulted in 700 arrests.
He added that more than 10,000 Uighurs have been arrested in the past four to five months on allegations that they pose a security threat. "They were told they'd be kept under arrest until after the Olympics," he said.
"Everywhere, homes, hotels are searched. People are arrested. Checkpoints are set up, and every passenger, every bus is checked. Even people with no past records have been arrested simply because they look suspicious," he added.
"Police are everywhere. If three, four Uighurs gather to talk in a street, police immediately arrive and force them to disperse."
The worldwide relay of Beijing's Olympic flame has been marred by protests, mostly calling for greater liberties in Tibet after Beijing's crackdown on major protests in March.
Bowing to international pressure, Beijing last month said it was willing to resume talks with the Dalai Lama's representatives, who are heading to the meeting this weekend.
But Isa was sceptical.
"It's not credible," he said. "This time it's because there was an international reaction and China has only three months left until the Olympics to improve its image after Tibet."
He expects Uighurs to demonstrate when the Olympic flame arrives in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, in June.
"Most Chinese demonstrators are pressured to support (the flame and the Games). Many are suffering under the Chinese communist regime. Chinese have never forgotten the Tiananmen" massacre of 1989, Isa said"
for starters, a little less heavy handed oppression?
let me know if this one gets through ( a little long)
Xinjiang
Chinastan
Sep 4th 2008 | KASHGAR AND KUQA
From The Economist print edition
A crackdown in China’s wild West, its Muslim-majority chunk of Central Asia
ON THE roads crossing the dusty fields of cotton and maize around the oasis city of Kashgar, China’s police are on alert. Terrorists, as they call them, have been stepping up their attacks. Officers at checkpoints turn back foreigners venturing towards troublespots. Citizens entering Kashgar line up by the roadside to have their identity cards scanned.
Kashgar’s recent troubles began on August 4th when the police said a lorry was driven into a group of border guards jogging in the heart of the city. Home-made explosives were detonated and the police were attacked with knives. Sixteen policemen were killed, bang in front of a posh hotel. Just ahead of the opening of the Beijing Olympics, the incident unnerved the government. It blamed two “terrorists”, arrested on the spot. That is its usual term for Muslim militants pushing for the independence of Xinjiang, a vast Central Asian expanse of mountain and desert.
Despite an intensified campaign against potential troublemakers, violence has continued. On August 10th, with the games under way in Beijing, 2,800km (1,750 miles) to the east, assailants threw home-made bombs at a police station in the town of Kuqa during the night, killing a guard. Again, they were Uighurs, members of the mostly Muslim, Turkic ethnic group estimated to make up nearly half Xinjiang’s 20m population. They let off several more bombs in Kuqa’s broad, deserted shopping streets, killing a Uighur civilian.
A dangerous neighbourhood
There have since been at least two more attacks in the countryside around Kashgar. On August 12th three guards were killed at a checkpoint in Yamanya township. Two policemen were killed on August 27th in nearby Jiashi county. The official media called the attacks “terrorism”. It is the bloodiest series of such incidents in Xinjiang since the 1990s.
China likes to link Xinjiang’s troubles to the militant Islamism roiling other countries in the region. On August 28th, at a summit in Tajikistan, President Hu Jintao told fellow leaders of the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation, which groups China, Russia and four Central Asian countries, that members should “deepen co-operation” in their fight against the “three evil forces” of terrorism, separatism and religious extremism.
The police in Xinjiang have not pinned the blame for the recent violence on any terrorist group, nor has any claimed responsibility. But the official press has been less restrained. Nanfeng Chuang, a weekly magazine, said unspecified pro-independence groups outside China were “imitating al-Qaeda” and sending members into Xinjiang to organise terrorist attacks.
The group most commonly accused of waging a terror campaign in Xinjiang is the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), which in 2001 China described as a “major component” of Osama bin Laden’s network. Earlier this year officials said ETIM had been plotting attacks against the Olympics. A group calling itself the Turkestan Islamic Party (possibly another name for ETIM) released videos claiming responsibility for bus explosions in Shanghai in May and the south-western city of Kunming in July. But the authorities, partly perhaps to prevent fears of a spread of violence into the rest of China, denied the blasts had any terrorist connection.
In fact scant evidence has been made public of any organised terror campaign in Xinjiang or anywhere else in China. The recent attacks involved only the crudest weapons—no machine-guns or other military arms in a part of the world awash with them. In Kuqa a Chinese man shows how an explosive device had fallen to the bottom of the flight of stairs down to his shoe shop. He says the confined space concentrated the blast and enabled it to smash metal and glass shutters.
None of the attacks seems to have been aimed primarily at civilians. One did die in Kuqa, but the decision to attack at 2am does not suggest an intention to cause widespread loss of life among ordinary citizens. The killing of the border guards in central Kashgar occurred at around 8am, also a quiet time, since most people follow an unofficial local time two hours behind the Beijing hour on the clocks.
There is not much evidence either of religious extremism. There have been no reliable reports in Xinjiang of suicide-bombings, a hallmark of Islamist fanaticism. In Kuqa two attackers are said to have blown themselves up, but whether by accident or design is not clear. Eight others were shot dead by police. Li Wei of the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations in Beijing says he believes that Xinjiang’s militants are motivated more by separatism than jihad. In the 1930s and 1940s, a Republic of East Turkestan twice enjoyed a brief independence in parts of Xinjiang. In Kashgar a few older women go out with their heads completely veiled and most women, even many schoolgirls, wear headscarves. But many young people drink alcohol and dress as fashionably as do their Han Chinese counterparts.
So China may be overstating the menace a bit, to rally international support for its crackdown. Travellers in southern Xinjiang say they often see slogans on walls warning people to shun Hizb-ut-Tahrir, an extremist group banned in much of Central Asia that wants to unite Muslims around the world under one caliphate. Others remind citizens that making one’s own way to Mecca is “illegal”. China only allows government-run trips, partly to stop pilgrims mixing with extremists.
To discourage the others
China’s heavy-handed repression angers many Uighurs. In the build-up to the games and particularly since these latest incidents, residents of Kashgar and Kuqa say many suspected of militancy have been arrested. Helmeted police cruise the streets of Kuqa at night in open-topped jeeps. A driver in Kashgar erupts with a tirade against China’s leaders—as “fascists” who do nothing but “bully” Uighurs. Security is likely to remain tight at least until after October 1st, when officials are fearful of attacks over the National Day holiday.
On July 9th near Kashgar, apparently to cow anyone plotting to disrupt the Olympics, the authorities summoned residents to a rally. Officials read out death sentences imposed on three Uighurs for terrorist offences. Notices posted around Kashgar showed the three men’s faces covered by red crosses (indicating they had been executed) and gave details of 57 others sentenced for separatist or terrorist crimes.
The Economist found a relative of one of the 57 near Kashgar. The police soon stopped the interview and detained those involved for over three hours. One officer said he had not been home for more than two weeks because of the alert in the area. A Han Chinese, unusually for a rural policeman, he carries a pistol on his hip.
Ok, thanks for reposting that, Takuan.
From what I can gather, Chinese people have a completely different notion of religion's place in society than Westerners do. Here, religion is viewed by the largely atheist population as a dangerous distraction from the facts of the real world; that point of view is doubly true for religions that advocate fasting or abstaining from human necessities.
Viewed through that lens, I don't think it's that hard to understand their policies. I don't claim to believe in their ideas, I tend to lean towards Libertarianism, but I think you need to place yourself in someone else's shoes to see why they do what they do.
As far as the police state-esque treatment of the Xinjiang people after the attacks, all I can say is that all governments have the obligation to protect their citizens. Higher level questions as to whether or not they have an ethical right to consider that region part of their country are not within the scope of law enforcement.
I think Beijing wants the land and resources that the Uighurs (and Tibetans) are sitting on and that is all there is to it. There is a racist element to it all in that "Han" people make their Han-ness important in who gets to develop,own and profit from these resources. If there had been genuine good faith from the beginning that the original owners of all these good things would also share in the profits, things today might be more peaceful. Why couldn't the Uighurs (and Tibetans) kept their culture? Why is Beijing so damned afraid?
They missed a valuable lesson in trust that could have helped them deal with the disenchanted Han now rising up in revolt in the cities.
Ultimately, the current Chinese model of government has no faith in the Chinese people.
It will not survive.
I think the words "original owners" are too subjective. It always comes up during debates over Israel and what it means to be American. Where do you draw the line? Dynastic China had a presence in Xinjiang for quite a time. Is that too recent to count? where do you draw the line?
Scholars and statesmen could study, debate and set rules. In fact of practice,it will be decided by guns. I do think though the central Chinese body politic is in grave danger of fractures from within. If and when (probably) this happens, even Uighurs outgunned and outnumbered today might have their turn on top in their own neighbourhood. I fully expect China to splinter into a dozen nations. It just depends how fast and how bad the economic crisis hits.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Soviet_Union_(1985-1991)
We shall see. I'll be happily back in America in a few weeks, so I should be able to watch from afar if it happens as you expect.
I think you are right that in the end these moral debates are always settled by superior firepower. I don't, however, think that any number of scholars and statesman could decide on what constitutes original ownership of a piece of land. And if they did, who would listen?
the ongoing argument is what buys us enough time to live our lives
Early Uighur history is summarized (and drawn!) nicely in The Cartoon History of the Universe III. The Uighur/Chinese relationship apparently started when the Uighurs sold Turkish horses to the Chinese emperor.
Xinjiang & Tibet and most of what makes up modern china is an artifact of Qing Rule
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qing_Dynasty
From Han
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_Dynasty
to Ming
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Ming-Empire2.jpg
What is now Tibet and Xinjiang was a never considered part of china and was of no interest. The Qing dynasty, in a mixture of aggression, fear, and Mongol politics (the Qing were descendants of the Jurchens at group who invaded and ruled China previously in the 12th century ad. They later joined and became enmeshed with Genghis Khan's Mongols.)
Before the Qing, Central Asia was the worlds greatest melting pot, so it's little surprise that mummies looking distinctly non-Chinese are
appearing there.
Kennewick man is in the Burke museum in Seattle.
If you'd like more information on him
http://www.nps.gov/history/archeology/kennewick/