"We feel like foreigners in our own land," complains one Uighur teacher in the provincial capital of Urumqi, who offers only a nickname, Batur, for fear of angering the authorities. "We are like the Indians in America." Or Tibetans in Tibet. "Most Uighurs sympathize with the Tibetans," says Batur. "We feel we are all under the same sort of rule."
Though Xinjiang's 8 million Uighurs have shown only a few signs of the sort of unrest that shook Tibet recently, the Chinese government is just as nervous about "splittism" here among the country's fifth-largest ethnic minority, afraid that beneath the surface calm, resentment is bubbling.
The authorities claim to have foiled three Uighur terrorist plots in recent months – one aimed at bringing down a passenger plane and the other two at this summer's Olympic Games in Beijing – though they have given scant details to support the reports.
That concern, many Uighurs charge, translates into harsh government control of their lives, restrictions on the use of their language in schools and on their Muslim religious practice, and a colonial-style economy that keeps most local people in menial jobs while Han Chinese immigrants run businesses and the local administration.
Others are more sympathetic. "We can understand that they feel their culture is being diluted" says Zhu Lijuan, another student. "But without Han people, how would they have cellphones or computers?"
"The Uighurs are in a very difficult position," says Nicholas Bequelin, a researcher with Human Rights Watch. "They can modernize but at the expense of their culture, or they can refuse to do so and end up marginalized economically
I generally disagree with the whole "if you modernize you lose your culture" bit but it's cool. Yes, I realize that it's often a result but I'm unsure of whether it has to be one? Hm.
Young men under the age of 18 are not allowed to pray in the mosque, the guardian says. Recently introduced regulations forbid local government employees from going to the mosque and ban teachers from wearing beards and students from bringing the Koran to university, human rights activists say.
I know a lot of non-Muslims go through hell living in a Muslim country and often face similar problems. I really do wonder what the ideal balance is to live in harmony (hey, if the Muslims/Christians/Jews could do it Spain for a few centuries, we should be able to pull it off as well, no?). I've forever been very curious and confused about shariah; numerous people and scholars have argued that shariah as practiced in many Muslim countries is misguided, but I've never fully examined the ideals myself.
The Chinese government "conflates … any religious activities outside the official framework with terrorism and separatism," argues Mr. Bequelin, leading ordinary Uighur believers to fear they could be charged with aiding the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), an armed separatist organization on the US government list of terrorist groups.
ETIM, a shadowy group that advocates an independent Islamic state for Uighurs, is seen by the Chinese authorities as the principal security danger in the region. Accused of a failed bomb plot on a Chinese airliner last month, the organization "is the preeminent threat to the Beijing Olympics," says Rohan Gunaratna, head of the International Center for Political Violence and Terrorism Research in Singapore.
But fear of being branded a separatist hangs heavily over most Uighurs. Asked if he is happy with the way the government treats him, one man says that answering that question would make him choose between "committing a political sin or a sin against my conscience." He chooses the latter, and is silent.
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