IRIN Focus on Uyghur community caught in “political games”

Political pressure as a result of sensitive Kyrgyz-Chinese relations continues to take its toll on Kyrgyzstan’s ethnic Uyghur community, leaving many feeling increasingly victimised. “We feel that the Uyghur community is a card in political games in Sino-Kyrgyz relations,” Nurmuhamed Kenji, director of the Central Asia Uyghur Information and Project Centre in the capital, Bishkek, told IRIN. “Unlike other ethnic groups, we are part of international politics,” he said. With a population of 4.5 million, Kyrgyzstan is home to a number of predominantly Turkic Muslim nations, and counts some 50,000 Uyghurs among them. After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Uyghur community started reorganising itself, creating the Ittipak association to defend its cultural and political rights in Kyrgyzstan. The Uyghur are one of the many Turkic nations living in Central Asia. Despite a population estimated at 10 million, they do not have their own country. Scattered throughout Central Asia and in the former Soviet republics of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan, the majority - eight million - live in China. In 1955, former Chinese leader and founder Mao Zedong created the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in northwestern China to sustain the development of the Uyghur nation. But this policy has resulted in increasing tension between the local Uyghur population and the Han Chinese. In recent years, this tension has led to terrorist acts in Xinjiang and the Chinese capital, Beijing. Today, the Uyghur communities of the former Soviet republics of Central Asia face many challenges in their efforts to assume their identity: China’s stand on Uyghur issues, Central Asian states’ ambivalent relations with China, and the little attention the West pays to the problem of the Uyghur nation. According to Muzapparkhan Kurban, chief editor of the Uyghur-language monthly ‘Vizhdan Avazi’, “there is no open pressure on the Uyghur community in Kyrgyzstan, but in state structures there are no Uyghurs”. He told IRIN the reason was that the position of the Uyghurs in the country was linked to that of their counterparts in China. China takes the threat of Uyghur separatism very seriously, because part of the Uyghur population supports the idea of an independent Uyghuristan, also known as Eastern Turkestan. In mid-June, Chinese Vice-President Hu Jintao toured Xinjiang and announced strict measures to crush Muslim separatists in the autonomous region. Hu, widely seen as President Jiang Zemin’s likely successor, also called for an increase in surveillance of Islamic activists so as to “resolutely curb illegal activities carried out in the name of religion”. His inspection tour coincided with the 14 to 15 June summit in Shanghai which brought together the leaders of China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan and established, together with Uzbekistan, the new Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. During the summit, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Jiang drew attention to Muslim separatists in their own countries - Chechens and Uyghurs, respectively - as a source of ongoing instability. According to Kenji, China’s perception of the Uyghur issue is irrelevant. “How can you label a whole nation as terrorist? If you look at the history of the Uyghur nation, you will see that Uyghurs are extremely tolerant. They brought different religions to Asia - Nestorianism, Buddhism, and finally Islam. Uyghurs have always lived mixed with other nations, and there has never been any ethnic conflict on Uyghur territory. Turkestan has always been a land of tolerance, where nomads and urban populations lived together.” Kurban explained that “Uyghurs have always been looked at suspiciously, even by Stalin, who ordered the deportation and killing of many Uyghurs in the 1920s and 1930s. People have been taught to distrust Uyghurs, and today they call us terrorists, Wahabbites [a sect of ultra-orthodox Muslims], because this is how we are portrayed in the media.” But Kenji admits that the idea of an independent state is foremost in the minds of all Uyghurs. “For 200 years, the Uyghur people have fought for the creation of an independent state. We cannot lose hope, because otherwise this means the death of our nation. Yet we need big changes in the world to come: the legal frame of international relations needs to be amended. The UN itself is in contradiction; on the one hand it defends the inviolability of international borders, on the other hand it defends the right to self-determination for all nations. Obviously there is a double standard here.” Kurban is more direct, and asks: “If self-determination is offered to the people in Kosovo or Palestine, why is it denied to Uyghurs?” Yet for the Central Asian governments, the priority is elsewhere. Kyrgyzstan shares a 1,100 km border with China, and strives for economic development to overcome its geographic isolation and lack of natural resources. Stable relations with Beijing are therefore essential and many signs point towards a Kyrgyz-Chinese rapprochement; there is a no-visa regulation between the two countries, and cross-border business is rapidly expanding. The Sino-Kyrgyz border point on the Torugart Pass in the Tien Shan mountains is regarded as a possible gate of the future TRACECA road, an international project supported by the European Community, and aimed at facilitating road and rail transport of goods and persons between Europe, the Caucasus, Central Asia and China. In this context, the Uyghur community becomes a key political card in negotiations with China for the Kyrgyz government. Recently, a number of prominent Uyghur leaders died in suspicious circumstances. Dilbirim Samsakova, a women’s rights activist, was found dead in Kazakhstan in June. Nigmat Bazakov, chairman of the Ittipak Society, was shot to dead at point-blank range in front of his house in Bishkek on 28 March 2000. Hashir Wahidi, chairman of the Uyghuristan Liberation Organisation in Kazakhstan, was fatally attacked in his house by unknown individuals in 1998; he died just a few months after the attack. Eminzhan Osmanov, director of the Uyghur section of the Writers’ Union of Uzbekistan, was murdered in jail in early March, 2001. Local authorities usually put the blame on criminal structures or terrorist groups, as Uyghurs are often involved in business. According to Kenji, however, “in the eyes of the Uyghur community, all those deaths are politically motivated and perceived as political assassinations”. Today, the Uyghur community can only rely on itself. Kenji founded the Central Asia Uyghur Information and Project Centre in 1997. The centre operates as a non-profit organisation focusing on the cultural development of the Uyghur community in Kyrgyzstan, and to a certain extent in Central Asia. It also publishes ‘Taraqqiyat’, an information and analytical bulletin in Russian, English and Uyghur. Kenji describes the centre’s mission as “defending the right to develop ourselves, as we do not have our own state”. As for support from abroad, Kenji is rather critical: “The West does pay attention to our situation in Central Asia, but there are no preventive measures. Besides, all the help goes through governmental channels and very little is left for ethnic minorities.” The main danger, according to him, is radicalism out of desperation. “If we don’t support the human development of ethnic minorities, people will select radical ways. We are not listened to, and all we want is to live normally,” he explained. While Kurban praises Western attention, and the recently opened Radio Free Asia Uyghur service that broadcasts to Central Asia, he points to a very little known refugee crisis in Kyrgyzstan and neighboring Central Asian republics. “Many desperate Uyghurs from China try to seek political asylum in Central Asia, believing that local governments will support them, as Turkic brothers. Yet there is no support; on the contrary, most governments threaten to deport them back to China, where they will be jailed and shot,” Kurban said. “Those people cannot move to a third country. They are at a dead end and become easy victims of terrorist or criminal groups. I don’t understand why UNHCR is not helping those people,” he added.