Archive for ‘Ethnic clash’

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26/06/2013

Violence in China’s Xinjiang ‘kills 27’

BBC: “Riots have killed 27 people in China’s restive far western region of Xinjiang, Chinese state media report.

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The violence broke out in Turpan prefecture early on Wednesday.

Police opened fire after a mob armed with knives attacked police stations and a local government building, Xinhua news agency quoted officials as saying.

There are sporadic outbreaks of violence in Xinjiang, where there are ethnic tensions between Muslim Uighur and Han Chinese communities.

Confirming reports from the region is difficult because information is tightly controlled.

China’s state media have been quick to issue an official version of events regarding the latest round of violence in Xinjiang, but it will be tough to verify those reports.

Xinjiang lies on China’s remote north-west border and it is difficult for foreign media to travel there. Many people on both sides of the conflict are reluctant to speak to visiting journalists for fear of reprisals if they dispute the government’s stance.

Unfortunately Xinjiang usually hits international headlines when violence flares between the region’s minority ethnic Uighur Muslims and the majority Han Chinese. Many Uighurs contend that their language and religion are being smothered by an influx of Han Chinese migrants.

Xinjiang is a large geographic area rich in oil and gas deposits. Soon it will also become a major supplier of coal to China’s energy-hungry cities. The region’s fertile land also grows produce that is shipped to the rest of the country. The Han Chinese who move to Xinjiang hope to benefit from the region’s untapped resources.

The violence occurred in Turpan‘s remote township of Lukqun, about 200km (120 miles) south-east of the region’s capital, Urumqi.

The Xinhua news agency report, citing local officials, said rioters stabbed people and set police cars alight.

Seventeen people, including nine security personnel and eight civilians, were killed before police shot dead 10 of the rioters, it said.

At least three others were injured and were being treated in hospital, it added.

The Xinhua report did not provide any information on the ethnicity of those involved in the riot or on what sparked it.

But Dilxat Raxit, a spokesperson for the World Uighur Congress, an umbrella organisation of Uighur groups, told the Associated Press news agency the violence had been caused by the Chinese government’s “sustained repression and provocation” of the Uighur community.

In 2009 almost 200 people – mostly Han Chinese – were killed after deadly rioting erupted in Urumqi between the Han Chinese and Uighur communities.

In April an incident in the city of Kashgar left 21 people dead.

Uighurs and Xinjiang

Uighurs are ethnically Turkic Muslims. They make up about 45% of the region’s population; 40% are Han Chinese

China re-established control in 1949 after crushing short-lived state of East Turkestan. Since then, large-scale immigration of Han Chinese. Uighurs fear erosion of traditional culture.

The government said the violence began when “terrorists” were discovered in a building by officials searching for weapons.

But local people told the BBC that the violence involved a local family who had a longstanding dispute with officials who had been pressurising the men to shave off their beards and the women to take off their veils.

Uighurs make up about 45% of Xinjiang’s population, but say an influx of Han Chinese residents has marginalised their traditional culture.”

via BBC News – Violence in China’s Xinjiang ‘kills 27’.

See also: https://chindia-alert.org/political-factors/chinese-tensions/

Posted in China alert, Dissident, Ethnic clash, Governance, Insurgency, Internal politics, Politics, Religious clash | Leave a Comment »

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21/06/2013

Tibet policy: Bold new proposals

Finally some one with a new idea for Tibet. Hopefully some progress will be made.

The Economist: “FEW outside China think the Communist Party’s strategy for Tibet is working. A combination of economic development and political repression was meant to reconcile Tibetans to Chinese rule and wean them off their loyalty to the Dalai Lama, the exiled spiritual leader. Instead disaffection is still rife, especially among the young. And all across Tibetan areas of China, Tibetans still display the Dalai Lama’s portrait, sometimes openly. Since March 2011 more than 100 Tibetans—especially in Tibetan areas of provinces bordering what China calls the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR)—have set themselves on fire. Most have done so in part to call for the Dalai Lama’s homecoming. An overwhelming security presence and the Dalai Lama’s commitment to non-violence mean that the unrest is easily contained. Hence little has suggested that China’s leaders are concerned about the bleak implications for the future: that their rule in Tibet can be maintained only by the indefinite deployment of massive coercive force.

So for a Chinese scholar, Jin Wei, who is director of ethnic and religious studies at the Central Party School in Beijing, to call for a “creative” new approach is startling. For her to do so publicly, in an interview this month with a Hong Kong magazine, Asia Weekly, suggests that she has high-level backing. A report from a Beijing think-tank in 2009 challenged the official line that rioting in Tibet the year before was instigated from abroad. But Robert Barnett, a professor of Tibetan studies at Columbia University in New York, describes Ms Jin’s intervention as a sign that, after two decades, “debate has re-emerged within China about the government’s hard-line policies in Tibet”. Ms Jin even accused former party chiefs in Tibet of being “biased against the practice of religious affairs”. This, she said, “foreshadowed the accumulation of grievances today.”

Bold new proposals

One former party secretary in Tibet (from 1988-92) was Hu Jintao, who went on to head the party nationally for ten years until last November, when he gave way to Xi Jinping. Those who have forecast that Mr Xi might prove a bolder reformer than the cautious Mr Hu have so far seen little to back them up. Here, on Tibet, is at least a hint of a crack in the hardline consensus. Some have detected another in the appointment of Yu Zhengsheng to head the party’s main policy group on Tibet and Xinjiang, a Muslim-majority region in the north-west. Mr Yu is the head of an advisory body designed to promote national unity. Previous heads of the group have been security specialists.

This is new

Ms Jin’s analysis, though couched in the terminology of party orthodoxy, is similar to that of many foreign observers. She argues that, by demonising the Dalai Lama, and viewing any expression of Tibetan culture as potentially subversive, the party has turned even those Tibetans sympathetic to its aims against it. The struggle has evolved from “a contradiction between the central government and the Dalai Lama separatist clique into an ethnic conflict between Han Chinese and Tibetans”.

She is not advocating a new soft approach to “political” issues, such as the Dalai Lama’s call for greater autonomy for Tibet and Tibetans’ hankering after a “greater Tibet”—ie, within its historic borders, beyond the TAR. But in fact, most protests in Tibet are not about “politics”, defined like this. Many have been sparked by anger at Chinese repression—of Tibetan culture, language and tradition, or of individual protesters. It is a vicious circle, made worse by anger at the large-scale immigration into Tibet of Han Chinese.

Ms Jin has ideas on how to break the impasse. Talks with the Dalai Lama’s representatives, stalled since the most recent of nine fruitless rounds in 2010, should resume, she says. They should concentrate on “easy” issues first, setting contentious debate about Tibet’s status to one side for now. China should consider inviting the Dalai Lama to visit one of its semi-autonomous cities, Hong Kong or Macau, and eventually allowing him back to Tibet. It should also try to defuse the crisis his death will bring by agreeing with him on a chosen reincarnation from inside China’s borders. Otherwise, China risks having to deal with two incarnations: one it endorses and one in exile who is more likely to be revered by most Tibetans.”

via Tibet policy: Bold new proposals | The Economist.

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29/05/2013

Settlers in Xinjiang: Circling the wagons

The Economist: “In a region plagued by ethnic strife, the growth of immigrant-dominated settlements is adding to the tension

MANY hours’ drive along what was once the southern Silk Road, through a featureless desert landscape punctuated by swirling dust-devils and occasional gnarled trees, a curious sight eventually confronts the traveller: row upon row of apartment blocks with vivid red roofs, as if a piece of Shanghai suburbia has been planted in the wilderness (see picture). Following the military-style nomenclature of immigrant settlements in China’s far west, it calls itself 38th Regiment. It is home to thousands of people, in a spot where just a few years ago there was nothing but sand.

The town is the latest addition to a vast network of such communities in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, China’s biggest province by land area and also its most ethnically troubled. Neighbouring Tibet has long been roiled by ethnic tension, too, but rarely has it witnessed the kind of violence that has troubled Xinjiang: a low-level insurgency involving ethnic Uighurs whose Muslim faith and Central Asian culture and language set them apart from the Han Chinese who dominate places like 38th Regiment. On April 23rd, 21 people were killed near Kashgar during an encounter between police and alleged separatists. An explosion of inter-ethnic violence in 2009 in the regional capital, Urumqi, that left nearly 200 dead, by official reckoning, exacerbated the divide. The expansion of the settlement network is deepening it further.

To use its full name, the 38th Regiment of the 2nd Agricultural Division is part of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps. This state-run organisation, usually referred to as the bingtuan (Chinese for a military corps) controls an area twice the size of Taiwan, broken into numerous parts scattered around the province (see map). A few bits are city-sized. Most are more like towns or villages. Of their total population of more than 2.6m people, 86% are ethnically Han Chinese. In Xinjiang as a whole, in contrast, Han officially make up just over 40% of the 22m inhabitants. The rest are Uighurs and a few other ethnic groups.”

via Settlers in Xinjiang: Circling the wagons | The Economist.

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01/05/2013

* China’s new mental health law to make it harder for authorities to silence petitioners

SCMP: “The director of Xinjiang‘s largest mental health institution has welcomed a new law, which went into effect on Wednesday, banning involuntary inpatient treatment for many people deemed mentally ill.

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“Seventy to 80 per cent of the patients have been forcibly admitted to the hospital,” said Xu Xiangdong, director of the Fourth People’s Hospital in the regional capital Urumqi, the Yaxin online news portal reported on Monday.

“Because of this increased consideration for patients’ rights, [the figures] will change fundamentally,” he said, adding that it would put an end to frequent episodes of people being wrongfully declared mentally ill.

The new law, which has been debated for a quarter of a century, is meant to crack down on local authorities aiming to silence petitioners and troublemakers by arbitrarily declaring them mentally ill and locking them up in mental health wards.

Under the law, patients must first give their consent to being hospitalised, except in cases in which they could harm themselves or others.

If patients are still forcibly confined, they or their guardians have the right to seek a second opinion. Forced hospitalisations for reasons other than severe mental illness are banned.

Last week about 200 health practitioners from the region were sent to Xu’s hospital to be trained in the new provisions on patients’ rights stipulated by the new law, the Xinjiang Daily reported.

Two million people in Xinjiang live with mental disabilities, Xu estimated, amounting to more than 9 per cent of the population in the economic backwater of China’s remote northwest.

That compares with almost 8 per cent of China’s population diagnosed with some form of mental illness, according to the Ministry of Health in 2011. A largescale 2009 study estimated a much higher national average at 17.5 per cent.

In Xinjiang, authorities have not been able to provide adquate resources to deal with the increasing number of people living with mental disorders. Xu told the Yaxin portal in 2011 that the number of mentally ill patients had increased by 20 to 30 per cent annually over the last years.

In Monday’s report, he said less than 5 per cent of the two million mentally ill could receive treatment because of a lack of resources and trained staff.

Two years earlier, the regional government had reported plans to build 15 new mental hospitals and to expand current ones. Until now, only one additional hospital in Kashgar has been completed, the Yaxin report said.

In March, a gruesome murder of a seven-year-old Uygur boy by a Chinese man has caused tensions among ethnic communities in the Turpan prefecture east of Urumqi. The man had been declared mentally ill to prevent ethnic revenge attacks, locals told Radio Free Asia.”

via China’s new mental health law to make it harder for authorities to silence petitioners | South China Morning Post.

Posted in China alert, Dissident, Ethnic clash, Freedom, Governance, Human rights, Illegal practices, Insurgency, Internal politics, Justice, Politics, Rule of law, self determination | Leave a Comment »

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24/04/2013

* China’s Xinjiang hit by deadly clashes

BBC: “Clashes in China’s restive Xinjiang region have left 21 people dead, including 15 police officers and officials, authorities say.

Map

The violence occurred on Tuesday afternoon in Bachu county, Kashgar prefecture.

The foreign ministry said it had been a planned attack by a “violent terrorist group”, but ethnic groups questioned this.

There have been sporadic clashes in Xinjiang in recent years.

The incidents come amid rumbling ethnic tensions between the Muslim Uighur and Han Chinese communities. In 2009 almost 200 people – mostly Han Chinese – were killed after deadly rioting erupted.

Nothing is stopping foreign journalists from booking flights to Xinjiang after hearing reports of violence there. However, simply travelling to the region doesn’t guarantee the ability to dig out the truth behind this story.

In 2009, dozens of foreign reporters were permitted to join an official tour of Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, after clashes between minority ethnic Uighur residents and majority Chinese Hans killed 197 people.

Their experiences were mixed. Some reporters were able to speak to a variety of people on the ground, while others faced harassment and intimidation.

The situation remains the same today. Reporters who travel to the area are closely followed by government minders. Locals often hesitate to answer questions, fearing reprisals from government authorities.

Uighur exile groups often provide accounts that differ from the official Chinese government reports. Reconciling the two can be tricky.

The situation isn’t any easier for Chinese journalists. China’s propaganda departments have warned domestic news outlets against conducting their own independent reporting on sensitive Xinjiang stories, ordering them to reprint official stories from China’s major state news agencies.

It is very difficult to verify reports from Xinjiang, reports the BBC’s Celia Hatton.

Foreign journalists are allowed to travel to the region but frequently face intimidation and harassment when attempting to verify news of ethnic rioting or organised violence against government authorities.”

via BBC News – China’s Xinjiang hit by deadly clashes.

See also: https://chindia-alert.org/prognosis/chinese-challenges/

Posted in China alert, Culture, Dissident, Ethnic clash, History, Instability, Insurgency, Internal politics, Politics, terrorism, unrest | 2 Comments »

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14/04/2013

* China Makes Inroads in Nepal, Stemming Tibetan Presence

NY Times: “The wind-scoured desert valley here, just south of Tibet, was once a famed transit point for the Tibetan yak caravans laden with salt that lumbered over the icy ramparts of the Himalayas. In the 1960s, it became a base for Tibetan guerrillas trained by the C.I.A. to attack Chinese troops occupying their homeland.

Prayer wheels at a temple in the Mustang area of Nepal. The Chinese are trying to restrain the flow of disaffected Tibetans fleeing to Nepal and to enlist the help of the Nepalese authorities.

These days, it is the Chinese who are showing up in this far tip of the Buddhist kingdom of Mustang, northwest of Katmandu, Nepal. Chinese officials are seeking to stem the flow of disaffected Tibetans fleeing to Nepal and to enlist the help of the Nepalese authorities in cracking down on the political activities of the 20,000 Tibetans already here.

China is exerting its influence across Nepal in a variety of ways, mostly involving financial incentives. In Mustang, China is providing $50,000 in annual food aid and sending military officials across the border to discuss with local Nepalese what the ceremonial prince of Mustang calls “border security.”

Their efforts across the country have borne fruit. The Nepalese police regularly detain Tibetans during anti-China protests in Katmandu, and they have even curbed celebrations of the birthday of the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader, according to Tibetans living in Nepal.

via China Makes Inroads in Nepal, Stemming Tibetan Presence – NYTimes.com.

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24/02/2013

* I am here to share your pain, PM tells Hyderabad blast victims

Times of India: “Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Sunday visited the Thursday’s blast sites and hospitals where the injured are being treated to express “solidarity” with the people of the city and appealed for peace and calm.

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He lauded the people of the city for refusing to be provoked by the “nefarious” act.

Singh visited the twin blast sites and Omni and Yashoda hospitals where he met some of the injured and their families, assuring them of all help.

“I have come to share the grief of people of Hyderabad. I express condolence for the families of the bereaved and wish speedy recovery for the injured,” Singh said after meeting the blast victims at the hospitals.

He also said the state government has assured all medical help for them.

“The state government has assured all help will be given for treatment,” Singh, who flew in here from Delhi by a special IAF plane, said.

Making an appeal for peace, he said, “I call upon the people to maintain calm in this hour of grief. I am happy that people of Hyderabad have refused to be provoked by this nefarious incident.”

Singh had on Saturday strongly condemned the blasts, saying those responsible for the “dastardly” act would not go unpunished.”

via I am here to share your pain, PM tells Hyderabad blast victims – The Times of India.

See also: https://chindia-alert.org/political-factors/indian-tensions/

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04/02/2013

* “Muslims have bigger problems than Rushdie”

Salman Rushdie

Salman Rushdie (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Hindu: “Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen said here on Sunday that the Muslim groups who protested against author Salman Rushdie’s visit to the city were distracting attention from “the real disadvantages” that the community faced.

“A lot of people who are enormously disadvantaged have enormous reasons to complain about other things,” Professor Sen said in response to a question on the controversy at the Kolkata Literary Meet, one of the events in the 37 International Kolkata Book Fair.

Professor Sen said that communities such as the Scheduled Castes, the Scheduled Tribes and the Muslims in West Bengal were not as privileged as the rest “in terms of the even-handedness of progress.”

“To subvert that issue into a completely different kind of issue and getting offended about something else — that is distracting attention from the real disadvantages that they face,” Professor Sen said.

The author of The Argumentative Indian said the militancy seen in recent developments restricted the conversation: “Anything that makes the Indian constructive argumentative tradition more militant — that people have the right [to deem an act as offensive] and therefore you cannot say those things — becomes a limitation because it restricts the conversation,” Professor Sen said.”

via The Hindu : News / National : “Muslims have bigger problems than Rushdie”.

See also: http://chindia-alert.org/political-factors/indian-tensions/

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22/12/2012

* China opens second railway to Kazakhstan

China’s “go west” policy now extends even further west than its most western province! This is good news for Xinjiang, long deemed by its Muslim residents to be looked down upon and mistreated by the majority Han Chinese, for Chinese migrants who would otherwise have headed east into heavily crowded and over-competitive eastern sea board, and for Kazakhstan and countries beyond. A win-win-win situation, indeed.

Xinhua: “A second cross-border railway between China and Kazakhstan opened Saturday.

The railway is composed of a 292-km section in China and the remaining 293-km section in Kazakhstan. They were joined at the Korgas Pass in Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region.

Contruction of the Chinese side of the railway cost 6 billion yuan (962 million U.S. dollars), railway officials said.

The rail line is expected to ease the burden of the Alataw trade pass, where the first China-central Asia railway traverses. It handles 15.6 million tonnes of train-laden cargo a year.

Industry observers expect the Korgas pass, which now connects China and Kazakhstan by a railway, a highway, and an oil pipeline, to handle 20 million tonnes of cargo a year by 2020 and 35 million tonnes a year by 2030.

The railway launch followed the meet of Chinese Vice Premier Wang Qishan and his Kazakh counterpart Kairat Kelimbetov in Astana earlier this month, vowing to enhance bilateral cooperation in energy, trade, communication and other fields.

Wang suggested enhancing the China-Kazzkhstan interconnection by the rails and a trans-continental highway that links China with Europe.

China and five central Asian countries have been deepening trade and economic cooperations in recent years. The total trade volume between China and central, west, and south Asian countries increased from 25.4 billion U.S. dollars to more than 370 billion, up about 30 percent annually.

In particular, trade between Xinjiang and five central Asian countries reached a historical high of 16.98 billion U.S. dollars last year, according to the customs figures.

Observers said the railway will also help the border city of Korgas become a key logistics hub with a network of highways, railways and pipelines.

Since 2010, the central government has been redoubling the efforts to build Xinjiang into a regional economic center, eyeing its geological closeness to central Asia and the region’s abundant natural resources including oil, coal and natural gas.”

via China opens second railway to Kazakhstan – Xinhua | English.news.cn.

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09/12/2012

* India’s UP saw over 100 communal clashes in 2012

Despite the notion of unity in diversity, India continues to suffer from communal / ethnic clashes over 60 years after independence.

The Hindu: “Uttar Pradesh has earned the dubious distinction of witnessing over 100 communal clashes this year that left 34 people dead.

File photo of the family of 55-year-old Mohammed Umar, who was beaten to death in Mukeempur Pahadpur village near Faizabad on October 25, 2012 as violence erupted during Durga Puja celebrations.

The towns where incidents of such violence took place are Kosi Kalan in Mathura, Faizabad, Pratapgarh, Sitapur, Ghaziabad and Bareilly.

More than 450 people were also injured in these clashes which took place from January till October 31, Home Ministry officials said.

There were 84 incidents of communal clashes in the state in 2011 in which 12 people lost their lives.

The country witnessed 560 incidents of violence this year till October end, which claimed 89 lives, while in 2011, 580 clashes took place that left 91 people dead.

Uttar Pradesh was followed by Maharashtra where 83 incidents were reported so far this year in which 13 people were killed and 88 incidents in 2011 which claimed 15 lives.

Madhya Pradesh saw 78 incidents of communal violence so far this year in which 11 people were killed and in 2011, 81 incidents of communal clashes were reported that left 15 dead.

In Karnataka, there were 54 incidents of communal clashes in 2012 and 70 incidents in 2011 in which three and four people lost their lives respectively.

Rajasthan had witnessed 42 incidents of communal clashes in 2011 leading to death of 16 people while this year the state has witnessed 30 incidents of such violence and six dead.

There were 47 incidents of communal clashes in Gujarat in 2011, in which three persons lost their lives, and 50 incidents so far this year in which five were killed.

Andhra Pradesh saw 33 communal clashes in 2011 in which one died and so far this year, 45 clashes took place in which two were killed.

There were 30 incidents of communal clashes in Kerala in 2011, in which one died, and 46 incidents in this year in which one was killed.

Bihar witnessed 26 incidents with four deaths last year and 17 incidents this year in which three persons were killed.

Tamil Nadu saw 21 incidents of communal violence and two deaths in 2011 and 11 incidents with two deaths this year so far.

There were 15 incidents in West Bengal in 2011 in which three persons were killed, and 22 incidents in this year, in which eight persons were killed.”

via The Hindu : News / National : UP saw over 100 communal clashes in 2012.

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