作者：傅才德
來源：紐約時報 http://cn.nytimes.com/china/20140526/c26bovingdon/
時間：2014年05月26日
周四上午，新疆维吾尔自治区首府乌鲁木齐一处拥挤的市场发生了一连串爆炸，导致31人丧命，94人受伤。此次事件被定性为“暴力恐怖袭击”，国家主席习近平立誓要“从严惩处暴恐分子，全力维护社会稳定。”这是新疆今年内死伤最严重的事件，此前中国各地还发生了一连串的袭击，发动者均来自新疆的少数民族维吾尔族，其中的一些人想让新疆从中国分离出去，成为独立的东突厥斯坦。
直到不久前，维吾尔人一直是新疆人口的主要组成部分。不过，占中国人口绝大多数的汉族人多年来向新疆移民。根据2010年的人口普查结果，这种移民使得说突厥语族语言、大部分为穆斯林的维族人在自治区的2200万人口中只占了不到一半，而汉族人口正在接近同等规模。在共产党开始统治中国的1949年，新疆的汉人比例仅为6.7%。
美国印第安纳大学(Indiana University的教授鲍文德(Gardner Bovingdon)认为，人口的改变对于中国政府如何制定新疆政策、如何应对暴力事件的激增具有一定影响。近些年，鲍文德申请中国签证时一直被拒。他是名为“新疆13人”(Xinjiang 13)的团体中的一员，为2004年编辑的合集《新疆：中国的穆斯林边陲》(Xinjiang: China’s Muslim Borderland)一书撰写了文章，而这本合集惹怒了中国政府。在采访中，鲍文德教授探讨了中国的新疆政策，以及政府和自治区民众可能会采取的路线。
问：对新疆这一轮暴力事件和政府的行动，你有何看法？
答：人们想知道，这是不是维吾尔分离主义者的组织规模扩大、计划性增强的证据。我觉得下这样的结论还为时尚早，而且我尤其怀疑北京方面宣称的这些事件全都与东突厥斯坦伊斯兰运动(Eastern Turkestan Islamic Movement)有关的说法。我甚至不相信，这个组织现在还具备之前的能力。
北京方面想说，所有希望独立的维吾尔人都是分裂分子和恐怖分子。你知道，在汉语中，我们把东突厥斯坦称作“东突”，就好像所有相信东突厥斯坦、所有寻求东突厥斯坦独立的人都是这些伊斯兰运动的盟友一样。事实绝非如此。被美国和联合国确定为恐怖组织的只有东突厥斯坦伊斯兰运动，而这一身份的确立是在2002年。我觉得，这正是北京方面一直试图把各种事情和该组织联系在一起的主要原因。
问：所以，这些袭击是在中国境外策划的说法并非实情？
答：中国政府依然秉持的一个观点是，政府能够而且应该控制媒体，政府也应该利用自身的力量来炮制宣传，讲述它想要传播的故事，压制它不想要的说法。我怕那里的人们——的确有一些人乐于说，维吾尔恐怖主义的威胁正在增强；这件事清楚地表明，东突厥斯坦伊斯兰运动与基地组织(Al Qaeda)等团体相勾结——我怕那些人基本上是通过煽动恐怖主义威胁以确保自身的利益。这么做既符合他们的利益，也符合北京方面的利益。
我想我们必须持怀疑态度。我认为我们必须等待令我们满意的证据出现。我担心，我们根本不可能从中国的体制内部获得这种证据。
问：袭击活动不断发生，是否意味着维族社会的沮丧情绪正不断增长？
答：在我看来，这些具体的袭击活动显示出，有一小群人正致力于暴力活动，他们可能是受到了宗教信仰的驱动。从现有证据来看是这样的，而我对这些证据是持怀疑态度的。不过，我们绝不应该把这些人的行为和态度，与普通维族民众的行为和态度等同起来。这就是为什么我仍然要重申我多年来一直提到的观点，大量其他证据显示，大多数维族人对北京实施的政策或多或少都是有些不满的。事实上，无论在哪个问题上，你回忆一下10年甚至更长时间以前，当我还在新疆的时候，维族人有哪些不满，你会发现，北京的做法都违背了维族人曾经表达的意愿：北京进一步打击了宗教活动，进一步打击了维族语言，计划生育政策也更具压迫性，这种例子还有很多。
我认为，很难否认维族人中广泛存在的不满。但我也觉得，如果说爆炸和持刀伤人事件的增多是维族人不满情绪加剧的直接证据，这也是一种误解。
问：极端分子的最终目的是什么？
答：这种活动的长期目标是什么？我想起了法国人用来形容阿尔及利亚的一个表述——politique du pire——“最糟糕的政治”。如果有人从事了暴力活动，政府就予以镇压，而这将加剧大多数维族人的不满，因此从长期来看，它可能会引发更大不满情绪的爆发，以及更广泛的暴力行动，甚至超出那些组织的范围。
中国政府的考量是什么？我认为它正尝试着完成一个极具挑战性的任务。一方面，它需要谴责暴力行为。它需要让民众放心，在当前的例子中，主要是让新疆的汉族人口放心。因为这些袭击活动显然针对的是汉族人口为主的区域。中国政府需要让他们相信，政府能恢复稳定，阻止更多暴力活动的发生。它还需要释放一个信息，那就是我们只是批评和打击少数维族人，这些人不代表大多数，他们是恐怖分子。
问：你认为事态会如何发展？
答：很大程度上，北京已经放弃了这个想法：把所有维族人变成快乐而满足的中国公民，他们会全心全意地支持与中国人身份认同相关的项目。
维族人未来不可能构成真正的军事威胁。他们目前也不可能成功地制造分裂，当然，除非北京的中央政府出现了治理危机。然而，另一方面，即使双方的较量接近尾声，也不意味着未来就能够避免暴力活动的发生。一个最值得关注的后果，也是我们在探究未来时一个最大的疑问是，在新疆占据优势的汉族人群，可能是作为多数族群，会如何看待这些事？他们还会留在这里生活，还会告诉亲戚这是一个安居乐业的地方吗？或者，人们是否会心生恐惧，然后离开这里？
傅才德(Michael Forsythe)是《纽约时报》记者。
星期一, 5月 26, 2014
星期二, 10月 08, 2013
Uighurs in China Say Bias Is Growing
作者：ANDREW JACOBS
来源：http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/08/world/asia/uighurs-in-china-say-bias-is-growing.html
KASHGAR, China — Job seekers looking for opportunities in this ancient oasis town in China’s far western Xinjiang region would seem to have ample options, based on a quick glance at a local help-wanted Web site. The Kashgar Cultural Center has an opening for an experienced dance choreographer, the prefectural Communist Party office is hiring a driver and nearby Shule County needs an archivist.
The New York Times
But these and dozens of other job openings share one caveat: ethnic Uighurs, the Muslim, Turkic-speaking people who make up nearly 90 percent of Kashgar’s population, need not apply. Roughly half of the 161 positions advertised on the Civil Servant Examination Information Web site indicate that only ethnic Han Chinese or native Mandarin speakers will be considered.
Such discrimination, common across the region, is one of the many indignities China’s 10 million Uighurs face in a society that increasingly casts them as untrustworthy and prone to religious extremism. Uighurs are largely frozen out of the region’s booming gas and oil industry, airport jobs are mostly reserved for Han applicants, and truck drivers whose national identity cards list their ethnicity as Uighur cannot obtain the licenses required to haul fuel, an unwritten rule based on the fear that oil and gas tankers could easily be turned into weapons, according to several trucking companies.
Despite its name — the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region — this strategically pivotal expanse of desert and snow-draped mountains that borders several Central Asian nations is tightly controlled by Beijing. Top government positions as well as critical spots in the sprawling security apparatus are dominated by Han Chinese, many of them recruited from the eastern half of the country.
“The bottom line is that the Chinese don’t trust us, and that is having a corrosive impact on life in Xinjiang,” said Ilham Tohti, a prominent Uighur economist in Beijing. “And the way things are going, it’s going to get worse.”
After a summer of violence that claimed at least 100 lives, analysts, human rights advocates and even a handful of Chinese academics are raising alarms over what they call repressive policies that are fueling increased alienation and radicalization among Uighurs, many of whom subscribe to a moderate brand of Sunni Islam. These policies have been tightened since ethnic rioting four years ago left at least 200 people dead in Urumqi, the regional capital.
The Chinese government blames outside agitators, among them members of a separatist movement it contends has links to global jihadists, for much of the unrest. While there have been a number of unprovoked attacks on Chinese police officers or soldiers in recent years, most experts say the threat from Islamic militants is far less potent and organized than that portrayed by Beijing.
In August, paramilitary police officers not far from Kashgar shot at least 32 men, killing a dozen, during a raid on what was described as a secret “munitions center”; a few days later at least a dozen other Uighurs were killed as they prayed at a farmhouse in Yilkiqi township, according to Radio Free Asia. The authorities said the men were taking part in “illegal religious activities” and training for a terrorist attack, but did not provide further details.
Other episodes include a shooting outside a police station in Aksu Prefecture that wounded 50 and left three dead, and a violent skirmish in Hotan, another Silk Road outpost, during which dozens of men were reportedly shot while protesting the detention of a local imam. The Chinese state news media described these and other episodes as “terror attacks”; exile groups say they were peaceful demonstrations crushed with brute force.
Local residents say these and other clashes have been fueled by the dispiriting realities of daily life here: the institutionalized job discrimination, the restrictions that prohibit those under 18 from entering mosques and the difficulty that many Uighurs face in obtaining passports. Those Uighurs lucky enough to travel abroad say they are often interrogated upon their return by security officials who demand to know whether they have engaged in separatist activities.“The government should realize that reckless and inappropriate decisions by local authorities are only causing more instability,” said Yang Shu, a professor of Central Asian studies at Lanzhou University, referring to rules that discourage women from wearing head scarves and young men from growing beards.Even in Urumqi, where ethnic Han Chinese make up 75 percent of the population, knots of heavily armed police officers in fatigues are positioned throughout Uighur neighborhoods; after dark, Uighur men are barred from the front seats of taxis, according to a local ordinance cast as an anticrime measure.
Huang Xiaolin, a Han engineer who was recently lured to Hotan from coastal Shandong Province with a generous salary and subsidized housing, said colleagues frequently warned him against entering the city’s Uighur quarter. “The local people here are uncivilized and prone to violence,” he said, standing near a propaganda banner that read, “The Han and the Uighur cannot live without one another.
Beijing has coupled its “strike hard” security approach with turbocharged economic development, but even that has stoked resentment among Uighurs, who say the best jobs go to newly arrived Han. “The Chinese government is focused on a very outdated understanding of macroeconomic development, thinking that it will bring everyone up to the same level, but it’s clearly not working,” said Sean R. Roberts, a professor at George Washington University who studies development in the region.
Part of the backlash, experts and local residents say, has been prompted by increasingly intrusive restrictions on religion. Civil servants can be fired for joining Friday afternoon prayer services, and Uighur college students say they are often required to eat lunch in school cafeterias during the holy month of Ramadan, when observant Muslims fast. In cities across the region, signs warn people against public prayer, and video cameras are pointed at the doorways of local mosques. Residents also say the government maintains an extensive web of paid informers and monitors Internet traffic and cellphone conversations.
Such policies are born out of concern that the radical Islam that has destabilized neighboring Afghanistan and Pakistan will take root in Xinjiang, a fear not entirely unfounded given the region’s proximity to lawless countries that have provided a haven for a kaleidoscope of jihadists from across the Muslim world, including some Uighurs.
But experts say the raids on unsanctioned religious schools and other restrictions have prompted even greater religiosity. “Five years ago, you would have been shocked to see a veiled woman in Urumqi, but not anymore,” said a Han academic at Xinjiang University who is critical of Beijing’s policies in the region. “For a lot of Uighurs, growing a beard and asking your wife to cover her head in public has become an act of defiance.”
Despite the growing death toll, analysts say China’s new leadership is unlikely to reconsider its hard-line policies any time soon. During a state visit to four Central Asia nations last month that sought to bolster Xinjiang’s role as the linchpin of a revitalized Silk Road, President Xi Jinping vowed to continue the battle against what he described as the “three forces” of separatism, terrorism and religious extremism, according to the official Xinhua news agency.
By failing to consider the root causes of Uighur discontent, Beijing could unwittingly radicalize a generation of young people, said Nicholas Bequelin, a researcher for Human Rights Watch who is based in Hong Kong. “The entire Uighur ethnicity feels asphyxiated, having become suspect as sympathetic to extremism,” he said. “Xinjiang is trapped in a vicious circle of increased repression that only leads to more violence.”
来源：http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/08/world/asia/uighurs-in-china-say-bias-is-growing.html
KASHGAR, China — Job seekers looking for opportunities in this ancient oasis town in China’s far western Xinjiang region would seem to have ample options, based on a quick glance at a local help-wanted Web site. The Kashgar Cultural Center has an opening for an experienced dance choreographer, the prefectural Communist Party office is hiring a driver and nearby Shule County needs an archivist.
The New York Times
But these and dozens of other job openings share one caveat: ethnic Uighurs, the Muslim, Turkic-speaking people who make up nearly 90 percent of Kashgar’s population, need not apply. Roughly half of the 161 positions advertised on the Civil Servant Examination Information Web site indicate that only ethnic Han Chinese or native Mandarin speakers will be considered.
Such discrimination, common across the region, is one of the many indignities China’s 10 million Uighurs face in a society that increasingly casts them as untrustworthy and prone to religious extremism. Uighurs are largely frozen out of the region’s booming gas and oil industry, airport jobs are mostly reserved for Han applicants, and truck drivers whose national identity cards list their ethnicity as Uighur cannot obtain the licenses required to haul fuel, an unwritten rule based on the fear that oil and gas tankers could easily be turned into weapons, according to several trucking companies.
Despite its name — the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region — this strategically pivotal expanse of desert and snow-draped mountains that borders several Central Asian nations is tightly controlled by Beijing. Top government positions as well as critical spots in the sprawling security apparatus are dominated by Han Chinese, many of them recruited from the eastern half of the country.
“The bottom line is that the Chinese don’t trust us, and that is having a corrosive impact on life in Xinjiang,” said Ilham Tohti, a prominent Uighur economist in Beijing. “And the way things are going, it’s going to get worse.”
After a summer of violence that claimed at least 100 lives, analysts, human rights advocates and even a handful of Chinese academics are raising alarms over what they call repressive policies that are fueling increased alienation and radicalization among Uighurs, many of whom subscribe to a moderate brand of Sunni Islam. These policies have been tightened since ethnic rioting four years ago left at least 200 people dead in Urumqi, the regional capital.
The Chinese government blames outside agitators, among them members of a separatist movement it contends has links to global jihadists, for much of the unrest. While there have been a number of unprovoked attacks on Chinese police officers or soldiers in recent years, most experts say the threat from Islamic militants is far less potent and organized than that portrayed by Beijing.
In August, paramilitary police officers not far from Kashgar shot at least 32 men, killing a dozen, during a raid on what was described as a secret “munitions center”; a few days later at least a dozen other Uighurs were killed as they prayed at a farmhouse in Yilkiqi township, according to Radio Free Asia. The authorities said the men were taking part in “illegal religious activities” and training for a terrorist attack, but did not provide further details.
Other episodes include a shooting outside a police station in Aksu Prefecture that wounded 50 and left three dead, and a violent skirmish in Hotan, another Silk Road outpost, during which dozens of men were reportedly shot while protesting the detention of a local imam. The Chinese state news media described these and other episodes as “terror attacks”; exile groups say they were peaceful demonstrations crushed with brute force.
Local residents say these and other clashes have been fueled by the dispiriting realities of daily life here: the institutionalized job discrimination, the restrictions that prohibit those under 18 from entering mosques and the difficulty that many Uighurs face in obtaining passports. Those Uighurs lucky enough to travel abroad say they are often interrogated upon their return by security officials who demand to know whether they have engaged in separatist activities.“The government should realize that reckless and inappropriate decisions by local authorities are only causing more instability,” said Yang Shu, a professor of Central Asian studies at Lanzhou University, referring to rules that discourage women from wearing head scarves and young men from growing beards.Even in Urumqi, where ethnic Han Chinese make up 75 percent of the population, knots of heavily armed police officers in fatigues are positioned throughout Uighur neighborhoods; after dark, Uighur men are barred from the front seats of taxis, according to a local ordinance cast as an anticrime measure.
Huang Xiaolin, a Han engineer who was recently lured to Hotan from coastal Shandong Province with a generous salary and subsidized housing, said colleagues frequently warned him against entering the city’s Uighur quarter. “The local people here are uncivilized and prone to violence,” he said, standing near a propaganda banner that read, “The Han and the Uighur cannot live without one another.
Beijing has coupled its “strike hard” security approach with turbocharged economic development, but even that has stoked resentment among Uighurs, who say the best jobs go to newly arrived Han. “The Chinese government is focused on a very outdated understanding of macroeconomic development, thinking that it will bring everyone up to the same level, but it’s clearly not working,” said Sean R. Roberts, a professor at George Washington University who studies development in the region.
Part of the backlash, experts and local residents say, has been prompted by increasingly intrusive restrictions on religion. Civil servants can be fired for joining Friday afternoon prayer services, and Uighur college students say they are often required to eat lunch in school cafeterias during the holy month of Ramadan, when observant Muslims fast. In cities across the region, signs warn people against public prayer, and video cameras are pointed at the doorways of local mosques. Residents also say the government maintains an extensive web of paid informers and monitors Internet traffic and cellphone conversations.
Such policies are born out of concern that the radical Islam that has destabilized neighboring Afghanistan and Pakistan will take root in Xinjiang, a fear not entirely unfounded given the region’s proximity to lawless countries that have provided a haven for a kaleidoscope of jihadists from across the Muslim world, including some Uighurs.
But experts say the raids on unsanctioned religious schools and other restrictions have prompted even greater religiosity. “Five years ago, you would have been shocked to see a veiled woman in Urumqi, but not anymore,” said a Han academic at Xinjiang University who is critical of Beijing’s policies in the region. “For a lot of Uighurs, growing a beard and asking your wife to cover her head in public has become an act of defiance.”
Despite the growing death toll, analysts say China’s new leadership is unlikely to reconsider its hard-line policies any time soon. During a state visit to four Central Asia nations last month that sought to bolster Xinjiang’s role as the linchpin of a revitalized Silk Road, President Xi Jinping vowed to continue the battle against what he described as the “three forces” of separatism, terrorism and religious extremism, according to the official Xinhua news agency.
By failing to consider the root causes of Uighur discontent, Beijing could unwittingly radicalize a generation of young people, said Nicholas Bequelin, a researcher for Human Rights Watch who is based in Hong Kong. “The entire Uighur ethnicity feels asphyxiated, having become suspect as sympathetic to extremism,” he said. “Xinjiang is trapped in a vicious circle of increased repression that only leads to more violence.”
星期六, 7月 20, 2013
Violence in northwest China and Beijing's growth plans
COMMENT
In China’s Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region differing cultural values between Uighurs and Han Chinese highlight the need for Beijing to review its ethnic policy to coincide with its development plans.
Recent violence at the end of last month which killed 35 people underlines the country’s ongoing struggle with its ethnically diverse border regions and the skewed living standards between people living near the coast and those deeper inland.
On the surface, what is happening in Xinjiang may not be as media-friendly as Egypt or Turkey, but unrest is just as geopolitically significant.
An historic heavy-handed control has already scarred relationships with ethnic minorities and a softer way of dealing with people inland could be evolving. Beijing is looking at new pragmatic approach for its border regions.
Xinjiang is located far inland near the Central Asian borderlands. The recent riots in the majority-Muslim northwestern region erupted just four days before the fourth anniversary of the 2009 clashes which killed almost 200.
It is unclear which ethnic minority the rioters represented, but state media has suggested a possible connection with Uighur exiles operating outside China that Beijing calls “terrorists”.
The exiles are angry at what they call cultural dilution as Beijing implements a massive migration of ethnic Han into the region to modernise core agricultural regions.
Fighting between the two groups is increasing and exacerbated by the vast energy reserves there which Beijing wants to develop. China has huge plans for the Xinjiang region, especially as it pushes westward into Central Asian trade routes and energy pipelines.
The stuttering march of development
Beijing is under pressure by such violence to find a way to reconcile its ethnic policy with its long-term goal of developing the interior regions into a wealthy and modern society.
Beijing is under pressure by such violence to find a way to reconcile its ethnic policy with its long-term goal of developing the interior regions into a wealthy and modern society.
China has struggled with Tibet in similar ways as Xinjiang because of the enormous distances to a diverse and ethnically divided interior feeling increasingly subjugated by Beijing.
Much of the legitimacy of the Communist Party in the eyes of the Han Chinese population comes from an expectation of continued stability and territorial integrity.
Unrest in Xinjiang has arisen from a policy of encouraging the movement of the Han to marginalise minority influences and integrate them into mainstream society.
But do these minorities want to be associated with Han lifestyle?
The fact that riots are erupting more often since 2008 as Uighurs push back against Beijing’s social engineering will worry Chinese officials trained in the ideology of sinic cultural superiority.
Clearly, the unique cultural traditions of the ethnic minorities are still closely respected, and adoption of Han Chinese culture – essentially a foreign one – is unattractive for many.
Calling Beijing’s ethnic policy in the border regions a total failure at this point may be premature. But building a “harmonious society” was always going be difficult for central planners.
Forcing two or more starkly different ethnic groups together under an artificial edifice has clearly not been successful, but there are some signs Beijing is considering more conciliatory policies.
China is must deal with its historic ghosts by keeping the interior docile and developing. In the past, revolutionary unrest has regularly been triggered in the under-privileged agricultural sector.
But Beijing’s go-to panacea for unrest – resolute advancing development – might have reached a violent ceiling in the northwestern provinces.
Ethnic unrest in China is not homogenous and differs from one restive region to another. Taken together, however, such clashes and public disobedience suggest China will continue to struggle with the complicated nature of stability in these areas.
China cannot very well adopt the Soviet strategy of forcibly removing whole populations. Instead, Beijing will continue diluting the populations and tighten security while adopting a softer approach to grievances to limit the unrest.
Nathan Smith has a Bachelor of Communications in Journalism from Massey University and has studied international relations and conflict. He blogs at LikeBulb
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