The New Dominion

On 4 June 2009, the Swedish Security Police (Säpo) took into custody a 61-year-old Uyghur man, a former refugee and now Swedish citizen, on charges of espionage. Now, that man’s identity has finally been revealed. Radio Free Asia reports that the suspected spy is Babur Mexsut (Mäxsut), a figure of some prominence in the international Uyghur independence movement.

Babur Mexsut is known to the Swedish and world Uyghur community as a loyal member of the movement. He was arrested, in fact, shortly after returning from a meeting of the World Uyghur Congress (Dunya Uyghur Quriltiyi) in Washington, DC, where he was a guest. Babur Mexsut appears in photographs that show him at rallies holding the blue-and-white East Turkestani flag. Radio Free Asia, which has based its research on rumors from the Uyghur community and interviews with some of its members, that Babur Mexsut is a long-time friend of several prominent members of the Congress. Dilshat Rishit, a frequent spokesman for the World Uyghur Congress who traveled with Babur to Washington, DC, described him as a typical older gentleman, very friendly and welcoming, who acted his age. Babur, said Dilshat Rishit, had never mentioned anything to him about working for the PRC and made comments to him about his desire to work more for the Uyghur cause during his retirement.

According to several individuals interviewed by Radio Free Asia, however, Babur was not above suspicion. Maynur, the head of the Swedish Uyghur Organization, was the first to reveal Babur Mexsut’s identity publicly. She expressed feelings of relief at the vindication of her community’s long-held suspicions of Babur. Maynur urged patience, however, on the part of the world Uyghur community.

More damning is the testimonial of Abdurishit Haji Kerimi, an old acquaintance of Babur, whom he met in Kashgar in the 1990s. According to Kerimi, Babur disappeared the day after the conference. Later, Babur borrowed Kerimi’s cellular phone, as his own was not working, to make several calls. When Kerimi inspected the numbers Babur had dialed, he found several calls to China and to Urumchi, as well as some to the very Chinese embassy in Washington, DC in front of which they had been protesting.

Radio Free Asia has been especially aggressive in seeking out evidence against Babur Mexsut’s character, as well as of the crimes of which he is accused. RFA journalists seem to be looking for any evidence of deviance in Babur’s behavior during the conference. On 19 June, RFA revealed, that Rabiye Kadeer refused Babur’s offer of a donation of 100
000 Euros. The organization also contacted several very old acquaintances of Babur, now living abroad. Their interviews, together with information offered by Kerimi, give us a sense of Babur Mexsut’s biography, albeit one in an unflattering light. The following depicts Babur as a lifelong outsider, just the sort of lonely young man who finds his home with the state.

Babur Mexsut, one of ten children, was born in 1948 in Lanzhou, the son of a Uyghur fruit seller from Kashgar and a Hui (Dungan) woman from Lanzhou. Although his father was poorly-educated, he was of Turkic nationalist inclinations. Soon after Babur was born, the family moved with a group of Uyghurs to Tianjin, where Babur was raised. Babur Mexsut was educated in Chinese and spoke little to no Uyghur, a language he has apparently not grasped fully to this day. (In this light, the early suggestion by RFA that the accused spy was a Uyghur with fluent Chinese may have already identified him to the community.) He kept his distance from other children, preferring the company of adults. In 1969, when Babur was 21, his father, in his sixties, moved the family to Khotan. Babur, it seems, followed in his father’s footsteps, mostly engaging in light trade. When he met Kerimi in Kashgar, he still spoke mostly in Chinese. Eventually, in 1997, Babur made his way to Tashkent, Uzbekistan, whence he moved to Sweden. His younger sister, it seems, wanted to move from Xinjiang to Sweden to live with him, a plan he rejected. Babur apparently resembles his father.

Babur Mexsut’s court date has been rescheduled for 2 July, partly because this is an international problem and partly because it has been difficult to find a lawyer.

Investigations into the accusations of espionage have prompted Sweden to expel one Chinese diplomat. In response, the PRC has expelled a member of the Swedish embassy staff. Neither country has officially confirmed this. The Swedish spokesman, in response to a question from Agence France Presse, did confirm that there had been mutual expulsions, but would not confirm with which country. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang, when questioned by another AFP journalist, pretended to have no idea what the reporter was talking about.

Sources:

18 June 2009 (Radio Free Asia) ﺷﯟﯦﺘﺴﯩﻴﯩﺪﯨﻜﻰ ﺋﯘﻳﻐﯘﺭ ﺟﺎﺳﯘﺱ ﮔﯘﻣﺎﻧﺪﺍﺭﯨﻨﯩﯔ ﺋﯩﺴﻤﻰ ﺋﺎﺷﻜﺎﺭﯨﻼﻧﺪﻯ

18 June 2009 (Radio Free Asia) ﺟﺎﺳﯘﺱ ﮔﯘﻣﺎﻧﺪﺍﺭﻯ ﺑﺎﺑﯘﺭ ﻣﻪﺧﺴﯘﺕ ﻫﻪﻗﻘﯩﺪﻩ ﻣﻪﻟﯘﻣﺎﺗﻼﺭ 1

22 June 2009 (Radio Free Asia) ﺟﺎﺳﯘﺱ ﮔﯘﻣﺎﻧﺪﺍﺭﻯ ﺑﺎﺑﯘﺭ ﻣﻪﺧﺴﯘﺕ ﻫﻪﻗﻘﯩﺪﻩ ﻣﻪﻟﯘﻣﺎﺗﻼﺭ 2

22 June 2009 (Radio Free Asia) ﺟﺎﺳﯘﺱ ﮔﯘﻣﺎﻧﺪﺍﺭﻯ ﺑﺎﺑﯘﺭ ﻣﻪﺧﺴﯘﺕ ﺭﺍﺑﯩﻴﻪ ﻗﺎﺩﯨﺮ ﺧﺎﻧﯩﻤﻐﺎ 100 ﻣﯩﯔ ﻳﺎﯞﺭﻭ ﻳﺎﺭﺩﻩﻡ ﺗﻪﻛﻠﯩﭙﻰ ﺳﯘﻧﻐﺎﻥ

22 June 2009 (Radio Free Asia) ﺷﯟﯦﺘﺴﯩﻴﻪ ‘ ﺑﺎﺑﯘﺭ ﺟﺎﺳﯘﺳﻠﯘﻕ ﯞﻩﻗﻪﺳﻰ’ ﮔﻪ ﭼﯧﺘﯩﺸﻠﯩﻖ ﺧﯩﺘﺎﻱ ﺩﯨﭙﻠﻮﻣﺎﺗﯩﻨﻰ ﭼﯩﮕﺮﯨﺪﯨﻦ ﻗﻮﻏﻼﭖ ﭼﯩﻘﺎﺭﻏﺎﻥ

22 June 2009 (The Local) Sweden Expels Chinese Diplomat: Report

24 June 2009 (联合报网) 传瑞典驱逐 涉谍报中国外交官 中国以牙还牙

24 June 2009 (Sina) 瑞典被指驅逐中國外交官

Update: Radio Free Asia’s Uyghur service has now posted an article on the demolition.

On 15 June 2009, around 10:30 AM local time, wrecking crews working on the “renewal” of Kashgar’s Old City demolished the Xanliq Madrasa. Eyewitnesses report that the medieval Islamic college, listed as an Autonomous Region-level protected cultural site, was knocked down without any protest or ceremony. According to speculation, the “royal” madrasa, apparently located in the yard of Kashgar No. 1 Elementary School, may have been torn down to make room for an athletic field.

Mahmud al-Kashgari, the 11^th-century scholar who compiled the Dīwānu l-Luġat al-Turk, is said to have studied at the Xanliq Madrasa in its heyday. In the 1860s, following a lengthy period of decline at the Xanliq Madrasa and in the Islamic scholarly community in East Turkestan in general, a wealthy merchant from Atush named Abdurusulbay funded its renovation. In exchange, the Xanliq Madrasa was to host primary schools funded by local luminaries. In 1883, it became home to the first experimental school in Xinjiang to mix Islamic and “scientific” curricula. This was founded by Abdurusulbay’s grandsons, Bawudunbay and Hüsäyinbay Musabayov. Although that school was short-lived, its successor, Atush’s Hüsäyniyä School, produced generations of students educated using modern methods. It also spawned a broad-reaching network of similar schools that played a major organizing role in pre-1949 social and political movements. Many of today’s Uyghur intelligentsia can trace their philosophical, political, and sometimes family roots back to the educational efforts that began at the Xanliq Madrasa. The ideology that arose from these movements still resonates today, often in opposition to official communism.

Judging from online message boards, reactions to the destruction have been a mix of righteous anger and self-criticism. Having heard that the Xanliq Madrasa was torn down, many Uyghurs have expressed resentment towards the PRC government. Those who have spoken out feel that the destruction is part of a government “plan” to destroy physical vestiges of Uyghur history and “rewrite” it. This is connected closely to a sense that the government favors Han Chinese development over Uyghur industry and Han Chinese historical sites over Uyghur ones. These feelings of ethnic repression and conspiracy are reinforced by the knowledge that the Xanliq Madrasa was recognized as a protected historical and cultural site, a status that, in this case, clearly afforded it no special status or opportunity for preservation. Many have invoked the destruction of the Cultural Revolution, when many such sites were torn down all across the PRC. Some look back even before 1949 to a historical disregard for Xinjiang culture on the part of “those foreigners” – the Han.

Others, while angered by what has happened, have expressed frustration over Uyghurs’ own lack of initiative in protecting what they see as their history. A frequent refrain is, “If only we had held a protest, maybe we could have stopped this.” Such complaints are typical of those gripes found on message boards all over the Web. Others have pointed out that the very lack of a protest shows that Uyghurs, while mourning for the squandered legacy of their “Grandpa Mahmud,” actually possess a very weak sense of history. Certainly, no one seems to have bothered photographing the madrasa before, during, or following its destruction, and no one on the Web seems to know anything about it, save for Mahmud al-Kashgari’s having studied there.

Perhaps the kindest conclusion we can draw is that there is no real institutional mechanism in place for dealing with ethnic and cultural grievances or, for that matter, for reporting problems of interest to a specifically ethnic audience. The Chinese system of regional autonomy does not allow for official organization by or on behalf of ethnic groups per se. While the Xanliq Madrasa, an institution that should resonate with all Xinjiang Muslims, has been claimed both by everyday Uyghurs and by official narratives specifically as an artifact of Uyghur history and culture, there was no clear way for someone who might have seen the demolition order to publicize it to Uyghurs. Even if word got out, there was no obvious way to organize on behalf of the madrasa’s preservation. All the same, any protest or other actions would certainly have been stunted by a pervasive feeling of helplessness where the preservation of non-Chinese historical sites is concerned, as well as a lack of leadership.

On 4 June 2009, the Swedish Security Police (Säpo) arrested a Uyghur man in Stockholm on charges of espionage. The man in question, whose identity is otherwise undisclosed, is 61 years of age, received asylum from Sweden in the late 1990s, and became a Swedish citizen in 2002.

According to statements by a Säpo Chief Inspector, the suspect’s activities, conducted from January 2008 through June 2009, were not limited to Sweden. In Sweden, he is accused of being responsible for collecting information on Uyghur immigrants on behalf of the Chinese government. Sweden is home to a vibrant Uyghur community, including Küresh Kösen, who passed away in 2006, and more recently Adel Hakimjan, formerly a Guantánamo detainee and resident of Albania, who received asylum earlier this year. The historical connections between Sweden and Xinjiang run long and deep, and knowledge about Xinjiang is widespread in Sweden.

Formal charges must be leveled against the suspect by 18 June, at which time we should know more about the situation. In the meantime, Radio Free Asia, which makes a point of the suspect’s fluent Chinese, has been receiving calls from members of the Swedish Uyghur community reporting various unspecified suspicions about the man’s identity.

We may speculate more sympathetically, perhaps, about the man’s motives. It is, of course, entirely possible that this individual was sent by the PRC some years ago to keep tabs on members of the Uyghur community, that he is a mole and a shill for the Chinese state. I wonder, though, if he does not have family in Xinjiang, family who may be unable to follow him and whom the Public Security Bureau might harm if he does not follow their orders. It would be remarkable, I suppose, for someone who has spied in several countries to be a minor player in a larger game. It is worth noting, however, that he is accused of spying only over the course of the past year and six months. Do people usually begin their intelligence careers at the age of 59 or 60? Rather, I think that he is a typical example of “refugee espionage”: someone who is blackmailed into spying for their home country. It seems that this is a common problem in Sweden, and it is sad to see that a country that has accepted so many people in need has also taken on so many security risks, as well.

The New Dominion will keep you updated.

Sources:

8 June 2009 (Radio Free Asia) “Sweden arrests Uyghur who spied for China”

6 June 2009 (The Local) “‘Refugee spy’ remanded into custody”

4 June 2009 (The Local) “Security police arrest ‘refugee spy’“

Word of Old Kashgar’s imminent destruction has reached The New York Times. The story broke in the American media back in March with the Washington Post, was picked up by the Emirati The National, and has been bouncing around the Web for a while, though it has received little attention in the Chinese media.

This plan to demolish 85% of the area of the Old City of Kashgar and to relocate its population, a project with “unusually strong backing” from the upper echelons of the central government, has actually been in motion for quite some time. The incentives mentioned in the NYT – which, frankly, are a pretty paltry sum even in Kashgar – have been offered before to Old City families whose houses have collapsed, sometimes as a result of the occasional earthquakes that do affect the region. (See last week’s quake in Qarghiliq.) To my knowledge, not many had taken up the government’s offer of a new apartment on the outskirts of town, and the city even helped some build new houses in the Old City. Back then, the city was making money charging admission to parts of the Old City, which I suspect comprises the 15% to be left behind or “rebuilt” as a sort of theme park or minority zoo.

Now, no more. The bulldozers have begun to roll. Like the rest of China’s loveliest old places, such as UNESCO World Heritage Site Pingyao, whatever is left of Old Kashgar will fall to excessive and thoughtless commercialization, a trend mourned today, ironically, on Xinhua’s Xinjiang front page. At least they have left Pingyao intact, with the addition of plumbing, which officials apparently consider an impossibility for Kashgar.

Before I say anything else, please note that there is some effort within the PRC to save what may be saved of Old Kashgar under the Beijing Cultural Heritage Protection Center, though they are more concerned with projects elsewhere.  See their appeal here.

There is little to be said that Josh at Far West China has not already said. Yes, it is silly to think that Uyghur heritage is made of mud and straw, and we know that the people of Xinjiang are stronger than any construction project. This is not the end.

This is, however, a crude and transparent attempt to forcefully remake a social order by altering the place that its members live in. The government of the PRC is overtly concerned with the spaces that people inhabit, both symbolic and physical, as tools of statecraft and social engineering. The crackdown on mäshräp in Ghulja in 1997 demonstrated the PRC’s fear of unauthorized social movements, of varieties of organization and association that it cannot read or understand. The state’s insistence on maintaining an institution of both administrative and spatial ethnic segregation in the educational system even while working to culturally and linguistically assimilate minorities into mainstream Chinese society demonstrates that it has trouble understanding social orders that it has not itself brought into being, social orders that it could perhaps otherwise co-opt for political purposes.

The Old City of Kashgar is not just a warren of beautiful architecture expressive of a certain culture of building, as the Western media emphasizes, but a malleable concrete manifestation of a tightly-woven and long-standing social order undergoing constant evolution. Read more »

The Christian Science Monitor is clearly concerned with the rights of Uighurs. Their latest Uighur-related article interviews Abu Bakker Qassim in Tirana, Albania. The piece focuses on his perspective, as a now freed, former Guantánamo Bay inmate, on the current debate regarding the recent political debates in the U.S. over how to best deal with the civil and human rights issues that plague the Cuban prison.

Also, did anyone else catch John Stewart, of Comedy Central’s the Daily Show, briefly reference the plight of the Uighurs in Guantánamo during his interview with Newt Gingrich? It’s only about ten seconds long, at 00:40 – 00:50 of the interview; however, it may mean that the issue is gaining traction among journalists if even Stewart is mentioning it.

Colin Legerton and Jacob Rawson. Invisible China: A Journey Through Ethnic Borderlands. Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2009. 256 pp.

I am pleased to have my very own copy of Invisible China, a remarkable travelogue just recently published. The authors, Colin Legerton and Jacob Rawson, both current postgraduate students, have produced a worthwhile and very readable narrative of their journeys through China’s minority ethnic communities. This informative but entertaining and accessible book recounts their journeys in 2006 and 2007 while providing valuable and accurate background information to the lay reader and remaining sensitive to the realities of life for the people they met along the way. The book consists primarily of a series of mini-ethnographies, eleven in all covering fourteen contemporary minority groups, plus two narratives of visits to peculiar sites of ethnic tourism. Legerton and Rawson spent more time than most travel writers among their communities of interest, but they have distilled their visits into short and easily digestible snapshots of minority life accompanied by insightful commentary on wisely-chosen topics. Here, as this is The New Dominion, I will focus on their pieces on China’s Northwest, including their two chapters on Xinjiang.

The book opens with a scene familiar to almost anyone who has lived in China since the 1980s: Read more »