Under the rule of a totalitarian regime, reporting others is not only a good self surviving strategy but also a tool to get rid of those who you don’t like.

For example, I interviewed a person locked up in the immigration detention center. The interviewee, a Chinese citizen, is in the US without documentation. He has been living in the US for over 10 years, and owned a successful Chinese restaurant. Two years ago, his neighbor, also a Chinese, opened another Chinese restaurant. Upon knowing his illegal status, the neighbor reported him to the USCIS, who detained him and put him in removal proceedings.

I’m not saying that its only unique among people living in China. It’s just one of the possibilities that the reason of the call to the police could be triggered by something small, something that has nothing to do with “patriotism.”

http://www.rfa.org/uyghur/xewerler/tepsili_xewer/ramazanda-uyghurgha-zulum-08292008195823.html?encoding=latin

@ demin,

not sure about Porfiriy, the RFA, or people in general wanting to see more blood. The thought of a cold Uyghur blade entering someone’s rib cage is not my idea of excitment or entertainment. How do yu feel about this personally, how does such a thought make yu feel?

As Porfiriy also commented, what yu do say about social issues I believe is correct: social disparity is a driving force of dissastisfaction among Uyghur youth and has been for some time. Many of those who go over to the chinese modernist ideal, become minkao han, or associate themselves with the trappings of success, which are the justification for this modernization/colonization drive, also reject Islam to a degree if not outright: the non modernist are labelled hurapiy (superstitious), or kollak (backward/ignorant). Of coure the defining factor here is the baility of differiung individuals to partake in thge centrsal economic drive. A possibility not available to all Uyghur youth for various reasons ( Im being brief). I think a point here also worth remembering though is that many of the anti-statist islamic reformist groups also promote modernization within an islamic framework and shun islamic folk practices as superstitious. The traditional Uyghur is hemmed in on many sides. Yu are also right in pointing out the colonial, unequal rights/benefits, ethnic and social /historical dimensions of the problem however how yu draw the conclusion that incidents of violence excites people who want to just see more blood is perplexing?

@ Okay,

how yu can say the Uyghur o not know what it is like to live in China baffles the intelligence of any sensioble person. They know well and they know the hard end of the stick yu perhaps have never seen or felt. Please, why make such comments that display both prejudice and an ignorance of another people’s reality?

@wgj,re:

“Slightly paraphrased: There must be *either* brainwashing *or* coercion going on, since you can’t think of any other reason why people would fight violence. That’s not just cynical, it’s inhumane.”

This statement of yours was unclear, as to ‘who’ is brainwashing who? Could you explain your meaning here please wgj?

*re: your comment on Porfiriy’s statement that the informant society, is being currently produced by the state, and your contention that this is simply Porfiriy’s own opinion, are both quite ill-informed statements.

The CCP has thrived on Uyghur informants since its armies entered Xinjiang after the mysterious political deaths of Ahmet Jan Kasim and other leaders of the northern East Turkestan Republic. The ‘jahsus’ is almost a given aspect of Uyghur society. They, the ‘informers,’ are all around, and in cases possibly within the same family networks. Informant networks just like the old neighbourhood granny watches of inner China have long had their mirror in Uyghur society. This is nothing new. When one thinks about the consequences of resisting the state or of pressure brought upon individuals and families to comply to be informants on threat of punishment - a well tried tactic of CCP organs in Xinjiang - surely incentive is in fact there to sell your soul so to speak. I suppose after a good ffity years of suppression, imprisonment and execution in the XUAR, for those who do resist, reason enough could be seen for the potential ‘jahsus’ to manifest or the traditionally ‘paid’ jahsus to increase. It is right to say FEAR is a big factor here. Of this it is clear to the uyghur. Of course this is a situation common to many colonized groups throughout history.

(note for intertextualities sake the ‘present’ “opposite end of China” post on the carpet search for terorists in Xinjiang)
.to get a feeling for a claimate of fear).

For more past examples of Uyghur pitted against Uyghur imagine the class struggle sessions when the landlords were finally brought before the ‘people’ between 1950-55; and the Cultural Revolution period when Uyghur betrayed Uyghur. Here it is the extreme ideologies of the CCP which pitted Uyghur against Uyghur.

Further antecedents can be found in the compliance of the Qing and Republican. Periods when the Manchu centre ruled the Xinjiang vis a vis the ‘beg’ system of sinicized Turkic officials, who all had their own networks of native informants and advisors so to speak. Yakob Beg’s islamic sulatanate of twelve years’ duration was known for its secret police network which spread across Central Asia into Persia.

As far as violence goes, one could say that historically the state is the main protaganist in these matters and continues to be so. In that ‘bigger’ picture sense Violence begets Violence and always has/does - eventually, it would seem. But, we all know what Mao said about violence don’t we? But again, are all the pigeons now coming home to roost

Any way, on topic I believe, I came across this excerpt last night from the imprisoned Uyghur writer Nurmehamet Yasin’s ‘Wild Pigeon’ which voices a long held Uyghur belief that their present lot is partly due to the disloyalty of those who have all along aquiesced to the state and also betrayed their country men:

“…I want to go on, to press the same message even more vividly. But suddenly I hear a piercing sound and feel a vicious pain in my legs. I try to fly, but my wings hang empty at my sides. All the other pigeons fly up and hover above me. “Look at you, stirring up trouble—now you will taste life inside a pigeon cage,” one of them shouts.“ Then let’s see if you carry on this way again!” Suddenly I understand. The old pigeon drew me in toward him to set me up so his host could catch me. Pain fills my heart. The humans weren’t any danger to me—it was my own kind who betrayed me in hope of their own gain. I cannot understand it, and I am grieved. Suddenly I am seized with the idea that I cannot give in—as long as I can still break off my legs, I can free myself. Using all of my strength, I fly one way and another in turn. Pain fills my heart. The humans weren’t any danger to me— it was my own kind who betrayed me in hope of their own gain…. “Don’t be silly, child, stand up! What is the matter with you?” The voice is my mother’s. She stares at me and I realize that I am unhurt. My mother says:” “You had a nightmare.” “I had a very terrible dream.” I embrace my mother closely, and tell her everything in my dream. “Child, in your dream you saw our destiny,” she replies. “Mankind is pressing in on us, little by little, taking up what once was entirely our space. They want to chase us from the land we have occupied for thousands of years and to steal our land from us. They want to change the character of our heritage—to rob us of our intelligence and our kinship with one another. Strip us of our memory and identity. Perhaps in the near future, they will build factories and high-rises here, and the smoke that comes from making products we don’t need will seep into the environment and poison our land and our water. Any rivers that remain won’t flow pure and sweet as they do now but will run black with filth from the factories. This invasion by mankind is terrible,” she says.“ Future generations will never see pure water and clean air—and they will think that this is as it has always been. They will fall into mankind’s trap. These humans are coming closer and closer to us now, and soon it will be too late to turn back. No one else can save us from this fate—we must save ourselves.”

“Wild Pigeon” was translated from the Uyghur into English by Dolkun Kamberi,director of RFA’s Uyghur service, and edited in English by Sarah Jackson-Han.The full English trans-lation can be read at http://www.rfa.org/english/uyghur/ 2005/06/27/wild_pigeon/ and http://www.rfa.org/ english/uyghur/2005/06/27/wild_pigeon2/.

But calling my blog writing “inhumane” does make me snicker a little. Take it easy! Its a blog.

“[I]t could either be out of patriotism towards the CCP, or the more sinister (and in my opinion more likely) possibility that in Xinjiang a system of incentives and punishments is creating an “informant” environment among the Uyghurs.”

That has nothing to do with the media, you’re clearly voicing about your own opinion (as is evident by the words “in my opinion”). Slightly paraphrased: There must be *either* brainwashing *or* coercion going on, since you can’t think of any other reason why people would fight violence. That’s not just cynical, it’s inhumane.

One thing I have emphasized over and over again in my writings and has sort of become a theme here is that looking at Xinjiang inevitably operates in the second degree: it is reporting on reporting. As the way things are the bulk of what we can do is analyze what is being said about the unrest from disparate sources like the RFA or Xinhua rather than the incidents themselves. I’m not elevating the violence to a sacred cause, but it cannot be denied that there is an agent involved that is reporting a “sacred” motivation and that in and of itself is significant. The violence could indeed just be violence. I couldn’t agree more. But more powerful and significant than that potential reality is the fact that millions of people, both inside and outside China, are not being told that the violence is just violence. They are being told by Xinhua that this is jihadist extermism or by RFA that this is a backlash against ethnic oppression.

One reason perhaps for the hiatus of violence after the mid 90s was the severity of the crackdown which commenced with the Strike Hard. Thats not to say that other non-fatal Uyghur-Uyghur conflicts were not occurring say post 96.

In Kashgar because of the the enormity of the greater oasis its hard to know; all events do not reach the ears of the west; maybe one day, records and files will be availble to the historian who cares to write the history of the last thirty years in the area. At any rate it would seem by post 9/11 the spirit of resistance had been knocked out to a degree - at least on the surface.

That said, on the other hand it seems that an increase in Uyghur violence may occur in the midst of severe crackdown as in 96 and 97. Perhaps the same reaction occurred during the Olympic summer ‘heat’ in Xinjiang recently (but of course the Olympic timing was understanably a separate and special case). Im musing I know.

Being on the road to Peziwat, the Yaman Yar incident as yu suggest may have had other than a big picture organized resistance motive. To muse further, the drowsing guards at the checkpoint may have had the job of reporting on suspected dissident types and their movements to and from Kashgar, and for that reason they were taken out so to speak. Its an awful scene to consider. Such a sleepy laid back area in reality, yes, and poor; also an area quite devastated from the earthquakes of the last decade or so.

All said, even if crackdown momentarily quashes resistance and attacks against state representataives (Uyghur and Han alike), the Uyghur anti-Han sentiment which the CCP has never been able to root out since 1950 seems perrenial with the potential to always arise, especially as Han influence in its many forms increases. What do desperate impoverished youth have to lose anyway, especially in the face of perceived inequality?

Just a footnote before I finish this screed. Im not sure if the victims of a storming of a police station in Kuqa ca. 96 (please forgive all of these circas - I dont have hard copy with me or any computer files at present) were all Uyghur? There was also a big incident in nearby Xayar at that time, in which not a few Uyghurs were killed buy others; but I think in both instances Han police were also killed.

Appreciate feedback, hope yu get over your jet lag and enjoy the golden nanjiang autumn.