Xinhua reports that, around noon Beijing Time (10:00 AM Xinjiang time) on 18 July, Khotan City sustained a bombing attack that ended in a hostage rescue. The attack seems to have centered on a bazaar in the Narbagh (Na’erbage) area, near a police station and several government offices. Xinhua reports, and now so have international media, that four people were killed in the incident. Casualties include two of the hostages, one member of the People’s Armed Police, and one member of the “security defense teams,” ad hoc militias formed by the Party apparatus and police forces. One more member of the security defense teams was injured and hospitalized. Six people were eventually recovered successfully from the police station where they had been held as hostages by the attackers.

Initial reports suggested that 14 attackers had been killed. World Uyghur Congress spokesman Dilxat Raxit, reached for comment shortly after the incident, asserted that the incident was actually an attack by police on unarmed, peaceful protestors demonstrating in the bazaar over land rights. Shortly thereafter, the WUC’s narrative changed: A riot broke out, Dilxat said, when a group of Uyghurs had gone peacefully to the police station to demand the release of several prisoners.

Later, the Chair of the Press Office of the Xinjiang Regional People’s Government, Hou Hanmin 侯汉敏, provided a rather different narrative to the Huanqiu Shibao. According to Hou, Western media had rushed to link the Khotan incident to the Xinjiang or Uyghur independence movement. Yet, he proceeded to do just the same in recounting the following: First, the attackers, wielding bombs and Molotov cocktails, assaulted the Commerce Office and the Tax Office, located next to the police station, injuring two. Then, they burst into the police station and rushed to the second floor to hoist the “flag of separatism,” by which I presume he means the old baby blue moon-and-star. The attackers took control of the police station and held hostages until they were defeated in a clever attack by security forces. Hou provided no new numbers.

Note, please, that the map provided by the Epoch Times may be misleading. Indeed, the place they indicate at the site of the incident is what you get when you put “Khotan Narbagh Police Station” into Google Maps. However, that spot is not in Narbagh Village, nor is it near a tax office or a commerce office. The following map indicates a commerce office (yellow) and a tax office (blue) in Narbagh Village, though I cannot determine their proximity to a police station, nor to a bazaar. It has been reported that the incident took place in a heavily Uyghur part of the city, as well, which we might not be able to reconcile with the neighborhood of these offices.

View 18 July 2011 Khotan Incident in a larger map

I was suspicious of Dilxat Raxit’s initial account, which has now disappeared from BBC News’ website, in large part because it fit too neatly into popular contemporary notions of political repression in the West. Specifically, I recall the phrase “fired into the crowd.” Perhaps this was an embellishment by a journalist, but the narrative remains the same: Police shoot civilians demonstrating for freedom. It sounds too conveniently similar to what has actually happened every day for several months, now, across the Middle East. RFA has produced no news, and major Western media is regurgitating Xinhua, so that brings me to the official Chinese account.

The mention of the “flag of independence” makes me suspicious. Mostly, it reminds me of similar claims made about a protest in Khotan four years ago, which turned out to be, as far as anyone can tell, a demonstration about local issues and concerns about religious freedoms. Like most such events in Xinjiang and all over China, this probably has to do with some intractable local conflict or gross violation of basic human rights or dignity that has stirred up rage against the authorities. Did someone really fling a few Molotov cocktails just to go and raise a flag in the middle of the neighborhood police station? If so, it was a sad and futile gesture. If someone actually committed such a suicidal act, I suspect that it was motivated not by a dream of an independent state, but rather by the same sorts of problems that led Mohamed Bouazizi to immolate himself in Tunisia all the way back in January.

We don’t know much, what we do know smells funny, and everyone’s scrambling for a master narrative. As usual, it’s the news from Xinjiang.

Mullā Bilāl’s lengthy text, which is mostly verse and partly prose, is a remarkable source for the history of the Ili Valley in the 1860s and 1870s. This was a source for Ho-dong Kim’s excellent book Holy war in China: the Muslim rebellion and state in Chinese Central Asia, 1864-1877, a must-read for anyone interested in Xinjiang.

But I’ll let Pantusov do the talking. (Note that his introduction is inaccurate in places and displays the prejudices of a Russian orientalist of the 19 c. The New Dominion does not necessarily share any of the opinions presented below.)

The Muslim war against the Chinese

A text in the Taranchi dialect

published by N. N. Pantusov

Volume One

Kazan’

1880

Permitted by the censor, St. Petersburg, 22 August 1878

Preface

The title Kitab-i ghazat dar mulk-i chin (“religious war in the Chinese state”) refers to this essay on this history of the Ili region, presently of the area of Kul’dja [FN: The Kul’dja region is subordinated to the Military Governor of Semirechie Province, who lives in city of Verny, where there is under him a special consul for Kul’djanese affairs.], formerly a Chinese province and then of the Kul’dja Sultanate, the end of the existence of which was on account of political behavior and animosity towards us on the part of the Sultanate government in June of 1871.

This book is written in the Taranchi dialect, which differs quite little from that of Kashgar-Sart. The author is a Taranchi from the city of Kul’dja, Mulla Bilal son of Mulla Yusuf, nicknamed Nazym [ناضیم], or “poet.” Mulla Bilal, who indeed took part in the fight with the Chinese and the clash with the Russian army, who had seized the Ili region, is still at present hale and healthy, having lived over 54 years. Today, he holds the responsibilities of an imam at one of the mosques of the city of Kul’dja, while, in his time free from such service, he is a copyist of various writings and – the profession of a mulla – a scribe.

Mulla Bilal begins his defter (book) [FN: This book was found in Kul’dja in October 1876. Located in the first leaves of the book are variants borrowed from unfinished draft copies of this composition, preserved by Bilal.] in the ordinary way, with Muslim writers’ glorification of God, then of Muhammad, and of the other prophets and askhab. The following chapter talks about the author of the book the circumstances of the coming into being thereof.

The history of the Ili border region of the past one hundred or so years and following the war begin the chapter: “The narrative of from which khan to which khan passed the cities of Ili, in the time of which khans they flourished, and during the time of which khans they were destroyed.” In this chapter, the particulars of the history of the border region begins with the time of the Emperor [khakan] Qianlong (or, in the Muslim transliteration…) under whose government was constituted the migration of Kashgarian Sarts – subsequently Taranchis – into the Ili Valley from the different cities of Altishahar nearly 120 years beforehand. [FN: Today Yettishahar, under the power of the Kashgar bedaulet [Yaq’ūb Beg], conquered in December 1877 by the Da Ching [Great Qing] army.]

Mulla Bilal takes the history of the region up to the time of the conquest of the Sultanate by Russian arms.

This narrative was written in 1292 of the Hijra [1875], “in the year of the snow leopard” by the Ili reckoning, in verse and, to a lesser degree, prose, and was completed in 1293 [1876].

This narrative is written in the Turkic Taranchi dialect.

The Taranchi dialect, differentiated from the Kashgar-Sart idiom by its content of a great number of Mongol and Chinese words in its lexical composition, is remarkable in regard to its phonetics in the softness of sounds in the pronunciation of words, constrained by which the author often sins in orthography. Thus, owing to this fact, we encounter in his writing soft [qäsim] instead of hard [qasïm], [yetib] instead of [yatïb].

In the spelling of other words, however, the softness of the tongue does not appear. For example, علی will be said [eli], باسلكان [basylgan] pronounced [besilgan], اتی [aty] said [ety]…

The softness of the tongue in connection with idiosyncratic stress – which contravenes the general grammatical rule of stress on the final syllable – makes the Taranchi dialect so little understood to those who know a Turkic language that it requires a significant period of time to learn the ways and forms of communicating in the language, even though a Taranchi speaks the same Turkish language as the Kashgarian Sarts, inhabitants of the Taranchi cradle.

To the Taranchis, under the Sultanate’s rule, the overthrow of the Chinese served as an epoch for the beginning of a new era. This is called “Islam” (تاریخ اسلام). The conquest by Russian arms took place in the seventh year of Islam; 1877 is the thirteenth year of Islam.

On the model of the Kashgar dialect, there is also found in Taranchi a replacement of the letters ب and پ with ف, although, in pronunciation, the letters پ and ب are heard in the initial position. Instead of تاپيب, تافيب is met; instead of پارە, فارە.

The isolation of the Taranchi people in the Ili Valley, under the odious yoke and oppression of Chinese rule, oppressed and uprooted as a consequence of exorbitant taxes and corvees, allowed the possibility neither of the development of the popular spirit nor of the language. The latter, isolated from mutual lexical exchange and borrowings from other kindred Turkic dialects, could not develop, but rather weakened and spoiled from the admixture of surrounding neighbors from the Mongol and Chinese peoples, as well as the accumulation of some of the features of the Chinese language in certain relations. The former was expressed in the composition of the lexicon of the language, into which entered Chinese, Kalmyk, and Mongol words; the latter in its omission, for example, in conformity with the shortcomings of Chinese pronunciation, the letter ر in several words and grammatical forms. For example, the Taranchis say [baza] for [bazar], [bizlaga] for [bizlarga]… Probably for this reason, in the verbal suffix دور, the final [r] is discarded. For example, instead of ديدور, they say ديدو [deɪdu], for بولادور
بولادو [buladu].

The Taranchi dialect, adjoining to, of the Turkic dialects, the Kyrgyz dialect, the popular Taranchi language assimilated, in part, the special phonetic features of this dialect: substituting the sound [l] with the sound [d], [j] with [zh] (i.e. softer that [dzh]). For example, for ايزلاب, the Taranchis say and writes ازداب, for مونكلاشدى
مونكداشتى, and the words يغيب and يكرمە the Taranchis pronounce [zhigyb] and [zhigarma]…

Xia stated that several details of the violence were kept from the public in order to preserve broader social harmony, while Xinhua journalists reported sensitive information directly to the government. This included the rioters’ organized and deliberate burning of buses full of people, the decapitation of a child and display of his head on a highway overpass, the humiliation of a dead woman, and other acts of brutality. We have no way of verifying this at this time.

More revealing to me is Xia’s casual remark that the rioters seen in the photographs were tattooed and bare-chested, that they “had nothing.” Is this an interpretation of ethnic violence through the eyes of class conflict? Is it an accurate assessment of the Uyghurs who took to the streets? Many young Uyghur men have tattoos that they grow ashamed of later in life, since they represent the excesses of a more reckless youth, though I, for one, have never learned the secrets of any of these marks. The causes and the unfolding of the riots remain a mystery, but perhaps this is a clue.

Farewell, old friend.

Hello, beautiful.

Wang initially came to office following the 10-year tenure of Song Hanliang (宋汉良 1934-2000, in office 1985-1995), a long-time Party member from Shaoxing, Zhejiang who had worked in Xinjiang’s oil industry since 1954. Song was appointed not only Party Secretary of the XUAR, but also the First Secretary and First Political Commissar of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC). Wang (1944-), himself from Shandong province, arrived in Xinjiang in 1992 after a long career in the Party and government of Shandong. He was appointed Acting Secretary in 1994 before receiving both of Song’s appointments the following year. In 2002, Wang was appointed to the Politburo, reflecting both Hu Jintao’s confidence in him and the increasing importance of the Northwest in the Party’s plans for China.

Zhang Chunxian (1953-), for his part, is portrayed as a good communicator, perhaps what Xinjiang needs after 15 years of tough posturing and insulting propaganda. Vice President Xi Jinping traveled to Urumchi in person on the morning of 24 April to announce Zhang’s new appointment and praise his skills and “liberated” and “creative” ideas. Indeed, as Party leader in Hunan, he succeeded in using the Web to encourage communication between the provincial government and its citizens. The Party established an on-line government forum, and Zhang himself offered New Year’s greetings to web users on a message board. He became known as a Party Secretary who focused on people, both in the administration and in policies that aimed at strengthening Hunan with “culture.”

Like his predecessors, Zhang has a background in engineering, but he also holds a degree in management from the Harbin Institute of Technology. He has also served as the PRC’s Minister of Communications (2002-2005). This, however, is in itself no indicator of his mastery of media, since the Ministry, both then and in its new identity as the Ministry of Transportation, was concerned not with telecommunications, but with shipping, the postal service, and public transport. Zhang’s most obvious credentials in this respect are his smiling, clean visage, which should help him avoid the “Ratzinger effect” that accompanies Wang’s tough, authoritarian, and somewhat toad-like image, and his rumored marriage to CCTV newscaster Li Xiuping, which may bring a rare dash of celebrity to the position. It is uncertain whether Zhang will also take Wang’s place as Commissar of the XPCC.

Some journalists outside of China see Zhang’s apparent focus on the economy as a contrast to Wang’s insistence on stability through strict limitations on non-Han culture and language. There is nothing new, however, about the rhetoric of economic development in Xinjiang. Song Hanliang, back in March 1992, “described economic construction as the Party’s central task for the 1990s,” including developing close ties with newly-independent Central Asian states. (Harris 1993: 123) Only a month beforehand, however, he and other Xinjiang party and government leaders had engaged in the usual rhetoric about ethnic and religious “splittism.” (119) These two policies continued throughout Wang’s time in office, and economic development and trade with Central Asia have been tied with increasing intimacy to security cooperation. (Becquelin 2000: 70) Certainly, Wang Lequan also oversaw the push for strictly Mandarin-medium education for minorities in Xinjiang and supported it with ridiculous statements, most amusingly, “minority languages in Xinjiang contain only limited amounts of information.” (Dwyer 2005: 37) This policy, however, is part of a broader drive for standardization on the national level that has been going since the early 1990s. Certainly, Wang has paired these strict ethnic policies with Strike Hard campaigns. Xinjiang, then, has been on a tight leash, and policies on “culture” and “development” have gone hand-in-hand. So, it is difficult to say whether the appointment of Zhang, photogenic and media-savvy though he may be, will signal a real change in that way Xinjiang is managed.

Some citations:

Becquelin, Nicolas. “Xinjiang in the nineties” in The China Journal No. 44 (July 2000), pp. 65-90.

Becquelin, Nicolas. “Staged development in Xinjiang” in The China Quarterly No. 128 (July 2004), pp. 358-378.

Dwyer, Arienne M. The Xinjiang conflict: Uyghur identity, language policy, and political discourse. (Policy Studies 15). Washington: East-West Center, 2005.

Harris, Lillian Craig. “Xinjiang, Central Asia and the implications for China’s policy in the Islamic world” in The China Quarterly No. 133 (March 1993), pp. 111-129.

Here are two of his poems. The translations are unrhyming but otherwise accurate. Where I have felt the need to make stylistic choices, I have done so.

From Alip Tékin, Ibrahim. Memtili Ependi Shéirliri [The Poems of Memtili Ependi]. Ürümchi: Shinjang Xelq Neshriyati, 1998, p. 1:

[2]^ Tewpiq (تەۋپىق) comes from the Arabic tawfīq, a Muslim theological term referring to God’s grace or guidance. In Uyghur, it is often rendered as the “correct road” toghra yol. Memtili took this as his pseudonym, apparently from an early age.

Memtili composed this poem at the age of about 19, around the time of the departure of his teacher and mentor, the Ottoman educator and Pan-Turkist Ahmed Kemal.

From the same source, pp. 13-14:

[4]^ Thus, the speaker, to his Senem/senem, is just an improvised meshrep dance, but also represents, perhaps, the social power of the meshrep gathering.

[5]^ Ghérib is the tragic lover of Senem.

Memtili most likely wrote this poem in Istanbul, where he had arrived some years before. During his work and education there, he joined a group of young Turkestani exiles, some of whom returned with him to Kashgar in 1934 in hopes of building a new Turkic state. The poem suggests that he, as the speaker, has just learned about the uprising that led to the formation of the Turkic Islamic Republic of East Turkestan (1933-1934).

The last time Xinjiang had an incident involving a an airplane was March 2008, when Xinhua reported that a young Uyghur woman, apparently in the company of an older man and under the direction of a Pakistani national, attempted to bomb an airplane with a soda can full of gasoline in order to sabotage the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.  The fate of the accused girl is still in question, as is the veracity of the state’s narrative of that event.  (For the best blogging on this, see Mutant Palm here and here.)

What you see below is the 新疆總圖 or “General Map of Xinjiang.” This particular version is from the work 欽定新疆識略 Imperially-Commissioned Outline of Xinjiang, produced in 1821 by Song-yun, published again in 1894 as a typeset and annotated edition, and reproduced from that version by lithograph in 1962 in Taiwan. By the magic of modern digital technology, I have arranged the two halves of the map, previously printed conveniently on either side of a single page, into a complete image for your edification and mine.

"General Map of Xinjiang" - Click to enlarge!

The map was made by imperial decree in 1755 and completed four years later along with several other maps of the region. Although the map’s production apparently involved Jesuit missionaries under the leadership of an imperial censor, it does not resemble later maps that the Jesuits produced for the Qing court.

First of all, it’s oriented with south on top, as in older Chinese maps. Check out the place names. Along the top, from left to right, we have… Lop Nor (羅布淖爾, with all of the little circles). Then, in the middle, there’s Khotan (here 和闐), and, above it, a pass to Tibet. Heading down and to the right, we pass through Yarkand (葉爾羌), a place name now used for the nearby town of Qarghiliq, while Yarkand itself is translated as 莎車. You will see the latter name nearby, marking an ancient kingdom recorded in Chinese texts. Then come Yengisar (英吉沙爾) and Kashgar (喀什噶爾), both of which’s names were “corrected” by this text. East of these is Badakhshan and, if you look southeast/down and to the right, you will find Andijan (安集延), which seems to have been contemporary Chinese writers’ main point of reference for the Ferghana Valley and much of Central Asia. Turning down and to the left, we pass through Ush-Turfan, Aksu, and Kucha. West/left of there is Qarashahr, marked here next to Ancient Yanqi (焉耆), as it is known in Chinese today. Crossing the mountains to the north/down, there’s Urumqi, and, to the east/right, Ili! This puts us just over the mountains from Lake Balkhash (巴勒喀什), which is a short ways east across the plains from Tarbaghatai (塔爾巴哈台), now known also as 塔城 and, in Uyghur, Chöchäk. You will notice that, north/down of here, some areas are marked with names of peoples, such as Kazakh (哈薩克) and Khalkha (喀爾喀). Anyway, if you go back to Urumqi and follow the road east/left, you will wander through Turpan (吐魯番), Qumul (哈密), and even Ancient Loulan (古樓蘭) before arriving at Dunhuang (敦煌).

Besides being oriented to south, rather than north, as later maps increasingly were, as well as having mountains that are artistic more than they are accurate, this map also lacks lines of longitude and latitude. Instead, in the Outline, it is preceded by several pages of very tedious explanatory notes detailing distances between the places marked on the map (pp. 169-175).

In any case, for an especially good discussion of mapmaking in the Qing Dynasty, specifically in the context of Xinjiang, I recommend Peter C. Perdue’s China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia, pp. 442-257.

Two days before rioting broke out over Xinjiang, I hopped a plane bound for Kashgar. I got stuck a little in Urumqi, but made it to Kashgar eventually. The events below record my adventure as you can call it, being stuck in the middle of the chaos in what basically became a police state for three days (and remains so today).

When I arrived in Kashgar, it was “business as usual”: Uyghurs being Uyghurs, i.e. speaking their Turkic language, praying five times a day, and living in and around the Old City. Of course, I was disappointed by the Chinese-built shopping malls, massive highways, and blatant destruction of Uyghur cultural sites (including tombs) and discrimination against the Uyghurs. There are signs everywhere in Chinese reading: “Follow the Communist Party for 10000 years.” “Give up superstition, embrace science, embrace modernity.” “The many peoples of China are one: Hate Separatism from the Motherland.” It’s not a good feeling entering the city.

But a cab drive away (one cab drive too long) and I was basically back in the Middle East. It felt like home. Kebabs everywhere. Hummus, tabouli, green tea with mint. The Old City was “heartening” if tragic… bulldozers, bulldozers, bulldozers. I saw a few mosques come down, probably a few hundred years old each.

Kashgar of course was magical… what was left. I went to centuries-old mosques with sublime Central Asian architecture. I went to “state approved official” tombs and got an “official” tour of the “official Old City.” (This is the 15% of the Old City that the government has decided not to destroy. What’s the catch: No one lives there. They hire actors to dress up as “traditional” Uyghurs for six hours a day.) They smile and proudly display pictures of the Chinese flag. This is the only part of the Old City that Western journalists are allowed to photograph. I got some pictures of the “unofficial” Old City, which was absolutely marvelous. I also went to the Sunday Market and the Livestock Market. I was offered a few camels for a good price, but very sadly I was unable to accept.

I met some reporters in the Old City from the West, but most of them were being followed and having their cameras taken away from them. What I saw was a Uyghur population in Kashgar feeling that they faced the immediate destruction of their cultural and historical heritage. Families were being evacuated from their homes. I honestly have no idea why they would even let Westerners in the city to see this. I still have no idea why they didn’t make me leave.

Waking up the second morning, I heard on the Chinese news that “terrorists” had struck the capital in Urumqi and that their goal was to divide the Motherland. I thought nothing of it honestly, until I went outside. Within about two hours, the city of Kashgar was filled with soldiers and riot police pouring into the “Uyghur” part of town. The internet had been completely cut, along with my phone. I was unable to have any contact with the outside world. But it seemed OK. I again just thought it was policy. When I went out for dinner that night, I saw the authorities arresting people, including old men.

The next day martial law came. The Uyghurs gathered in the Id Kah Mosque to protest the arrests, as well as the destruction of their city, etc. I was pretty close to the Id Kah Mosque. I heard the loud sounds, the screams, and honestly, the screams of people in great physical suffering. There was a stampede, and I knocked over a bunch of watermelons but got back to the hotel (the merchant didn’t hold it against me). The army marched in and all the Uyghur shops in the city were told that they would close for three days (the Chinese of the city were either leaving or behind locked doors). All the mosques were closed and the Uyghurs were clearly scared. Trucks with loudspeakers circled around the Old City, proclaiming: “Always listen to the Communist Party. Hate separation.” The Chinese news interviewed Uyghur women who happily said things like “Xinjiang has always been part of China for 2000 years. Uyghurs are Chinese, one of 55 minority groups. We hate independence and love the motherland.”

The police were just kind of amazed I was there, which is probably why they didn’t make me leave. One happily asked me if I had been to Shanghai yet. God. I asked a police officer what he thought of the situation, and he was optimistic, said that everything was going to be fine. He concluded by saying, “You know, in the next ten years, we’ll just send more Han here and that’ll just end the problem once and for all.”

Kashgar was amazing, and I’m glad I went. I wouldn’t tell anyone else to go to Kashgar in the future though, because I know that the Old City is going to be gone before next Christmas. Uyghur culture and Uyghur language are beautiful to hear and study, as all things become as they slowly disappear.

Tuesday morning, hundreds of Uyghurs staged a protest in downtown Urumqi just as Chinese authorities were taking journalists on a “tour” of the Uyghur neighborhood. Many claimed to be the mothers, wives, and sisters of the detained young Uyghurs, and they wailed for their kin. They waved the ID cards of the detained men. In the end, around a hundred found themselves cornered in a burned-out part of south Urumqi, surrounded by riot police with clubs and guns drawn.

The footage and photographs of this event have produced what will doubtless be enduring images of the most violent public conflict in the PRC since the Tian’anmen Square demonstrations in 1989. A young woman with a ponytail and a soccer jersey, a member of a proud generation of Uyghur girls, waved her finger in the helmeted faces of the People’s Armed Police. The “Tian’anmen” photograph of this event, however, is this picture, which has appeared in various forms on the front pages of Al Jazeera and Hürriyet and in the galleries of The New York Times, The Guardian, and goodness knows where else:

The same woman appears in a video clip from The Guardian, in which the Armed Police tanks before her… actually seem to be backing away.

This is not the quiet stillness with which an anonymous man stood before a tank on Tian’anmen Square, though the photographs make it look like it is. This is a different image, one that speaks of a hidden fury, a constant authority and power in the hands of tradition. This is an image that will appeal powerfully to the Muslim world. This picture tells a story of brave boys who righteously stood up, as young men do, and who were punished by non-Muslim occupiers. The image is a mother, the keeper of tradition, the one who educates religious and ethnic values and traditions into her children, looking out for those children, missing them, coming to find them when they have lost their way. Here, she chides and scolds the men who have taken her son away, and, in their stillness, they seem to fear her.

In reality, their commander certainly told them to hold their fire, to contain, not to attack. With media cameras all around, with tensions already extremely high, this was no time even to make arrests.

Furthermore, cracking down on a crowd of women, children, and old men would delegitimize police action. Anyone familiar with the politics of ethnic representation in Xinjiang will tell you: Minority groups are overwhelmingly represented in the media by women, children, and old men. Minority men are threatening to the majority, which can easily accept them as perpetrators of murder and mass destruction.

Politically, this seems extremely auspicious for the world’s awareness of Uyghur political, legal, and cultural issues. The initial riots could be dismissed as action by only a thousand or so people fitting a slim demographic in Urumqi: under 30, male, educated. Now we see everyone else: over 30, female, uneducated, religious, etc. If someone planned this entire event, then it was certainly very, very well staged. In the media, Uyghurs look unified, with the exception of the many Uyghur police officers working to halt the action. (I am not precluding, by the way, the possibility that this is more than a Uyghur protest! I have not seen any mention to the contrary, though I would be unsurprised to find at least Uzbeks and Tatars in the mix.)

I would note that the people in the videos of today’s Uyghur protests, especially the women, were almost all wearing headscarves. Uyghur women in Urumqi do not generally wear headscarves, though they almost universally own one or two for certain religious and social occasions. Those women who did not had their hair up, generally in pigtails, a modest style for young Uyghur women, à la Rebiya Kadeer. There are several possible reasons for this.

First, it could be that, in the aftermath of Sunday’s protest, the police rounded up not only many suspected participants, but any religious men they could find. That was the demographic that participated in the mäshräp groups, the government’s repression of which helped spark the Ghulja riots in 1997. This is the group that the government feels least able to co-opt, that it most wants to “educate,” as Urumqi Party Chairman Li Zhi threatened to do to demonstrators. As such, the women may be wearing headscarves anyway. The size of the demonstration also suggests that this was organized through preexisting social ties, as through the more religiously observant Uyghur community. Even if the participants were not necessarily religious, they would still identify as Muslims, making the headscarf a very visible symbol of unity, as well as difference from Han Chinese. I wonder if Uyghurs in Urumqi might begin more frequently to demonstrate their ethnicity and religion in their outward appearance.

Alternatively, if someone politically savvy planned this action, then they may have actually called on female participants to wear headscarves. The image of a crowd of apparently traditional Muslims facing down what looks like a faceless army of Chinese can draw on over a billion sympathizers. The concern here is that, while peaceful and charitable international Islamic organizations may pay more attention to the region, so will violent organizations that may see Xinjiang as a higher-profile arena than it previously was.

The last few days in Urumqi have produced a startling amount of both imagery and coverage from media outlets around the world. This is the moment, it seems, when Xinjiang may cease to be a journalistic oddity and exoticism and join, for better or for worse, the stock list of “restive” regions.

This piece was co-written with New Dominion author Sherin.

Selected sources:

Hürriyet: Sincan’da dehşet fotoğrafları

7 July 2009, Al Jazeera: Troops deployed in Uighur city

7 July 2009, The Guardian: Riots in Urumqi, China

7 July 2009, The New York Times: New Protests in Western China After Deadly Clashes

7 July 2009, The New York Times: Another Media Tour Goes Very, Very Badly for Chinese Authorities

Melissa K. Chan, Al Jazeera reporter in Urumqi