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

In the video above, you can see a youth smashing the window of a donkey meat restaurant. The Uyghur-run Arman grocery store next door, however, is untouched. I am pretty sure this Döngköwrük/Erdaoqiao.

Here, demonstrators make their through the Döngköwrük/Erdaoqiao neighborhood, blocking traffic on one side of the road. They look remarkably organized, and I wonder who is at the vanguard. They may be holding a banner. You can see a couple of people rushing across the opposite lane to join the march. This doesn’t look like thousands of people.

In this video, you can see police action taking place on a side alley. There may be demonstrators down there, too. The action is taking place in a city block on South Liberation Street (解放南路), about here:

View Protests in Urumchi City Block in a larger map

Locals are posting videos to YouKu, but have mostly been quickly “harmonized” and taken down.

View several photos of the violence in Urumqi today here.