Chinese President ditches G8 to deal with Uighur unrest
Updated
Chinese paramilitary police are patrolling Urumqi, capital of China's north-west Xinjiang region, after the worst ethnic violence in decades killed 150 people.
Local reports say Han Chinese rioted for the second day, as police arrested alleged ring leaders. A curfew has been imposed, after thousands of Han Chinese armed with sticks, knives and metal bars, roamed the city seeking revenge against Muslim Uighurs. meanwhile, Chinese President Hu Jintao has abandoned the G-8 summit in Italy, to return to Beijing.
Presenter: Sen Lam
Speakers: MJ Gohel, head of the Asia Pacific Foundation
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GOHEL: There is no doubt that the Chinese President cut short his visit to the G-8 Summit because he sees that there is a major crisis for China. The violence in Xinjiang since Sunday has been some of the most bloody that the region has seen. It has created a sense of crisis in Beijing and of course, the authorities have clamped down by sending thousands of troops into the region. This is something quite unprecedented which is happening in the region.
LAM: If the situation does not improve, is there a danger that Beijing might order a harsher crackdown?
GOHEL: There is a fear that Beijing could order a much harsher crackdown. There has been violence on and off and unrest and protests in that region since 1991 or so. It has been sporadic; it has never been as intense as it's been recently. Tensions have been mounting there for a very long time. Basically, the problem is that Xinjiang consists of a very large Muslim population. There are something like eight-million Uighur Muslims, out of a population of 20 million or so. There are ethnically Turkic Muslims. There has been large scale immigration of Han Chinese into the region and currently Han Chinese account for roughly 40 per cent of Xinjiang's population. And the Uighur population is concerned that there could be erosion of their traditional culture. So there is the potential for ethnic violence and what happened with the toy factory was really a catalyst which triggered underlying problems of ethnic tensions. Under Chairman Mao, there was almost forcible large scale immigration of Han Chinese into Xinjiang in order to change the ground reality as it were. However since then it has been a voluntary immigration, and to some extent there has been a mixing of the two and the ground realities have got changed. But at the moment there's free movement. Nevertheless this has created ethnic tensions between the Han Chinese and the Uighur population.
LAM: But do you think there is a concerted effort by Beijing to dilute the Uighur culture if you like, which after all is very strong and therefore could easily be politicised?
GOHEL: No, at the moment it appears that the region is described as autonomous. What the Chinese are saying is that there is a combination of elements which is leading to the violence. On the one hand, yes, they do admit that there are ethnic tensions, on the other hand they admit that there are trouble-makers there. And also they are blaming groups outside China for triggering this, including a couple of terrorist groups with links to radical Islamists in Pakistan.
LAM: So is too fanciful to imagine that these radicals might cut a swathe right across central Asia from Pakistan across Afghanistan into north-west China?
GOHEL: There is a concern that China could face a terrorism problem, in fact Beijing has highlighted two groups. The first is the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement, known as the ETIM, which the US and the UN agreed to ban in 2002 after being lobbied by China. The other group mentioned by China is the Eastern Turkistan Liberation Organisation, the ETLO. Now there is certainly some evidence that members of these groups have received training and indoctrination from Islamic militant groups in neighbouring Pakistan, and indeed, more than 20 Uighurs were captured by the US military after its invasion in Afghanistan in 2001. So there is some truth to the fact that there are Islamist groups operating, but of course, on top of this there are indigenous Uighurs who are seeking self-determination, and there are these ethnic tensions also. So it's a mixture of issues which has led to the current violence.
