The events leading up to the demonstration in Urumqi are, however, better known. The video of the lethal bashings was shot on June 26 at a toy factory owned by a Hong Kong tycoon in Shaoguan, Guangdong province, which had just recruited 800 Uyghur workers from an impoverished district of southern Xinjiang under the auspices of a state-sponsored economic migration scheme. Most of the Uyghur workers were female, aged between 16 and 19. The official version of the Shaoguan incident, based on an initial investigation by local police, was that a disgruntled ex-employee of the factory posted on the internet a false allegation that a group of Uyghur male workers at the factory had raped two Han female workers. Several days later, a ‘brawl’ broke out between Han and Uyghur workers that resulted in the hospitalisation of 120 people (81 from Xinjiang province, though their presumably Uyghur ethnic status was not spelled out), and the deaths of two Uyghur workers. No mention was made of the gender of the injured or deceased.
Different versions of the Shaoguan incident developed in internet chat rooms and bulletin boards. The incident had been captured on video by Han employees and posted on the internet. The footage shows an excited, male, Han mob armed with long sticks chasing down and beating two Uyghur women. Other photos circulated via the internet showed at least half a dozen bodies on the ground. At least two of the bodies appear dead, one male and one naked female.
The official and internet versions of the incident are not necessarily incompatible, but lend a very different character to the incident. The official account frames the incident as a breach of public order instigated by a ‘rumour-monger’. To viewers of the footage, both Han and Uyghur, the incident was an obvious outbreak of racial hatred. One of two Han spectators whose voices are recorded on the video exclaims excitedly that the beating received by a Uyghur woman was well deserved, presumably for her ethnic connection with the fictive rapists of the falsified rape claims. To at least some Uyghur viewers, the footage was confirmation of the predatory dangers faced by the young Uyghur women recruited against their will into the state-sponsored migration scheme.
Back in 1992, much of the American public, black and white, had difficulty reconciling the video footage of the Rodney King beating with the verdict of the predominantly white jurists in the first trial of the L.A.P.D officers captured on video, which found them not guilty of assault.
The crowds of people who came out into the streets in Urumqi expressed their frustration at a similar failure of the justice system to which they are subject.
In the absence of a coherent and compelling official response to incidents of ethnic conflict, people will interpret what happened in their own ethnically-informed manner. If hot-headed bloggers are appointed as jurists, they are unlikely to come to a verdict that will satisfy both parties to the conflict. Now the Han and Uyghur blogging communities have turned their attention to the incidents that have taken place in Urumqi since last Sunday.
To the credit of the Chinese government, the international media has been given unprecedented access to Xinjiang to report the facts of the riot and its causes as they see it, and the riot police deployed to contain the riots as they developed on Monday carried out their unenviable task with professional skill, at least in the situations that have been described by the international media.
While some Uyghurs may dream of having their own nation, in their waking hours both Uyghur and long-term Han residents of Urumqi today lament the loss of a world that existed before 1989 when children of both ethnic groups played together in the dusty alleyways of their apartment compounds. The reclamation of this lost land in northwest China may be as difficult a task as the fulfilment of Martin Luther King’s dream. Let us hope now that the arc of the Chinese moral universe bends in support of a justice system that serves the interests of all ethnic peoples.
Anthony Garnaut is an historian at the University of Melbourne
As an ethnic Han Chinese, my perspective on the riot in Xinjiang may subject to some natural biases. My understanding is that the history of ethnic issues in China has generally been better since the establishment of the People’s Republic of China.
While the Chinese Communists, like most other communists, may have had strong ideological outlook in the past in terms of capitalism and socialism/communism systems or “classes”, they have not been racists, at least inside China. To the contrary, they have treated ethnic minorities more favourably, given them special privileges.
For example, the Chinese family planning system has allowed only one child for Han people, but this one child policy has not applied to most ethnic minority groups. Just think about how important family continuation is for anyone, especially the Chinese, one would come to realise how special and favourable the policy has been to ethnic minorities in China.
Problems like inequality and conflicts exist in every societies and countries. The main differences are how they manifest themselves. For example, in Australia the Indigenous people suffer great disadvantages, as the recent report from the Productivity Commission shows. They not only range from extremely low income, but also to low life expectancy, dozens times of imprison rates compared to other Australians. This inequality should be much worse than the inequality in China between different ethnic groups.
China’s inequality is largely of a regional nature, as compared to ethnic nature. China has stated itself that there are three broad regions, the Eastern, the Middle and the Western regions in terms of development, with the Eastern region the most developed and the Western the least. It happens that most ethnic Uyghurs live in Xinjiang and most ethnic Tibetans live in Tibet and those two regions are all in the Western region and are relatively poor among many provinces in China, although my understanding is that the situations in Xinjiang are certainly better than those in Tibet.
People can fight even among own families, like between brothers and sisters, parents and children. They can fight between different families of the same ethnic group. They may fight between different local regions. Anything can happen there.
The situation can be very different if potential separation of regions is involved. Most Chinese naturally don’t like the idea to give away any territories. For example, many people resent the fact that Mongolia (Chinese say the Outer Mongolia, because there is an Inner Mongolia in China) was allowed to be independent and the Chinese Communists accepted that.
Others may like to see it in ethnic terms. But mostly, seeing it in ethnic terms is likely to beat up the matter and distort the fact.
I think the problem is China’s political system.
Yesterday Mr. Wang Lixiong asked me to sign an appeal for the release of Professor Hamu Yili, and I signed with more than one hundred Han people. You can read the letter in Chinese at http://news.boxun.com/news/gb/china/2009/07/200907132133.shtml. The letter also has a very good article by Mr. Huang Zhangjin. Hamu’s aid in Beijing.
Jing Zhao, CPRI, USA
Although I won’t fully trust the Chinese government’s voice and the reports coming from the media that’s heavily influenced (or may we say “controlled”) by the government, I do have doubts about whether the incident was a spontaneous riot escalated from peaceful public demonstration, or it was a planned mass killing. I tend to believe that the latter was the case. It’s hard for me to swallow that the animosity between the Han and the Uighur has been brewing to such an extent that such brutal, mindless killings are warranted. Also, from the recounts of the witnesses, the killings were carried out with tactics and in a somewhat organized fashion.
Whatever the case was, it was a terrible and tragic event. Ordinary people were beaten to death en masse on the streets and in the alleys. People in Xinjiang, Han and Uighurs alike, are left with the consequences. It may be a wake-up call for China, but after the sentiment subsides, I bet the government will quietly introduce new measures, and they won’t look pretty for the Uighur population.
“lament the loss of a world that existed before 1989” What’s the significance of 1989 in this context ? The tragedy at Tiananmen square or a more local incident ?