Page 118 - Conflict, Terrorism, and the Media In Asia

Uyghur separatism and nationalism in Xinjiang 107
state. One hundred police officers sent to quell the riot were overpowered and
their weapons and ammunition stolen. Disturbances continued on 6 April with
rioters firing small arms and throwing bombs at police and officials who were
surrounding them and blowing up part of the local government building.
According to the official account of the events, the rising was finally suppressed
by the Public Security Bureau, People’s Armed Police from the Kashghar garri-
son and militia units, but there were also reports that 1,000 regular PLA troops
were brought in, and local politicians later visited injured soldiers in hospital to
thank them for their part in suppressing the rising.
The next major incident occurred in June 1993 when a bomb exploded in
Kashghar. Government buildings were damaged and as many as ten people were
killed or injured in what was seen as a calculated attack on the representatives of
the provincial government in the city (BBC Summary of World Broadcasts 1993).
Émigré sources reported several bomb attacks in southern Xinjiang during 1993
and claimed that martial law had been declared in Kashghar city. Song Hanliang,
the CCP Secretary for Xinjiang is reported to have visited Kashghar and is quoted
as telling a multi-ethnic meeting of cadres that, ‘Nationalist separatists form the
main danger to the stability of our region, Xinjiang is a land with rich under-
ground resources, our main task in Xinjiang is to keep the stability so the other
parts of China could develop smoothly’ (Eastern Turkistan Dispatch 1993a: 4).
More detailed reports appeared in the German press, which stated that the explo-
sion was apparently caused by ‘a well-trained commando’ which used a large
quantity of explosives that tore a hole 7 metres long in the facade of the govern-
ment’s agricultural building in Kashghar. The report included a photograph of the
damage. A second explosion occurred on 4 August and further bombs were
planted in five different cities. Leaflets calling for independence and the cessa-
tion of Chinese migration into Xinjiang were distributed. Kazakhs in the Yili
4
region of north western Xinjiang also clashed with Chinese security forces dur-
ing the summer of 1993 with some demonstrators demanding that they be allowed
to become a republic in the CIS. There were also reports of an attack by Uyghur
farmers on Han Chinese labourers who had been brought in to work in an oilfield
in Karghalik in the Altishahr. An assassination attempt on the chairman of the
Xinjiang Regional People’s Congress, Amdun Nyaz, was also reported in July
(Eastern Turkistan Dispatch 1993: 1–3).
There was further serious unrest in six towns in the Yili region in April 1995.
On 22 April, as many as 50,000 people were reported to have taken part in rallies
and demonstrations against Chinese rule in the towns of Mongolkure (Zhaosu),
Tekes, Künes (Xinyuan) Gongliu, Qapqal and Nilka which surround
Yining/Ghulja, the administrative capital, and are close to the border with
Kazakhstan. Demonstrators were contacted through the mosques and the infor-
mal networks of extended family and Sufi orders that bypasses the official chan-
nels of communication. Contact was often by personal approaches and word of
mouth, as written communications could be dangerous and even telephone con-
versations might be monitored. The climax of the agitation came on 24 April with
strikes by as many as 100,000 workers, teachers and shopkeepers. Demonstrators