Page 126 - Conflict, Terrorism, and the Media In Asia

Uyghur separatism and nationalism in Xinjiang 115
Since the upsurge of the separatist movement in the 1990s, the silence on the
issue has been broken by a number of books published in Chinese which have
taken a very confident attitude towards Beijing’s suppression of the Uyghurs and
have in doing so provided an unprecedented amount of detailed information both
about the separatist movement and the methods used by Beijng to contain it. The
most influential of these is Guojia liyi gaoyu yiqi (The interest of the state is
greater than anything) by Ma Dazheng, which was published in Urumqi in 2003
and, as its title suggests, is an uncompromising condemnation of the separatists.
There is no independent media in Xinjiang. All Uyghur language publications
have to be whetted by the authorities or they are deemed to be illegal, and
although there was a relatively liberal period in the 1980s and 1990s there has
since been a crack down and sensitive or controversial books or journals cannot
be published. Oppositionist material does circulate clandestinely in Uyghur, often
via the mosques and the unregulated madrassas. Some of this is produced locally
but much material is also imported in the form of video and audiotapes, which are
subject to searches and confiscation by the Chinese authorities. Much of this
material is religious in nature: it reflects, and may have contributed, to the growing
Islamist trend in the Uyghur independence movement.
Émigré Uyghur publications have been an important conduit for alternative
sources of information about the lives of people in Xinjiang. As these have been pro-
duced by scattered communities, often with few resources, they have been
ephemeral and of varied quality. Émigré organisations also have a number of
different functions and responsibilities, including the development of support
agencies for their own communities, the preservation and transmission of Uyghur
language and culture within their community, and the dissemination of news from
Xinjiang. The Eastern Turkistan Information (Bulletin) was published from May
1991 by the Eastern Turkistan Union in Europe from its base in Munich until
1996 and the Eastern Turkistan Dispatch appeared infrequently from an address
in Lausanne, Switzerland. Both carried reports on abuses of human rights and the
repression of unauthorised Islam by the Chinese authorities in Xinjiang.
Difficulties with access to contacts inside Xinjiang and a reluctance to analyse the
independence movement objectively make them problematic as primary sources.
Towards the end of the 1990s the growth in the availability of the internet made
it possible for these hardcopy sheets to be replaced by web sites.
The internet is becoming more widely available in Xinjiang, but not to the same
extent as in the more prosperous areas of east and Southeast China. Detailed data
are not available, but it is clear that relatively few individuals have personal internet
connections at home. There are internet cafes, including a long-established one in
Kashghar, but these are subject to regular monitoring by the Public Security
Bureau and there is in any case regular filtering of internet content throughout the
whole of China. Because of this the internet has not been used as a major vehicle
for transmitting information about the separatist cause, but it has increased the
availability of information from outside Xinjiang. Uyghurs have developed special
fonts for the version of Persi-Arabic script that is used in Xinjiang for computers
and the web so that in itself is not a barrier to electronic communication.