Conference report: Culture, History and Human Rights in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region
Saturday 5th February 2005 at The Friends House, Euston Rd, London
The Friends House provided a welcoming and appropriate venue for our conference. It was good to see the room full with an attentive audience of about sixty people united by their desire to know more about the human rights situation in the XUAR and a desire to do something about it. Many Uighurs, now living in the UK, were there as, of course, were members of Amnesty International. At least two correspondents working for Chinese newspapers came to the meeting and drafted articles for their newspapers in China. It is unlikely that their articles will be published, but they may be circulated internally to officials. Also well represented were campaigners for human rights in Tibet and others who were studying history or just thought they would come along. Stephen Greig, a volunteer at Amnesty International UK who is particularly interested in the XUAR introduced the conference and the first speaker, Christian Tyler.
Christian Tyler, a former staff writer on the Financial Times of London, has travelled widely in China and in 2003 published an important book on the XUAR: “Wild West China: The Taming of Xinjiang”. His talk weaved a coherent thread through the complex history of the region from ancient times to the present day. The relationship between the Chinese and Uighur civilizations as well as the intervention of the Manchu peoples were described and set the scene for an analysis of communist China’s impact on the situation. Although newcomers to this fascinating subject may have been lost by some of the detailed arguments, Christian punctuated his talk with summaries before moving on to new ground enabling everyone to follow him. For those who want to delve deeper his book is very well worth reading.
Our second speaker, Erkin Alptekin, is a leading figure in the Uighur’s struggle for freedom from the repression they have faced for so long. He helped form the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization which provides an international forum for occupied nations, indigenous peoples, minorities and even oppressed majorities to represent themselves more effectively. More recently Erkin Alptekin became the President of the World Uighur Congress: an international body which represents Uighurs living in various countries around the world.
In his talk, Erkin managed to construct both a moving and passionate argument, but also a highly reasoned one, for the necessity of ending the severe repression that Uighurs in his homeland face. After listing all the labels that Uighurs have been given over the years, from "separatists", "splitists" to "religious extremists" and "terrorists", he suggested that perhaps the Chinese were trying to give the Uighurs an identity crisis. He expanded from his original title which focused on China’s language policies in Xinjiang to make a strong argument for respect and protection of Uighurs’ rights in general, including the right to self-determination. It is characteristic of Erkin’s good natured approach to such profound problems that he was able to make the audience laugh as well as attract their deep sympathy for the tragic situation of the Uighur people.
After Erkin Alptekin’s talk teas and coffees were served and the audience signed an Amnesty International petition calling for the Chinese government to hold an independent inquiry into the Gulja massacre. Amnesty reports on the situation in the XUAR were available as were CDs of Uighur music and also DVDs of various Uighur films.
The third talk of the conference was delivered by Mark Allison, a researcher from the China team at Amnesty International’s International Secretariat. Researchers, such as Mark, are responsible for the detailed and reliable output from Amnesty which has resulted in it becoming a resource used by governments and law courts throughout the world as well as all those individuals and organizations who campaign for justice, not least, members of Amnety International itself.
Mark started his talk by telling the audience that Amnesty International does not support or oppose independence movements and that the common ground that Amnesty and many Uighur individuals and organizations share is the desire for an end to the repression and human rights abuses being suffered by so many in the XUAR. While, in principle, Amnesty supports the right to self determination, Mark pointed out that this is a very difficult area of international law over which there is little agreement. So, in practice it is difficult to campaign for this right.
Mark then moved on to give a very clear account of what is known about the circumstances surrounding the Gulja massacre (for a detailed account of this please see the Amnesty International publication: http://web.amnesty.org/library/index/ENGASA170052005). In doing this he also described the types of information that he and his colleagues have used enabling us to access the reliability with which different elements of this tragic incident can be afforded. It was clear that even the most conservative interpretation of what happened demands a response from the Chinese authorities and it is unrealistic to imagine that somehow this blot on the landscape of history will fade away without being properly addressed. He then moved on to cover the range of people that have been detained or imprisoned in Xinjiang in violation of their human rights, including poets, academics and journalists, many of whom were the subject of AI campaigns. He concluded by looking towards future opportunities for campaigning, including the Beijing Olympics in 2008 which will shine an international spotlight on China, including its human rights record.
Our final speaker, Enver Tohti, was working as a cancer surgeon in Urumqi city in the XUAR when he began to notice the high rates of certain cancers he was seeing. Enver left China with the blessing of the authorities in order to gain more medical skills in Turkey. However, when he returned home it was clandestinely and with documentary makers from the UK. Enver obtained documents relating to cancer statistics from the hospital in Urumqi where he used to work and then he and the documentary team posing as a guide and tourists travelled to meet and film Uighurs living near the nuclear test sites. The resulting Channel Four documentary can be obtained on DVD and is well worth watching. For Enver it was now no longer possible to stay in his homeland and he left and was granted refugee status by the UN and has recently become a British citizen.
Although delivered with humour and a little mischieviousness nothing could disguise the horror of the scene Enver had uncovered in his homeland. From the Shepherd whose job, before he died from the effects of radiation, was changed by the authorities into herding local people, not sheep, away from the nuclear test site area to the congenital abnormalities suffered by many of the younger villagers, a tragic picture imposed on a beautiful and ancient culture emerged.
With Enver Tohti’s talk concluded the conference too was over. Many of us walked to the Chinese Embassy to hold a vigil for the victims of the Gulja massacre. Although the level of repression in the XUAR is clearly extreme with justice and cultural freedoms routinely denied, we only have to look at history to see, as Erkin Alptekin had pointed out to us earlier, that such situations are inherently unstable. As members of Amnesty International, we hope that by campaigning against human rights violations in the XUAR, we can help to raise international awareness of the situation there and increase the pressure on the Chinese authorities to change their policies of repression in the region.