ISLAM Uighurs commemorate 15th anniversary of Urumqi massacre

The WUC organised demonstrations to pay tribute to the victims of Beijing’s most violent crackdown on the Muslim minority. An activist denounced “policies” that “give rise to crimes against humanity and genocide”. No Muslims from Xinjiang were allowed to participate in the Hajj. “Sinicisation” and “re-education” camps during the Eid holiday.

Urumqi () – On the 15th anniversary of the massacre, the World Uyghur Congress (WUC) organised a commemoration of the victims of the violent repression carried out by Beijing against thousands of peaceful protesters in Urumqi. The local population had organised a march to People’s Square in the centre of the city to protest against the way the Chinese government had acted in the incidents that occurred earlier in Shaoguan, which had left several Uyghurs dead at the hands of a crowd of Chinese workers during a dispute. In a statement, the president of the WUC, Dolkun Isa, said that the “massacre” was one of the “darkest episodes in the history of the Uyghur people”. “The government’s harsh repression of the protest – he said – has marked a fundamental turning point and intensified the repression against the Uyghur people that led to the current genocide.”

To commemorate the Urumqi massacre and call for an end to ongoing human rights violations, communities across the Uyghur diaspora around the world organised a series of protests on 5 July. The WUC urged people to join the demonstrations as a sign of solidarity with the cause of the ethnic-religious minority in northwestern China, stressing Beijing’s direct responsibility for the persecutions. The Congress argues that the failure of the international community to set limits on the Chinese government is what allows it to continue with “political activities” that lead to “crimes against humanity and genocide in East Turkestan”. This inertia has also been on display in recent hours, when China has indignantly rejected the West’s recommendations on human rights following the routine review by the United Nations, stating that such condemnations are not based on rights but on “political motivations”.

The Uighur people live in the Xinjiang autonomous region in northern China. They are Turkic-speaking and Muslim, and have complained of strong linguistic, cultural and religious repression by the Chinese central government. There have been numerous violent clashes over the years. Beijing claims that the area is home to Islamic extremists with independence aims; local activists accuse the Chinese authorities of deliberately stirring up ethnic tensions with excessive policing and “racist” policies against the community.

The most serious incident occurred on 5 July 2009, triggering a wave of repression by the central Chinese authorities in the weeks and months that followed, including the death penalty against those suspected of being responsible. On that date, 15 years ago, peaceful protests in Urumqi degenerated into ethnic clashes between Muslims and Han Chinese. In response, the police and the army quelled the tensions by making thousands of arrests. The Uighurs accuse the Han of having colonised them, occupying all the key positions in commerce and the civil service. This uprising was the most violent in the history of the western region of China.

Beijing took advantage of the clashes, which left more than 200 dead and 1,700 injured, to tighten military control in the area. In the following weeks, the authorities reported that nearly 1,400 arrests had been made among the Uighur population, whom it held responsible for the protests. In reality, the local population reported a much higher number of arrests, at least 20,000, and that the police stopped passers-by simply for being on the street, without giving any explanation.

One of the most active figures at the time in denouncing the violence was Rebiya Kadeer, a Uighur leader imprisoned for years in China for crimes of opinion and forced into exile in the United States, who denied the terrorist and armed character of the protest, insisting on the “peaceful” nature of the dissent. “China,” she declared, “has no right to speak of ‘terrorist attacks’ as long as it does not allow its citizens freedom of expression and assembly. In addition, China must put an end to arbitrary arrests, unjust executions and torture in prisons.”

Finally, the persecution of which they are victims also has a confessional component, confirmed by the absence of Uighur Muslims at the Hajj, the great pilgrimage to Mecca that recently ended. This was reported by the Islamic Association of China and numerous expatriates, according to whom Beijing has not granted permits to participate in one of the five pillars of Islam, while 769 pilgrims from Gansu and 284 from Yunnan were given the green light to go to Saudi Arabia. The last time a Uighur was allowed to participate in the great pilgrimage was in 2016. Finally, last month, on the occasion of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha (Feast of the Sacrifice), the police and security forces in the region set up “re-education” camps where they “showed films of “communist ideology” to the population and raided homes to suppress religious activities. Beijing is trying to weaken the ethnic and religious identity of the Uighurs and forge their loyalty to the Chinese state and the Communist Party. “It seems like they are trying to sinicize Eid,” said Erkin Ekrem, a professor at Hacettepe University in Ankara, Turkey, and vice president of the World Uighur Congress.