The Uyghurs by Bovingdon Gardner;

Author:Bovingdon, Gardner;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science/International Relations/General
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2011-10-02T16:00:00+00:00

GOVERNMENT RESPONSES

Between 1980 and 1997, the governments in Beijing and Ürümci made concessions in only four instances to matters raised during demonstrations. After a series of protests by Han former “educated youths” desiring to return to their home cities in the interior in the late 1970s and early 1980s, officials granted them the right to periodic home visits, agreed to resettle some individuals, and allowed for all the individuals who remained in Xinjiang to send one child back to China proper. In response to the Muslims’ protests in spring 1989, Beijing halted the publication of the book Sexual Customs, which contained offensive (and wildly inaccurate) descriptions of Muslims’ sexual behavior, and punished both the authors and publisher of the book. In this case, the government responded before the protests spread to Xinjiang, and although the authorities treated demonstrators in China proper quite leniently, they were much less generous with their counterparts in Ürümci (Gladney 1991:3–4; 1992). When 130 uranium mine workers,52 whose radiation sickness had been ignored by authorities for years, traveled to Ürümci and staged a sit-in on May 13, 1989, officials agreed to address their concerns but then scolded them for the form of their protest, saying that a sit-in was “inappropriate” (Zhang Liang, Nathan, and Link 2001:170). It seems evident that had they not protested, their problems would have continued to be ignored. Finally, in 1996 Beijing ended the testing of nuclear weapons at Lop Nur, although this surely was prompted by the hope of wringing arms control concessions from other countries rather than the many Uyghur protests against the practice (Johnston 1996).

In all other documented cases, the government responded to protestors’ demands with either stony silence or even more restrictive policies. When protestors called for greater religious freedom, Ürümci stepped up the repression of religious belief among students and officials, zero tolerance for private religious instruction, and arrests of religious pupils deemed underage or unsuitable (as, for instance, with all children and youths in high school or college or technical schools at equivalent levels). When demonstrators called for increased representation by Uyghur, Qazaq, and other non-Han officials, officials and their advisers pushed for more Han cadres to preserve stability. When Uyghurs repeatedly insisted that Han immigration stop, the government reinstated the PCC and then enacted a series of policies that dramatically increased the inflow of Hans. Officials expressly targeted those regions of Xinjiang where Hans were the scarcest, lavishing great state largesse on the completion of the Kashgar rail link with this aim in mind.53 When students asked for greater respect for Uyghur culture, the government chose to phase out bilingual education and has made a bid to eliminate the use of Uyghur (and Qazaq) as a high-prestige language (Dwyer 2005). And when Uyghurs sought local indigenous remedies to social ills such as alcoholism and drug abuse, the government cracked down on these autonomous social organizations (Congressional-Executive Commission on China 2009; Dautcher 1999, 2004:286–92).

The party-state has relied heavily on a particular strategy for breaking up existing organizations and thwarting the emergence of new ones.

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