Victimized in their own homeland, China’s Uighur Muslims are being forced out from their homes under a government policy to a centuries-old city which symbolizes the Uighur identity for hundreds of years.
“Every time I think about my housing problem, I’m so angry I can’t sit,” Uighur merchant Obul Kasim told Reuters on Tuesday, August 9.
Kasim was one of hundreds of Uighur Muslims who lost their homes in the oasis city of Kashgar in the far western region of Xinjiang under a government plan for urban renewal.
The government has launched a plan to move 50,000 people out of Kashgar old city, home to 220,000 people or 42 percent of Kashgar population, into modern apartment buildings.
Officials argue that some houses in Kashgar are too far away from fire hydrants and the old city has become dangerously overcrowded.
When Kasim first refused to leave his 100-year-old mud-brick home in 2004, police handcuffed him and took him to the local station.
In 2005 and 2007, he travelled to Beijing to seek redress over what he saw as inadequate compensation, but was rounded up by provincial officials both times.
The local government offered him compensation of 470 yuan ($73) per square meter for his 510 square meter (5,500 square foot) home.
High-rise apartments are now worth 30,000 yuan per square meter.
“No department has listened to me,” said Kasim, who sells embroidered skullcaps near Kashgar’s Id Kah mosque, China’s largest.
“My father was so angry because of this, he passed away of a heart attack.”
Kasim said he would return to Beijing to petition after the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, though he does not expect much.
Eroding Identity
Gopuk Haji, a 97-year-old doctor of traditional medicine, was given a house of 80 square meters, even though his previous mud-brick home was 100 square meters.
“A real Communist Party must help the people,” said Haji, who was given compensation of 9,600 yuan.
“This Communist Party is fake. They are only using money to line their pockets.”
Despite Uighurs’ protest, demolitions proceed at a furious pace across the flat, parched region around Kashgar, which used to be a stop on the historic Silk Road trade route linking China and Europe.
Heaps of earth and bricks dot the city’s residential quarters, while workers lay foundations for drab, modern high-rise apartments.
The historic, adobe Uighur homes with wooden doors in winding red-dirt lanes were once hailed as the best surviving example of Central Asian architecture.
Analysts believe that the demolitions aimed to eliminate the identity of Uighurs, a Turkic Muslim minority.
“One of the lessons that we can take from Xinjiangis that the pursuit of sheer economic growth as a solution to social problems is not working,” said Nicholas Bequelin, a searcher for New York-based Human Rights Watch.
Mass demolitions in Kashgar’s old city, he said, were “taken as evidence of the state’s intent to erase and destroy Uighur identity and heritage”.
Wrong Policies
Experts believe the roots of the tensions in Xinjiang stem from government policies of pouring more majority Han Chinese, who make up the majority in the country, into the Muslim-majority region.
“Uighurs are clearly upset with the policies there,” Dru Gladney, an expert on Uighurs at Pomona College in California, told Reuters.
“China thinks they can overrun the region with the Han and put in money for security services and that will ameliorate the problem. But it’s not working.”
Others warn that the dispossession of the Uighurs’ homes will add to the already simmering tensions.
“A very large source of discontent is land dispossession,” Tom Cliff, a graduate student at the Australian National University who spent more than three years in Xinjiang, said in emailed comments.
“Many Uighurs see this as their land being taken away from them with inadequate compensation and no recourse to the law.”
Xinjiang’s capital, Urumqi, was the scene of deadly violence in July 2009 when Uighur Muslims vented resentment over Chinese restrictions in the region.
In the following days, mobs of angry Han took to the streets looking for revenge in the worst ethnic violence that China had seen in decades.
The government has blamed the violence in Xinjiang on the separatist “East Turkestan Islamic Movement” (ETIM), but Uighurs doubt their claims.
“The ETIM doesn’t have a big influence on Uighurs,” said a 40-year-old imam, who declined to be identified.
“Most people have heard about this separatist movement, but most of them don’t know who they are or have seen their faces.”
Staring at a poster of two Uighurs shot by police last week on suspicion of involvement in the attacks in Kashgar, Kasim, the Uighur merchant, said: “They are not terrorists. They had their own problems.”
“If they couldn’t solve them, then maybe they had no choice.”
When asked whether Xinjiang should be independent, he said: “I’m afraid to give you an answer. Walls have ears.
“But if you are smart, you’ll know what my answer is.”
Source: OnIslam