East Turkistan Information Center

In the beginning of April, 2001, the communist Chinese regime ordered
the Chinese law enforcement agencies to start a new cycle of the
"strike hard" campaign to fight "crime" in the country. The leaders
of the Chinese communist party described the main goal of the "strike
hard" campaign as "to improve the social order through defeating dark
groups and various criminals". But, in the Xinjiang-Uighur Autonomous
Region, this campaign turned into persecution of Islam, Muslims, and
anyone suspected in favoring the idea of independent East Turkistan.

Commenting on the main target of "strike hard" in East Turkistan,
Chairman of a puppet government of the Xinjiang-Uighur Autonomous
Region, Ablet Abdurishit, an ethnic Uighur himself, said: "Ethnic
separatists are the main dark group and most dangerous criminals in
Xinjiang, and, this time, Strike Hard has to aim at fighting with
ethnic separatists".

During his visit to East Turkistan on April 13, Chi Haotian, the
Chinese Defense Minister, stressed at the meeting of the region's
military and Bintuan officials that "PLA divisions and Bintuan located
in Xinjiang must unite efforts to fight ethnic separatists".

In early 1990s, the fall of the Soviet Union caused sudden and
profound changes in the world, including break-ups of the USSR and
Republic of Yugoslavia. Dozens of new nations appeared on the world
map. These changes fueled the pro-independence aspiration of the
Uighurs whose home country, East Turkistan, has been a Chinese colony
since late 19th century.

Since then, the idea of independent East Turkistan has penetrated all
levels of the Uighur society. Some Uighurs resorted to various form of
actions, while others remained silent supporters of the idea. The
proportion between these two groups is steadily changing in the
direction of increase of the former. The pro-independence struggle
interlaced with the struggle for human rights and self determination
in East Turkistan.

However, the Chinese communist leaders in Beijing still do not
understand that the age of colonialism and totalitarianism has come to
its end, and that the world is entering the unprecedented epoch of
freedom and democracy. The Chinese leaders have not learned right
lessons from the collapse of the USSR, the break-up of Yugoslavia, the
war in Kosovo, downfall of Milosevic, and the ongoing war crime trials
in Hague. On the contrary, the Chinese regime believes that the
Chinese empire must be saved at any cost because the downfall of the
empire will be the end of the communist rule in this Asian country.

Beijing rulers learned one lesson from the break-up of the USSR, that
is, if they give more freedom to the Chinese people and if they let
their colonized peoples free, they will be ousted from the power and
persecuted. That is why the agonizing regime strengthening repressions
against all of its political opponents, including the suppression of
any signs of dissent in East Turkistan.

Nowadays, millions of Uighurs and other non-Chinese peoples suffer in
East Turkistan from the state terror unleashed by the criminal regime
in Beijing. The last decade entered the Uighur history as the decade
of harshest repressions against the Uighurs by the communist Chinese
government. Since 1996, thousands of innocent people in East Turkistan
were thrown in prisons being labeled as "ethnic separatists" and
"reactionary religious elements", and many were executed in the result
of the "strike hard" campaign. Arrested people are often subjected to
barbaric medieval tortures. Evidently, a new cycle of repressions is
on the way in the "strike hard" against Uighurs.

Wang Lequan, a Chinese communist party boss in Xinjiang-Uighur Region,
said "take as many people as necessary, but do not let even a single
separatist escape from the net". Such repressive actions against the
Uighur people can be compared with the Stalin's policy of collective
punishment of "unreliable" peoples of 1930's and 1940's.

Amazingly, the international community turned a deaf ear to screams of
the tortured and last dying sighs of the executed. Rustling of money
falling from the trade with China is the only sound that the ears of
the international community are capable to hear nowadays. The silence
by the international community on the situation in East Turkistan
unleashes hands of the Chinese authorities in harsh handling of the
Uighurs in East Turkistan.

It is even more disappointing that Russia, Pakistan, and Central Asian
republics pursuing their short sighted interests support the bloody
suppression of Uighurs in East Turkistan.

On the contrary, pursuing its far fetching policy, China initiated and
organized a military-political alliance with Russia, Kazakhstan,
Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan by signing the Shanghai Five agreement in
April of 1996 on coordinated actions "against terrorism and separatism
in the Central Asian region". No doubt that the only reason of
initiating this alliance was the preparation for the future "Chechnya"
in East Turkistan.

The Chinese democracy movement seems to be in disarray. The Chinese
intellectuals understand the need for democratic reforms in
China. Still, many of them deny the colonial nature of the Chinese
state and put interests of the Chinese state above the interests of
the oppressed peoples.

More Uighurs realize today that the actions of the Chinese government
against Uighurs target not individual "criminals" but the Uighurs as
an ethnic group potentially capable to consolidate and to break away
from the Chinese empire.

To repulse this last rampant assault of the hateful Chinese regime,
the Uighur independence movement should consolidate, and the Uighur
Intifada type movement should be initiated in East Turkistan. The
Uighur population in other Central Asian countries and Uighur
diasporas in Turkey, western, and Muslim countries should strike bells
and should continue to direct the attention of the international
community to the outrageous actions of the Chinese regime in East
Turkistan. The international community should be persuaded to monitor
the situation with human and minority rights in East Turkistan and to
express protests to the communist Chinese government in Beijing for its
uncivilized treatment of the Uighurs.

[ETIC, April 21, 2001]