Date : 5 July 2010
05 July 2010
Urumqi, capital of China's Xinjiang region, was torn in two on July 5 last year as the mainly Muslim Uighur minority clashed with the dominant Han ethnic group. Nearly 200 people were killed and 1,700 injured. The Straits Times was there to witness China's worst ethnic violence in decades. One year on, our correspondent revisits the city to find that peace has been restored, but only on the surface.
By Peh Shing Huei
URUMQI (XINJIANG): A year after a tearful Madam Zhu Xinqin approached me to send out her plea for peace in the wake of the worst ethnic riots in this city, it was my turn to look for her.
It did not take me long. She was sitting on a stool outside the same toilet she cleaned last year, wearing the same baggy blue Mao suit and her head covered by the same frizzy white hair.
'You are still here,' I said to her last Friday afternoon, glad to see a familiar face in this alien town.
'Of course,' replied the 61-year-old Han Chinese. 'Where can I go? This is my guard post.'
She was the humble sentry who wanted me, the reporter, to tell her fellow Urumqi folk to stop fighting a year ago. End the violence, she had pleaded to both the majority Han and the minority Uighur Muslims, with tears streaming down her face.
Today, she has a toothy grin, and is clearly glad that what she referred to as a 'civil war' is over. 'At least there is peace now,' she told me.
Peace, but only on the surface. It would be more accurate to call it an uncomfortable truce.
A year after reporting on China's worst ethnic strife in decades, I returned to this provincial capital of the far western Xinjiang region to find a place more routine than riotous.
Shops that were shuttered now bustled with customers. Restaurants reopened, selling local dishes such as lamb kebab and onion naan. People talked about the World Cup.
Even the iconic People's Theatre, the first cinema in Xinjiang and scene of much violence last July 5, was up and running, screening Hollywood blockbusters such as Toy Story 3 and Robin Hood.
But reminders of the tragedy that took the lives of nearly 200 and shattered the peace were not hard to find after a tumultuous year. Urumqi is still wounded.
Take Madam Zhu, for example. The toilet she cleans is situated strategically at the South Gate, where Han and Uighur quarters meet in this restive city.
Barely after she recovered from the July violence, Madam Zhu was again given an unwanted front-row seat two months later, when thousands of Han Chinese gathered at the South Gate to protest against the government after a spate of mysterious syringe attacks.
'They wanted to smash the Uighur restaurant next to my toilet, but I sat in front of the eatery and told them I would report to the police whoever threw the first stone. They went away,' she recalled.
It would take another two months before the restaurant - called Wangsheng-geli - reopened, halving Madam Zhu's earnings to just 20 yuan (S$4) a day.
Hers is the story of many Urumqi residents in the past year, as tourists avoided the city after the unrest. Taxi drivers reported a 50 per cent drop, while DVD shop owners like Madam Shen Yanxia suffered a 30 per cent drop in business.
Wangshenggeli owner Abdul Meneti said business had 'more or less' recovered, but Han Chinese no longer patronised his restaurant.
While the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) - which replaced Xinjiang hard-liner party secretary Wang Lequan with the more moderate Zhang Chunxian in April - continued to talk of a united happy people, the faultlines are bubbling right beneath the surface.
When I walked into the Uighur quarters and approached cosmetic jewellery salesgirl Muslima to ask for her views about the past year, three of her male friends quickly surrounded me, pushing themselves close. I gave my namecard, introduced myself as a Singapore journalist and smiled - very broadly.
Ms Muslima told me that Han and Uighurs are really still 'one family' and 'good friends', but the company and attention of her male friends - who no doubt saw me as a local Chinese - suggested her observations were either politically correct or hopelessly optimistic.
Her neighbour, fruit seller Yusoff, was less sanguine, although he would say, in a hushed tone and with a wry smile, only that 'it is not the same any more'.
Han Chinese businesswoman Yang Yuzhi, 44, said few Chinese venture into the Uighur areas now. 'I love their naan, but when I bought it some months back, my Han friends scolded me. So these days, I buy it and quickly hide it in my bag. I'm like a thief,' she said.
Her husband Zhang Wangxin, 47, who told me he loves Uighur cuisine too, said that Han-Uighur interactions are now cordial, but distant.
'In the past, a scuffle between races after drinks wouldn't attract much attention. Now we fear it could lead to another riot. So we become very polite to each other and we keep our distance,' he said.
The government is not leaving anything to chance. Military presence here has visibly increased in the past few days in the run-up to today's one-year anniversary.
Patrols by groups of soldiers, carrying assault rifles, 1m-long clubs and shields, could be seen all across the city centre, and Urumqi police officers have reportedly had their leave cancelled between June 20 and July 20.
The police department has also deployed 1,000 more officers to local police stations, and truckloads of paramilitary troops have been arriving, many in black armoured personnel carriers.
The security has been noticeably tight.
Bags are searched at the entry points of all office buildings, hotels and tunnels - I had never had my belongings checked that often in China - and there has been a visible increase in surveillance cameras installed.
The authorities confirmed that 40,000 high-definition closed-circuit TV cameras have been installed across Xinjiang.
And to prevent any mass congregations, Urumqi landmarks like the People's Square, the Big Bazaar mosque and even the circus have conveniently been put under 'renovations' in the past week.
'We have confidence and we totally have the ability to maintain stability in Xinjiang,' chief of the Xinjiang para-military police Qi Baowen was reported by the China News Agency as saying.
But the CCP has also dangled economic carrots along with these security sticks in Xinjiang to keep the peace.
Last month, it pledged to pursue 'leapfrog development' for the region and raise per capita gross domestic product to the national average by 2015.
But this has done little to calm the nerves of residents.
Said DVD shop owner Madam Shen, who came here from southern Fujian province in 1997: 'I hope to go home some day. There are no such troubles in Fujian.'
Even Madam Yang, who is born and bred in Xinjiang, has seen her hopes for the future changed. She now wants her son, who is in a university in north-western Xi'an city, to stay there after graduation instead of coming home.
'The hatred between Uighurs and Han Chinese will take a long time to subside. I don't want my son to be in a place like this,' she said.
Clearly, fear, like the summer heat here, has penetrated deep.
Madam Zhu, who has had a close-up look at last year's violence, said love is no longer in the air. 'To be honest, I'm still a little scared. When I see groups of Uighur men approaching, I get nervous. During the one-year anniversary, I'm scared something might happen again.'
shpeh@sph.com.sg
(With thanks to SPH - StraitsTimes.com)
Note : No reproduction or downloading of this Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) article is allowed in any medium. Permission has to be obtained from SPH.
The Straits Times - Xinjiang's Silk Road past to be revived
05 July 2010
KASHGAR (XINJIANG): With China's central government planning to ramp up growth in Xinjiang, Kashgar has a good chance of catching up, officials and analysts say.
The authorities aim to restore south- west Xinjiang, near the borders of Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Afghanistan, where Kashgar is located, as a transport and trading hub.
'The prosperity of the Silk Road trade will be gradually restored,' said Mr Wang Ning, an economist with the Academy of Social Sciences in Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region.
'For a long time, inadequate infrastructure and transportation hindered the region's development.'
Kashgar is an oasis town east of the Taklamakan Desert and a trading hub along the ancient Silk Road that connected China to Europe. But with the rise of maritime trade in the 15th century, the route and the stops along it were left in the dust.
To open the doors to investment, the Chinese civil aviation authorities have ordered domestic airlines to launch services between Xinjiang and China's larger cities, while negotiating new international flight routes linking the regional capital Urumqi with Russia, Turkey and Dubai.
By 2015, Xinjiang will have six new airports, bringing to 22 the total in the sprawling region covering 1.7 million sq km - almost the total land size of Indonesia - according to the Civil Aviation Administration of China.
The rail network will be increased from 3,600km to more than 12,000km by 2020, an investment of 310 billion yuan (S$64 billion), estimates the Ministry of Railways. Lines linking Xinjiang with Pakistan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan are also in the plan.
Another 120 billion to 140 billion yuan will be spent to overhaul Xinjiang's roads, including 7,200km of highways.
Security observers said economic growth in Xinjiang - especially the southern part, which has a lower gross domestic product and higher unemployment rate - could prevent recurrences of violence such as the riots of last year.
The authorities plan to expand the urban area of Kashgar to 100 sq km with a population of over a million. Kashgar will be a base for textile production, the crude oil industry, agricultural product processing, logistics as well as tourism, according to the plan.
But the drive to modernise the old Silk Road city has seen whole stretches of old Uighur neighbourhoods razed to the ground.
City residents have mixed feelings about the disappearance of the narrow streets and adobe homes once hailed as the best surviving example of Central Asian architecture.
The old buildings are 'what makes Kashgar unique. They are nowhere else in the world', said a Uighur man who gave his name as Memet.
'So it is a shame to tear them down, and replace them with something like that,' he said, gesturing at white-tiled, blue windowed commercial buildings found in every provincial Chinese city.
XINHUA, REUTERS
(With thanks to SPH - StraitsTimes.com)
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The Straits Times - A look back at the unrest
05 July 2010
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
(With thanks to SPH - StraitsTimes.com)
Note : No reproduction or downloading of this Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) article is allowed in any medium. Permission has to be obtained from SPH.