by Dan Martin
URUMQI, China: While the world focuses on unrest in Tibet and a resulting Chinese crackdown, Beijing’s leaders also face simmering tension in Xinjiang, where the reservoir of anti-China sentiment seems as deep as the region’s vast oil deposits.
Yusup Rema clicks open an online video glorifying Osama bin Laden and the September 11 attacks, and an impish grin spreads across his face as the images flash on the computer screen before him.
A member of the Muslim ethnic Uighur minority in western China’s Xinjiang region, Rema, 22, huddles with friends in an Internet cafe in the booming regional capital of Urumqi to revel in America’s humiliation.
But his answer is as quick as it is unexpected when asked who his people view as the real enemy.
“China. Definitely!” he barks, shooting a sharp look.
“We would rather see this happen to China than America,” he adds as the cafe’s speakers blare a western rock tune with the jarring refrain, “Why can’t we all live as one?”
Although extreme, Rema’s views are not uncommon among his fellows Uighurs, a Central Asian people whose language is related to Turkish and who eagerly denounced Chinese control to an AFP journalist.
Their reasons are strikingly similar to those often cited for fuelling Tibet’s unrest: an influx of Han Chinese settlers, resulting fears for indigenous language and culture, accusations of religious oppression and general Chinese heavy-handedness.
“It not only could happen here — it will happen if China keeps sending its people here,” said Abdil Musa, a 28-year-old Urumqi shop owner, referring to the Tibetan unrest.
“Maybe not tomorrow or five years from now or 20 years from now, but it will happen.”
The potential for trouble was underlined last month when about 1,000 residents of the southern Xinjiang town of Khotan clashed with police.
An exiled Uighur group said the violence was triggered by the death of a Uighur businessman in police custody and local restrictions on the wearing of headscarves by women.
Local authorities termed it a “rebellion”, but Uighur exiles said it illustrated the deep resentment in the area.
Chinese control over Xinjiang had been tenuous or non-existent for centuries until the late imperial period, intensifying after Communist China’s 1949 founding.
Resentment has persisted despite a generally rising standard of living in Xinjiang amid Chinese investment and the Han migration.
According to government figures, Xinjiang’s economy doubled between 1999 and 2007 to 340 billion yuan (about 50 billion dollars).
The growth has fostered an increasingly well-off Uighur middle class, said James Millward, a history professor at Georgetown University in the United States and author of a history of the region.
“Nevertheless, many people believe that Uighurs have not benefited as much from development as have Han,” he said.
“Where the economic gap apparently corresponds to ethnic differences, as in Xinjiang or Tibet, the situation is especially sensitive.”
In the 2,000-year-old Silk Road town of Kashgar near the Tajik border, modern streets and even a Chinese-dominated shopping mall have been carved into ancient Uighur neighbourhoods of mud and brick dwellings, in a stark illustration of the Chinese inroads being made.
“A lot of money has come to Xinjiang but who benefits the most? The Chinese,” said a carpet seller named Musa, one of many Uighurs who complained of discrimination in jobs and business.
In March, Xinjiang officials announced that a pair of terrorist plots had been foiled.
Uighurs told AFP the allegations were a sham aimed at justifying tighter control, which they say has indeed occurred, raising tensions further in the region.
Urumqi authorities last month were forced to deny rumours that a pair of city buses had been bombed in a terror attack, saying people spreading the rumours had been arrested.
Police surveillance and patrols appear to have been stepped up, many Uighurs and Chinese said, as the region prepares for the arrival of the trouble-plagued Olympic torch relay next month.
“It’s a little tense now,” said Li Rong, an Urumqi cab driver.
Like many Han Chinese interviewed by AFP, he expressed puzzlement and anger at the Uighur resentment and said Han people had been physically attacked recently in Uighur neighbourhoods.
“(Some Uighurs) spread their malicious lies but it is no use. China is one single country and Xinjiang is part of it,” he said.
