Ethnic Unrest In China Continues - with Fall-Out

It doesn't take a genius to predict that we haven't heard the last of this, and the inept response of the Han Chinese majority is only adding fuel to the fire. Darlings, trust me, firing a party underling to cover up for the gross incompetence of a politburo member isn't going to cut it in this situation in the long run (and it may not be as long as they think). China a Ousts Top City Official in Wake of Unrest By KEITH BRADSHER and XIYUN YANG Published: September 5, 2009 HONG KONG — The top Communist official in Urumqi in western China was dismissed on Saturday as a large deployment of the military police appeared to have brought a measure of peace to the city after two days of large street protests. Li Zhi, the party secretary of Urumqi, lost his post, the official Xinhua news agency reported on Saturday evening. He became the most senior person to be removed since ethnic tensions erupted there in rioting in July. Beijing officials also sent to Urumqi a special medical inspection unit from the People’s Liberation Army to investigate reports that people had been stabbed with needles. It is somewhat unusual for China’s leaders to replace a senior local official so quickly after protests — in this case, while large deployments of armed police officers are still blocking intersections in Urumqi and most shops are still closed. The Beijing leadership has often sought to avoid giving the impression of giving in to public pressure. The removal of Mr. Li “shows that Xinjiang is viewed as a strategic region where there cannot be the kind of social protests we have seen in recent days,” said Nicholas Bequelin, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch. The latest protests were notable for including large crowds of people who specifically called on Friday for the removal of Mr. Li’s boss, Wang Lequan, the powerful party secretary of restive Xinjiang region, of which Urumqi is the capital. Mr. Wang, a member of the Politburo believed to be a close ally of President Hu Jintao, has run the nominally autonomous region for 15 years and is famous within China for taking a hard line toward minorities. “They want to protect Wang Lequan, because firing a Politburo member would send a message they do not want to send,” namely that hard-line policies toward ethnic minorities can be questioned, said Li Cheng, the research director of the Brookings Institution’s China Center. Rest of article. I think the unintentionally funniest line in this article is the one about the special medical inspection unit! And just what are they going to say - even if they uncover the truth that probably 99.9% of the people who were reportedly pricked with needles weren't pricked by needles at all! You can be sure they aren't going to tell the truth, even if they wish to. Urumchi is, of course, famous for red-haired, blue-eyed mummies found buried in the desert outside the city proper in the 1970's, but rumored to have existed for thousands of years before then. NOVA did a special on them a few years back, you can probably find it online. Western scholars have yet to receive free access to the mummies, which are maintained under, I am given to believe, not very good conditions to their conservation. The mummies are a delicate subject in modern China as they predate the Han Chinese presence in northwestern China by a couple thousand years at least, and maybe more. I understand the oldest Urumchi mummy burials are some 4,000 years old. The Han Chinese did not establish a presence in the area until the Han Dynasty c. 220 BCE - 220 CE, with the establishment of the gate-way city of Dunshuang on the Silk Road. And, to be fair, not all of the mummies uncovered had red hair and blue eyes, but I believe it has been pretty much established by other archaeological evidence that many of the Urumchi mummies are related to people who originated far to the west and may have migrated east in one or more waves over a couple thousand years, beginning in 2500 BCE or so. Something the Han Chinese Communist rulers do not wish to acknowledge. Some of the mummies were buried in woven plaids which I understand are remarkably similar to the clan plaids worn by the people who eventually settled in northern Scotland. Some of the mummies (female and male), possibly shamans, tentatively identified as such because of the grave goods with which they were buried, were uncovered wearing tall pointed hats made of felt - similar to how we depict "witches" in the west today (think of the hat worn by the Wicked Witch of the West in the 1939 movie classic "The Wizard of Oz") - in addition to small woven cloth or felt bags filled with medicinal herbs (including cannabis) and herbs prized for their magical qualities, as well as other talismans. If my memory serves, a few of the 'shamans' were buried with colored throwing sticks -- perhaps for use in divination? The photo above is an example of one of the tall felt hats recovered from a mummy burial. Rather reminds me of that talking hat in the Harry Potter movies... So, the history of non-Han people in the Tarim Basin area is long-standing with links back to peoples of non-Han Chinese stock is ancient. An informative article, with several photographs, including the heart-breaking image of the red-haired infant, gives a good overview.

Urumchi Back in the News in a Bad Way

From The New York Times: China Reports Suspected Terrorist Activity By JIM YARDLEY and JAKE HOOKER Published: March 10, 2008 BEIJING — A Chinese passenger jet that departed Friday morning from the heavily Muslim region of Xinjiang was forced to make an emergency landing after the flight crew apprehended at least two passengers who authorities say intended to sabotage the airplane, state media reported Sunday. A senior Chinese official also said Sunday that a police raid last January against a group in Xinjiang suspected of planning terrorist acts uncovered proof that the group was plotting an attack on the coming Beijing Olympics. Terrorism is usually not a significant threat in China, where the authoritarian government takes an unflinching approach toward maintaining social stability. But Chinese security officials are very concerned that terrorism poses a serious risk as Beijing prepares to be the host for the Olympic Games in August. The airplane incident came in the same week that a man armed with dynamite hijacked a private bus filled with Australian tour operators who were sightseeing in the city of Xian. A police sniper later killed the man, and few details have been released about him or his motives. None of the hostages were wounded. On Sunday, Wang Lequan, the Communist Party chief in Xinjiang, took a hard stance, saying that China would strike the “three evil forces” of terrorists, separatists and extremists. “We are prepared to strike them when the evil forces are planning their activities,” Mr. Wang said, according to Xinhua, the country’s state-run news service. Xinjiang is a vast northwestern region that is home to China’s population of 8.3 million Uighurs, a Turkic Muslim group with linguistic and cultural ties to neighboring central Asia. The region has long had tensions over cultural aspirations by some Uighurs for an independent state. In the past, China has blamed Uighur separatists for terrorist actions. Human rights groups have accused China of overstating any terrorist threat as a pretext for cracking down on the Uighurs. In January, the Chinese police attacked what the authorities said was a terrorist gang in Urumqi, the capital city of Xinjiang. Two people were killed and 15 others arrested. Initially, few details were released about the raid. On Sunday, Mr. Wang said investigators had found knives, axes and books about terrorism in the raid. He said other materials suggested the group planned an Olympic attack, although no specifics were provided. “Obviously, the gang had planned an attack targeting the Olympics,” Mr. Wang told Xinhua in an interview conducted during the meeting of the National People’s Congress, the country’s Communist Party-controlled legislature. [Really? Based on the evidence of "knives, axes and books about 'terrorism' supposedly discovered in this 'raid?' The only 'gang' here is one described by a terrorist Communist government, hardly spot-free and not above planting evidence or just making up things to feed to the government-controlled media.] Mr. Wang said the gang had ties to the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, a separatist group designated as a terrorist organization by the United States and the United Nations. The thwarted airplane attack was also disclosed on Sunday. Nur Bekri, chairman of the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region government, told state media that “some people were attempting to create an air disaster.” The incident occurred on a China Southern flight that departed Friday morning at 10:35 from Urumqi, heading for Beijing. But the plane was diverted to the city of Lanzhou after an onboard incident. A China Southern employee in Lanzhou confirmed that the airplane had been diverted to Lanzhou. The employee said the airport was initially told that the diversion was necessary because of “traffic control” problems. State media provided only a few details, noting that “the attackers were stopped in time by the air police, and all the passengers and crew members are safe.” Mr. Bekri suggested that more than one person was involved but declined to provide specifics, telling Xinhua that the authorities are investigating “who the attackers are, where they are from and what’s their background. “But we can be sure that this was a case intending to create an air crash,” he said. A China Southern employee at the Lanzhou airport confirmed that the airplane had been diverted to the city and that the incident had been handled by public security officers. The diversion was initially described as necessary because of “traffic control,” the employee said. One person with information about the incident said a Uighur woman apparently smuggled three containers of gasoline onto the flight. [How?] The person said that she took the containers into the bathroom and was later apprehended by members of the flight crew. That account seemed consistent with a Friday posting on a Chinese Internet chat room. The messages discussed a landing in Lanzhou and said that it had been discovered in mid-flight that people had brought gasoline on board and that four Uighurs had been led away after the plane landed. They appeared to be a first-hand account from a passenger sending messages via a hand-held device from the Lanzhou airport, but that could not be confirmed. nor could the identity of the person sending the messages. Zhang Jing contributed research.