Xinjiang anti-Han violence

Discussion in 'World Events' started by Xylene, Jul 6, 2009.

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  1. Xylene Valued Senior Member

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    Up until now, over the last couple of days, 156 people have been killed and over 800 injured in anti-Han ethnic violence in the Xinjiang-Uigher region of north-western China. The Uighers are Moslem, and are the easternmost section of the Turkic race. Trouble between the Uighers and the Han Chinese migrants is fairly common, but this is the worst outbreak of violence in decades.
     
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  3. PieAreSquared Woo is resistant to reason Registered Senior Member

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  5. Baron Max Registered Senior Member

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    Yeah, and apparently can't get along even amongst themselves! Muslim-on-Muslim violence is at least as great, if not greater, than Muslim-on-others violence.

    Baron Max
     
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  7. Michael 歌舞伎 Valued Senior Member

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    Well, the putative "Han" Chinese are colonizing this area of China. There's a lot of Chinese and they need a place to live. I was thinking the other day, what if China had never had the one child policy? Maybe most of Afghanistan would be Han Chinese too? Well, according to some people it's a sign of a vibrant and strong country - to have billions upon billions of children. Well children needs a place to live.
     
  8. pjdude1219 The biscuit has risen Valued Senior Member

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    could someone please explain to me how these chinese are Han the only han i know is the han dynasty but that was a long time ago
     
  9. quadraphonics Bloodthirsty Barbarian Valued Senior Member

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    Yeah, that's where the term comes from. The Han are the majority ethnic group in China - something like 92% of the population. So much so that when outsiders refer to the "Chinese," what they usually mean is the Han (and not the Uighur, Tibetans, etc.)
     
  10. Xylene Valued Senior Member

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    Too true...look at the BS that's going on in Somalia...

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  11. DiamondHearts Registered Senior Member

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    Turkestan was an independent nation before the conquest of their lands by Communist China. The Chinese have for the last 150 years attempted to marginalize the ethnic Uygur Turkish population of Xianjiang (New Frontier in Chinese, their name for the region). Uygur culture was seen as subversive and Islam was officially banned. Only recently are Uygurs allowed to even pray in their mosques, Han Chinese informants have constantly created problems for Uygur leaders and Arabic was banned in the region by the Chinese for more than 100 years. The Chinese have further exasperated the situation by building a policy of immigration of Han Chinese and preferring them to the native Uygurs, in their old lands. Nuclear weapons are test fired in their lands, resulting in birth defects among Uygur villagers. Oil is also pumped out of their land, with little to no share of it going to help the Uygur people. The world tends to focus on the Chinese occupation of Tibet, but oftentimes Uygur freedom movement is ignored because there is a general hatred and racism for Muslims and Turks in the West.

    The situation in Somalia is the result of outright Western support of Ethiopian invasion of Somali land, illegal fishing and waste dumping in Somalia, as well as general poverty due to Western complicity in keeping Somalia disunited and under control of Western-backed warlords and Ethiopian occupiers.

    Backlash against foreign armies or governments generally results from genuine grievances in the areas of self-determination, economic exploitation, and military occupation.
     
  12. Michael 歌舞伎 Valued Senior Member

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    It's not just people in the "West" that think of the Tibetans. It's also people in the East. Even in a Muslim nation like Indonesia you'll find more people concerned with Tibetans than with Uygurs. And the sole reason for that is the Dali Lama. The Uygur really don't have an equivalent person (although there is a woman whose sometimes is on the news). I like the Uygur, I wish they had more freedoms, they are the only people that I can think of that have Female Imam's outside of New York. So they're quite liberal. Probably a side-effect from Communist core values of equality between men and women.

    Any which way it goes all of that area will be dominated by Han Chinese. It's simply a population thing. There are 100s of trillions of Han Chinese born every nano-second (a good thing according to some) and they need Uygur lands to accommodate all those Han babies.

    Interestingly I am great friends with a "Han" Chinese that also happens to have a grandfather from Xianjiang. Apparently he had 14 wives. Anyway, after the Nanjing massacre that family moved to Nanjing where he lives now.
     
  13. DiamondHearts Registered Senior Member

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    It depends on where you live. Pakistan has one of the largest Uygur diaspora communities in the world, in part because studying Islamic education is forbidden in China. In some villages in Pakistan on the border with China and in the Punjab and Kashmir regions, Uygurs make up the majority. Several other nations such as Kazakhstan, Turkey, and Kyrgyzstan have substantial Uygur populations as well.

    About Indonesia, You obviously don't know what you are talking about at all. I have never heard of any Uygur who has 14 wives, sounds fabricated considering your past statements. Most of them follow monogamy. Uygur population is strictly controlled by the Chinese state. Chinese authorities have at occasions been found to sterilize Uygur women, so Uygurs are often subject to more vigorous population control than any other minority in China.

    Lack of Western reporting in the regions where Muslims are being oppressed and subjugated revealed a deep moral void in the Western media and in the Western governments. The statements in this thread, and furthermore on this forum, reveal the inhumanity of some individuals who use lies and vilification of others to justify their own inherent biases.
     
  14. Xylene Valued Senior Member

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    The thing that worries me is that if the Chinese army/police/security services go into Xinjiang and kick some Uigher arse to get even, the Uigher folks have a vast Turkic and moslem population, with access to plenty of guns, to help them in any head-to-head scrap-out with the Han majority.
     
  15. pjdude1219 The biscuit has risen Valued Senior Member

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    Um the major ethnic group in china is well chinese.
     
  16. Michael 歌舞伎 Valued Senior Member

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    I didn't say his grandfather was Uygur, I said his grandfather lived there 80, maybe 100 years ago. It was common for Chinese to take many wives back then.

    Most Indonesians living in Indonesia will know of the Dali Lama and most will not know much about Uygur.

    It should be noted that the Uygur are Chinese.
     
  17. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    Anti-Han? That's new

    I have to note I'm impressed at the notion of "anti-Han" violence. It is very interesting to me how state news services without general credibility abroad suddenly become reputable when they say bad things about Muslims.

    The counterclaim is that the violence began when the Uighurs failed to call off their World Congress event in Urumqi, which brought the police crashing down on them.

    At this time, I give more credibility to the Uighurs than the state on the grounds that there is nothing unexpected about the government line, the government has invoked outside agitators as the cause, and if it comes down to flipping a coin, I'll take the eyewitness accounts suggesting state-induced violence over the official statements of the Chinese government almost any day.
    ______________________

    Notes:

    British Broadcasting Corporation. "Scores killed in China protests". July 6, 2009. BBC News Online. July 7, 2009. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8135203.stm
     
  18. Renrue Someone Registered Senior Member

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    Ah, but the PRC is actually in fact doing something different with this incident unlike their past unrest. They expanded foreign press access into Xinjiang (allowing them to even tape marching troops) rather than restrict it like they did with Tibet. The difference may be in fact that they're stating they had nothing to do with the incident.

    I do believe most of the Uighur eyewitnesses are saying Han are the agitators. On the other side, the Han state the Uighur started the riots that attacked Han shops and killed some of them. It isn't so much of people versus state, as it is two ethnic groups. Though, there are accusations of the government overlooking the violence against the Uighurs and that they've arrested many more Uighur men.
     
  19. Buffalo Roam Registered Senior Member

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    Really pj, do some research;

    Ethnic groups

    91.6% Han, 1.30% Zhuang, 0.86% Manchu, 0.79% Uyghur, 0.79% Hui, 0.72% Miao, 0.65% Yi, 0.62% Tujia, 0.47% Mongol, 0.44% Tibetan, 0.26% Buyei, 0.15% Korean, 1.05% other

    Everyone who lives in China is Chinese, but not every Chinese is Han.
     
  20. Xylene Valued Senior Member

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    Just wondering, aprapos to this thread, what would happen if the whole of Islam went up against the Chinese...who would win? It's easy to say the Chinese would win the initial part of the war by nuking all the major cities; but in Islamic history geurilla activity is the norm. The quick raid and retreat is the preferred method of fighting, as history and the present show. So China could congratulate itself too soon if they were to take on Islam in a major war.
     
  21. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    The Chinese government has little credibility regarding its handling of the Uighurs - regardless of how open they are about recent events, they have been concealing a long history of abuse and repression leading up to the current situation.

    For one example: apparently the Chinese used the region the Uighurs live in to develop their atomic bomb, with dozens of open air test detonations and no protection from fallout or remediation of effects. The only evidence-based and carefully calculated estimates of the consequences I have seen include almost 200,000 people directly killed by fallout, with longer term rates of disease and disability and genetic effects proportionately bad.

    I have little sympathy for fundie religions and their adherents, but the Uighurs have real and serious complaints against the Chinese government.
     
  22. Renrue Someone Registered Senior Member

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    I'm not trying to be an apologist for the PRC. In regards to Tiassa's post, I was referring that it wasn't so much of a people vs government situation as it was in Tibet. By the openness, it is apparent that they know there's little way to link the violence to the government.

    From what is known, it started with violence at a toy factory. It becomes an ethnic group vs ethnic group in credible testimony. If you interview the Uighurs, they'll blame the Han. And it's vice versa if you question the Han. So who can you trust then?
     
    Last edited: Jul 14, 2009
  23. retaxis Registered Member

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    from what i can tell from both Eastern and Western news services it is untrue that Uyghurs are not allowed to practice Islam. In fact majority of muslims in China are in fact Han Chinese also known as Hui and many of them study islamic education and become imams, sheiks and etc.

    And xylene, your what if questions are really quite childish. Those who would win if...They are only worth answering if there is a 10% chance of that happening.
     
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