The unrest in Urumqi and the massacre of Muslim Uighurs once again highlighted the instability of Chinese society and the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) cruel, merciless nature.
At 11pm on June 25 in Shaoguan City in Guangdong Province, a fight broke out between Han Chinese workers and Uighur workers over rumors that a Uighur had raped a Han Chinese girl at a factory. The result was that two Uighur workers were killed and 118 people injured, 79 of them Uighurs. Armed police did not intervene until after 4am. With the CCP’s ability to stop protests even before they get started, this was a very slow response, which in effect meant the party approved the beating of Uighurs. The Chinese government’s long-term nationalistic propaganda aimed at giving the Uighurs a bad name has resulted in most Han Chinese viewing Uighurs as suicide bombers, splittists and terrorists.
After the incident, Chinese authorities did not release any news on how they intended to stop the ethnic conflict. When a group of Uighurs protested in Xinjiang’s capital Urumqi last Sunday, it turned into a bloodbath. How this peaceful protest turned into conflict remains a mystery because the CCP had blocked all information in and out of the area, including telephones and the Internet. News reports at around midnight on July 5 said only two people died, but the morning after, officials announced that the death toll had jumped to 140 with 828 injured. Not long after the second set of figures were released, Beijing announced that the death toll had increased to 156 and yesterday raised it to 186 — with many believing that the real figure is much higher.
Thanks to the authorities rapidly “calming the unrest,” many people were killed that night and their corpses quickly disposed of, with thousands more arrested. Reporters from outside of Xinjiang were then allowed into designated areas for interviews, while the government laid all the blame on the president of the World Uighur Congress Rebiya Kadeer, a 62-year-old Uighur businesswoman who lives in exile in the US. The surprising effectiveness of the Chinese government’s actions imply that the incident was carefully planned in advance to draw the Uighurs out and give them a beating without leaving any traces behind.
The Uighurs have been wrongly accused and even with reporters from other areas and abroad arriving on pre-arranged tours, there were brave people who — like the monks last year in Tibet — directly exposed the CCP’s tricks and violent acts, saying troops drove directly at protesters in armored cars and raided the houses of innocent Uighur civilians taking away all able-bodied men.
This is the second mass slaughter conducted by the CCP after the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989. Is this how Beijing has “improved its human rights” record as President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has claimed? Because China is a powerful country, the international community has been relatively silent in its response. The UN should step forward and investigate these racially motivated killings. While an investigation team may be deceived by the CCP, at least it would force the CCP to restrain itself somewhat.
If the CCP really views Uighurs as Chinese, blood should prove to be thicker than water and the CCP should stop the killings. If however, the CCP views the Uighurs as some foreign tribe, they should be given the right to self-determination.
The reaction of the Taiwanese media was slow and television talk shows did not even touch on the issue on Monday evening. Have they forgotten all about the 228 incident? Last year and this year, the 228 Memorial Foundation held international symposiums on Xinjiang and invited Kadeer to provide a written statement. This year, I submitted a report on the latest state of human rights in Xinjiang and said Chinese President Hu Jintao’s (胡錦濤) concept of hexie (和諧), or harmony, is not applicable to the Uighurs and that the current secretary of the CCP in Xinjiang, Wang Lequan (王樂泉) and his empire have deliberately stirred up tensions to increase conflict. Judging by the recent developments, I was right.
Taiwanese should open their eyes and see what is happening. If Taiwan is swallowed up by China because of Ma’s surrender to the CCP, the Han Chinese — who long have been brainwashed into viewing Taiwan with hostility — will sooner or later be manipulated to kill Taiwanese and another 228 incident will become a reality.
Paul Lin is a political commentator.
TRANSLATED BY DREW CAMERON
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has long been expansionist and contemptuous of international law. Under Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), the CCP regime has become more despotic, coercive and punitive. As part of its strategy to annex Taiwan, Beijing has sought to erase the island democracy’s international identity by bribing countries to sever diplomatic ties with Taipei. One by one, China has peeled away Taiwan’s remaining diplomatic partners, leaving just 12 countries (mostly small developing states) and the Vatican recognizing Taiwan as a sovereign nation. Taiwan’s formal international space has shrunk dramatically. Yet even as Beijing has scored diplomatic successes, its overreach
For Taiwan, the ongoing US and Israeli strikes on Iranian targets are a warning signal: When a major power stretches the boundaries of self-defense, smaller states feel the tremors first. Taiwan’s security rests on two pillars: US deterrence and the credibility of international law. The first deters coercion from China. The second legitimizes Taiwan’s place in the international community. One is material. The other is moral. Both are indispensable. Under the UN Charter, force is lawful only in response to an armed attack or with UN Security Council authorization. Even pre-emptive self-defense — long debated — requires a demonstrably imminent
Since being re-elected, US President Donald Trump has consistently taken concrete action to counter China and to safeguard the interests of the US and other democratic nations. The attacks on Iran, the earlier capture of deposed of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro and efforts to remove Chinese influence from the Panama Canal all demonstrate that, as tensions with Beijing intensify, Washington has adopted a hardline stance aimed at weakening its power. Iran and Venezuela are important allies and major oil suppliers of China, and the US has effectively decapitated both. The US has continuously strengthened its military presence in the Philippines. Japanese Prime
After “Operation Absolute Resolve” to capture former Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro, the US joined Israel on Saturday last week in launching “Operation Epic Fury” to remove Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his theocratic regime leadership team. The two blitzes are widely believed to be a prelude to US President Donald Trump changing the geopolitical landscape in the Indo-Pacific region, targeting China’s rise. In the National Security Strategic report released in December last year, the Trump administration made it clear that the US would focus on “restoring American pre-eminence in the Western hemisphere,” and “competing with China economically and militarily
RSS