In the short and medium term, China’s rule in Xinjiang and Tibet seems secure: the international community will not challenge a UN Security Council member state. Only its own citizens could do that, but Herzen’s package deal seems to prevent that: just like the Tibetans, the Uighurs elicit not Han solidarity, but a braying for their blood — somewhat understandable, given that ordinary Han in Lhasa and Urumqi were made to pay with their own for China’s misdeeds.
In the longer term, however, the Chinese authorities have every reason to be worried: Xinjiang will grow to be a problem like Tibet.
Indeed, though the UNPO, to which both belong — alongside Assyria and the Buffalo River Dene Nation — has a vaguely Marx Brothers air to it (one expects Freedonia, the mythical country of which Groucho Marx was prime minister, to be on the roster), six member states already have left it to join the UN, and Kosovo, now independent if lacking UN recognition, will eventually follow. Political maps are never carved in stone.
It is therefore safe to assume that not only obscure academics and correspondents, but officials in Beijing as well, are now busy studying the history of the Ghulja uprising and of Osman Batur’s guerillas. Come to think of it: whatever happened to the Poles, whom Russia so successfully put down in 1863?
Konstanty Gebert is an essayist and author of numerous books on Polish and European history.
COPYRIGHT: PROJECT SYNDICATE
RSS