The chorus of smiling Muslims and Han Chinese wore matching yellow polo shirts and appeared on television singing: “We are all part of the same family.”
The TV spot on Wednesday was the latest effort in a relentless propaganda campaign by the Chinese government to end the worst ethnic rioting in the far western Xinjiang region in decades.
However, the message was falling flat on the streets of the dusty jade-trading oasis city of Hotan, where many Muslims were still seething with resentment over the Han, the dominant ethnic group in China. The residents spoke about the long-standing tensions in hushed voices in the Silk Road town’s bustling bazaar, where donkeys pulled carts piled high with melons and women in colorful head scarves sold wheels of flat bread that looked like pizza crust.
One Muslim shopkeeper picked up a hatchet, raised it over his head and lowered it with one quick stroke, before saying: “That’s the best way to deal with the Han Chinese.”
The store owner, who only identified himself as Abdul, scoffed at the TV shows featuring members of his own Turkic minority ethnic group, the Uighurs, gushing about how harmonious and happy most of the people were in the sprawling oil-rich Xinjiang region, three times the size of Texas.
“I don’t believe these people,” the businessman said with a whisper, as he scouted the street for police. “They get paid to say these things. Ninety percent of the Uighurs don’t believe that stuff.”
The media campaign began after July 5 when ethnic rioting killed at least 192 people in Xinjiang’s capital, Urumqi. In the first days after the rioting, state-run media provided extensive reports about Uighurs savagely attacking Han Chinese, while playing down the subsequent Han-led violence. The government was quick to frame the Uighur attacks as an act of terrorism by a tiny minority of violent miscreants, led by the US-based Uighur dissident Rebiya Kadeer.
Kadeer has repeatedly denied the allegations and has condemned the violence.
As thousands of security forces restored order in Urumqi, the government’s propaganda campaign kicked in with TV shows, loudspeaker trucks and red banners. Many slogans warned against the “three evil forces” of terrorism, separatism and extremism. The campaign targeted all of Xinjiang, even Hotan on the edge of the Taklamakan desert — a two-hour flight south of Urumqi.
Hotan is predominantly Uighur. The city is famous for its carpets and a statue of late Communist leader Mao Zedong (毛澤東) shaking hands with a Uighur worker.
On Wednesday, the propaganda continued with local TV showing the Uighur and Han singers swaying together as they sang: “We are all part of the same family.”
There were also several personal profiles of Uighurs who acted heroically during the riots.
One elderly Uighur couple reportedly gave refuge to a Han teenager, allowing him to spend the night in their apartment until his father could pick him up in the morning.
Another Uighur man was an ambulance driver who continued to rescue the wounded, even though he was injured and the windows of his vehicle were smashed.
“I’m a Communist Party member,” the man said. “I should be doing more than the average citizen.”
Swedish campaigner Greta Thunberg was deported from Israel yesterday, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs said, the day after the Israeli navy prevented her and a group of fellow pro-Palestinian activists from sailing to Gaza. Thunberg, 22, was put on a flight to France, the ministry said, adding that she would travel on to Sweden from there. Three other people who had been aboard the charity vessel also agreed to immediate repatriation. Eight other crew members are contesting their deportation order, Israeli rights group Adalah, which advised them, said in a statement. They are being held at a detention center ahead of a
A Chinese scientist was arrested while arriving in the US at Detroit airport, the second case in days involving the alleged smuggling of biological material, authorities said on Monday. The scientist is accused of shipping biological material months ago to staff at a laboratory at the University of Michigan. The FBI, in a court filing, described it as material related to certain worms and requires a government permit. “The guidelines for importing biological materials into the US for research purposes are stringent, but clear, and actions like this undermine the legitimate work of other visiting scholars,” said John Nowak, who leads field
NUCLEAR WARNING: Elites are carelessly fomenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers, perhaps because they have access to shelters, Tulsi Gabbard said After a trip to Hiroshima, US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on Tuesday warned that “warmongers” were pushing the world to the brink of nuclear war. Gabbard did not specify her concerns. Gabbard posted on social media a video of grisly footage from the world’s first nuclear attack and of her staring reflectively at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial. On Aug. 6, 1945, the US obliterated Hiroshima, killing 140,000 people in the explosion and by the end of the year from the uranium bomb’s effects. Three days later, a US plane dropped a plutonium bomb on Nagasaki, leaving abut 74,000 people dead by the
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is to visit Canada next week, his first since relations plummeted after the assassination of a Canadian Sikh separatist in Vancouver, triggering diplomatic expulsions and hitting trade. Analysts hope it is a step toward repairing ties that soured in 2023, after then-Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau pointed the finger at New Delhi’s involvement in murdering Hardeep Singh Nijjar, claims India furiously denied. An invitation extended by new Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney to Modi to attend the G7 leaders summit in Canada offers a chance to “reset” relations, former Indian diplomat Harsh Vardhan Shringla said. “This is a
RSS