Mick Hartley

After the recent execution of nine prisoners accused of violent crimes in the Urumqi riots in July – the majority of whom, it seems, were Uighurs –  Amnesty fear there may be more executions to come.

The Sunday Times' Michael Sheridan went to Urumqi to investigate:

Since the clashes ended on July 7, the Chinese and the Uighurs have traded acrimonious claims about what happened and how many died.

The government said that of the 197 people killed, only 46 were Uighurs. A local official put the number of rioters shot dead by the security forces at just 12.

Exiles, however, alleged that hundreds of Uighur men had died and thousands had disappeared after a police and army sweep through the rough district of Sai Ma Chang.

Last week The Sunday Times conducted dozens of interviews in an investigation to discover what had happened. We found a city with soldiers on every street, full of rumours and fear, cut off from communications with the outside world. But some facts became clear…. […]

There is no doubt that harsh punishments were thought necessary to repress rebellion and placate the dominant Han Chinese, who enjoy a privileged status and whose fury at becoming victims has rebounded on the regime.

The Chinese government rushed to blame a “plot” led by the most famous Uighur exile, a businesswoman named Rebiya Kadeer who, in this script, plays the role of villain usually reserved for the Dalai Lama by the Chinese. Two local government officials, both Uighurs, laughed at the claim of a conspiracy, however. “I can’t believe this,” said one.

It is, of course, easier to blame a plot than to admit that the hardline policy towards China’s minorities is a failure.Yet that is the conclusion of an article published in September by the Xinjiang Social Research Review, a journal restricted to elite officials and academics.

It revealed that 97% of Chinese officials who come from minorities, such as Uighurs, Tibetans and Mongolians, feel “unease in their hearts” about the gap in wealth and power.

The direst finding of all was that 12% of these trusted officials believed the policy would, in the end, lead to the breakup of China.

[As I write it's still early days in the comments section, but it's astonishing, to me, how readily people excuse China's brutal colonialism:

China has made its fair share of serious mistakes, that's for sure. But so has every other superpower…,

China is a multinational country. Some westerner politians just want to repress the development of China.

And so on]