There were articles on it inside the Times and the Post today so I assume most people have heard of it by now, but Rebiya Kadeer, a leading Uyghur businesswoman, civic leader, and prominent political prisoner for the past five years, has been released from China in advance of Condoleeza Rice's visit to the region. No one has missed the fact that the White House has returned the gesture by dropping a resolution against China's human rights practices in the UN Human Rights Commission, something groups like Human Rights Watch have decried as rewarding China's tendency to release a small handful of high-profile prisoners at moments of greater public scrutiny in order to gain rights concessions from the US. While undoubtedly true, her release still comes as a relief to her family, human rights advocates, and the Uyghur community.

The "crimes" for which Kadeer was imprisoned, as has been widely reported, consisted of mailing Xinjiang newspaper clippings to her husband Sidik Rouzi, an activist in the Uyghur expatriate community living in the United States and working for the US Radio Free Asia service. Dave reports from Under the Tenement Palm that the Han gossip mills in Xinjiang are suggesting much worse about her (without any supporting evidence to the effect, of course), and that no mention has been made of her release at all in Xinjiang itself, reinforcing the notion that this was intended primarily for foreign consumption rather than telegraphing any sort of shift in policies towards the Uyghurs (you can read more about those policies in my paper on the subject from last fall). He promises further updates as knowledge of Kadeer's release becomes more widespread in the community; upon her arrival in Chicago Kadeer was quoted speaking to Radio Free Asia sounding fairly upbeat for someone who's just suffered the past five years in a PRC prison:

"I can smile at my people. I can work for my people, and I can work for the entire Uyghur nation. I can shout out 'Greetings' to my people. For the rest of my life, I will create my own history.”

I'll be curious to know what kind of role Kadeer plays in Uyghur diaspora politics now that she's been freed, but for now it's worth some celebration.

In other Uyghur news, the US is having trouble finding somewhere willing to take captured Uyghur militants due to be released from Guantanamo, since Europe, looking to improve its ties to China, doesn't want to take them. Wu'er Kaixi, probably the second most famous individual Uyghur dissident after Ms. Kadeer (he was a student leader during the Tianenmen protests) takes the Europeans to task for their eagerness to conduct arms sales in the (unfortunately subscription-only) Asian Wall Street Journal.

I'm taking a break from hacking away at my Uyghur paper in order to cut it down to the six pages max requested by the New America Foundation for its application writing sample — a painful task if there ever was one, considering the original version runs in at 26 in full — in order to note the release of the State Department's Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2004. Many of its findings confirm the continuation of policies previously detailed in my paper; not too suprisingly, the situation is not good for Xinjiang's Uyghurs.   more »

Revised December 6, primarily illustrations and format

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Uyghur Separatism and the Politics of Islam in China's Western Frontier

Colin Cookman

From its earliest inception, the modern Islamic terrorist movement has been transnational and pan-Islamic in character. Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network had its origins in the corps of volunteers known as the "Islamic Internationale", or "Arab Afghans": young men hailing from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and the whole breadth of the Middle East who flocked under the banner of jihad to the mountains of the Hindu Kush and the training camps of Peshawar. There they gathered to wage guerrilla war in the name of Islam against the godless Soviet Communists, while the American government looked on with grim satisfaction as it covertly supported efforts to bleed the Russians in their own "Soviet Vietnam".

Following the United States' campaign to topple the Taliban and disrupt Al Qaeda's base in Afghanistan in the aftermath of the September 11th attacks, news reports tracking captured fighters and key figures in the Al Qaeda leadership regularly reiterated, either explicitly or through non-commental labels of ethnicity, the multinational character of the terrorists' network: U.S. President George W. Bush's "coalition of the willing" was facing off against a stateless, loosely affiliated coalition of the dispossessed, the globally marginalized, and the violently revivalist. Although the biggest names and largest percentage of captured Al Qaeda members continue to be primarily of Middle Eastern or South Asian origin, every now and then reports mention other, more exotic figures in the mix of captured and killed: Chechens from the Caucuses, Uzbeks, Filipino Moros, and, infrequently but not unnoticed, Uyghurs from China's Xinjiang province.

What motivates those small handfuls of anonymous young men to cross the Pamir mountains into Afghanistan and fight alongside the militants of Al Qaeda and the Taliban? In order to attempt an answer, we must examine the origins of Xinjiang's oasis peoples, the Uyghurs, and their aspirations for nationhood; the nature of Chinese rule over them today, and its effects on those aspirations; and the extent to which militant Islamic revivalism may have infiltrated China's western hinterlands, and what implications that holds for the Uyghurs and their region. This paper argues that China's discriminatory policies have, more than any other factor, served to alienate the Uyghurs and increase the appeal of militant Islam, in effect making Beijing's worst fears a reality.
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Major provincial conflicts involving Muslims and majority ethnic or religious groups are hitting the news once again in Asia. This time in China. Martial law has been imposed in a rural portion of the central province of Henan after four days of ethnic clashes.

The fighting was between farmers of the country's ethnic Han majority and the Muslim Hui minority living in neighboring villages, as well as thousands of military police sent in to restore order. It appeared to be among the worst incidents of ethnic violence known to have taken place in China in recent years.

The latest unrest followed a clash this summer in a nearby village in which police fired rubber bullets at farmers protesting land seizures and anti-government rioting two weeks ago in the western city of Chongqing. The Henan fighting served as a stark reminder of the varied tensions tearing at this vast nation as it undergoes rapid social and economic change.

The situation in Thailand is becoming increasingly tense. As David Fulbrook writes in the Asia Times:

Thailand's own September 11 may be moving closer, accelerated by the government's tough but inept policy that is alienating moderate Muslims in the deep south, possibly opening the door to foreign hands. A brutal response by disgruntled Muslims to last week's carnage [the death of 78 Muslims detained in connection with riots] would severely test relations with Buddhist Thailand and Muslim-majority neighbors Indonesia and Malaysia, potentially fracturing the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

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