China’s Other Ethnic Unrest

Xinjiang and Tibet have much in common. Their indigenous populations haven’t benefitted from economic development in their home territories and resent the flood of recently-arrived ethnic Han Chinese who have. Xinjiang’s Nobel Laureate Rebiya Kadeer is in exile, as is Tibet’s Dalai Lama. Some Tibetans ask for “autonomous” status within China, but Xinjiang’s Uygur (also spelled “Uighur;” pronounced wee-gur) people have not found this designation helpful in determining their own destiny. Tibetan unrest is front-page news. Protests by China’s Uygars have been forcefully suppressed, but unless you are in Human Rights Watch you probably haven’t heard of it. Why not?

No Hollywood stars make films about the Uygar way of life; Uygar religious institutions aren’t supported by American and European tourists. Xinjiang is known for oil, not Himalayan scenery. The Uygar do not have thousands of Western religious converts; they are Moslem. The result: scant media coverage of Uygur unrest in China.

Imagine if the Dalai Lama was sent to prison for mailing news clippings to a relative outside of the country. It happened to Rebiya Kadeer; her sons were also imprisoned for sending texts over the Internet. Young Uygur dissidents only obtain international attention by seizing aircraft and similar extreme acts. Young dissendent Tibetan monks (even “unofficial” ones) have access to Western opinion though press, tourists, and hundreds of thousands of Westerners who identify themselves as Tibetan Buddhists.

Tibetan government chief Qiangba Puncog is outranked by China’s chief official for Tibet, Zhang Qingli, who served in Xinjiang and was known for his tough line there. Suppression of current Tibetan unrest may start to look like the suppression of the Uygurs. The difference will be Western eyes and sympathy.