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Renaissance Thespian
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Xin Jiang Riot
July 10, 2009 - 03:33 PM
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Riot has erupted between Han Chinese and Uighurs. 156 people have died of the violence. What's your opinion over this issue?
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prieten47
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Re: Xin Jiang Riot
July 17, 2009 - 09:08 PM
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This situation seems very similar to the one in Tibet. The ethnic Chinese are expanding into regions with established different ethnic groups and these groups are feeling squeezed out oppressed. It can't be denied the Chinese have brought modernity and development to these regions, but this doesn't justify Chinese dominance over these regions. Race relations are always sensitive when different ethnic groups bump into each other. A bit more sensitivity on the part of the Chinese is called for, but sensitivity isn't the Chinese Communists strength. They take what they want and then resort to the iron fist when the locals get upset.
The lack of democracy is what is hurting China the most.
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Saladin
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Re: Xin Jiang/East Turkestan Riot
July 20, 2009 - 05:31 PM
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Xinjiang riot explodes myth of 'harmonious society': analysts
BEIJING (AFP) - In a few brief hours of ethnic carnage on a summer's evening in China's restive Xinjiang region, the political elite's pet concept of "harmonious society" was shattered, according to analysts.
Hu Jintao, chief of the ruling Communist Party, first launched the concept in 2004 as a rallying cry that could motivate every citizen of the people's republic to help build a peaceful and prosperous society.
It was meant as a formula that could unite the giant nation of 1.3 billion, narrowing the divides among the 56 ethnic groups and bridging the yawning gaps between rich and poor, city and countryside, east coast and interior.
"He has largely failed at this level. It's an ideal that appears more distant today," said Jean-Pierre Cabestan, a China expert at Hong Kong's Baptist University, following unrest in Xinjiang's capital, Urumqi.
"We will have to see if this slogan is still invoked in the same manner in future. As things are now, it is triggering sarcasm... (The riots) show that China remains a violent country, with serious tensions in society," he said.
The unrest on Sunday afternoon in Urumqi saw thousands of Muslim Uighurs take to the streets in protest over an ethnically charged brawl late last month at a factory in southern China that left two Uighurs dead.
However Uighurs say the deeper reasons behind the protests were frustration and anger at decades of repressive rule under the Chinese government, whose leaders are mainly from the dominant Han ethnic group.
In a few hours of mayhem, the protests turned violent with Uighurs attacking Han, and security forces cracking down. Han Chinese have also since sought revenge with mobs roaming the streets of Urumqi armed with makeshift weapons.
The government said 156 people died in Sunday's unrest and most of those people were victims of the rioters, but exiled Uighur leaders say up to 800 may have been killed and security forces were responsible for many deaths.
President Hu was forced Wednesday to abruptly cut short a visit to Italy, missing out on a meeting of the Group of Eight rich nations, to deal with some of the worst ethnic strife in decades, in an unprecedented move.
Hu was expected to give a signal reassuring the government remained committed to the concept of a "harmonious society."
But for many, the harmony that the leaders and the media they control constantly talk about is no more than a fiction.
Besides tragic events such as those in Xinjiang, China every month records many thousands of "mass incidents," defined as crowds of more than 1,000 people assembled over issues such as land disputes or corruption.
And the Xinjiang violence has echoed highly publicised unrest in Buddhist Tibet last year.
"The harmonious society is not something real. It's merely an ideal, or an objective," said Hu Xingdou, an influential commentator and economist at the Beijing Institute of Technology.
"The fact that the government has come up with this objective shows that in reality, there's quite a deal of disharmony."
Jean-Louis Rocca, a sociologist at Beijing's Tsinghua University, agreed.
"The authorities have always said they were facing conflicts and problems that needed to be regulated... and that you have to work hard to achieve it," he said.
"There is no harmony (among the Han Chinese and China's other ethnic groups). Everyone knows it, and therefore things proceed with great difficulty."
In cyberspace the slogan of harmonious society is greeted with ridicule and subtle puns.
"If someone writes "my blog has been harmonised," they really mean "my blog has been censored." Worse, if a Chinese is "harmonised," he has been "arrested." (By PASCALE TROUILLAUD/AFP)
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Stephane
Joined: Mar 4, 2009
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Re: Xin Jiang Riot
July 27, 2009 - 12:54 PM
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My dad traveled in Xinjiang last year. He's and ESL instructor, and some of his students were Uygur and sort of acted as guides. He told me that the discrimination of the Uygurs by Han chinese is absolutely unbeleivable. Example: a (Han chinese) woman gets on a bus with her child, and apparently a Uygur guy was standing too close to the child because the woman suddenly grabs her child and starts yelling at the poor guy (who has no clue about what's going on) about not standing so close, go away you dirty Uygyr. No wonder there's been violence. all you need is a society under that kind of tension and a few people deciding that the only way to solve this is by striking at the opressors, and BANG! instant violence.
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Stephane Gallant
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