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| Eastern Turkistan |
An introduction to Uyghurs and their motherland, East
Turkistan.
Introduction to East Turkistan
 East
Turkistan, also known as the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous
Region of China, lies in the heart of Asia. The current
territorial size of East Turkistan is 1,626,000 square
kilometers (635,000 square miles), which is 4 times the
size of California.
According to official records in 1949, East Turkistan's
original territories contained 1,820,000 square
kilometers of land. The Qinghai and Gansu provinces of
China annexed part of the territory as a result of the
Chinese communist invasion of 1949.
East Turkistan has a diverse geography. It has grand
deserts, magnificent mountains, and beautiful rivers,
lakes, grasslands and forests.
A brief history of East Turkistan and its people
East Turkistan is the homeland of the Turkic speaking
Uyghurs and other central Asian peoples such as Kazaks,
Kyrgyz, Tatars, Uzbeks, and Tajiks. According to the
latest Chinese census, the present population of these
Muslims is slightly over 11 million; among these, the
8.68 million Uyghurs constitute the majority. However,
Uyghur sources indicate that Uyghur population in East
Turkistan exceeds 15 million.
East Turkistan is located beyond a logical boundary of
China, the Great Wall. Historically, East Turkistan is a
part of Central Asia, not of China. East Turkistan's
people are not Chinese; they are Turks of Central Asia.
Records show that the Uyghurs have a history of more
than 4000 years in East Turkistan. Situated along a
section of the legendary Silk Road, Uyghurs played an
important role in cultural exchanges between the East
and West and developed a unique culture and civilization
of their own.
Uyghurs embraced Islam in A.D. 934 during the Karahanid
Kingdom. Kashgar, the capital of the Kingdom, quickly
became one of the major learning centers of Islam. Art,
the sciences, music and literature flourished as Islamic
religious institutions nurtured the pursuit of an
advanced culture. In this period, hundreds of
world-renowned Uyghur scholars emerged. Thousands of
valuable books were written. Among these works, the
Uyghur scholar Yusuf Has Hajip's book, Kutatku Bilig
(The Knowledge for Happiness, 1069-1070) and Mahmud
Kashgari's Divan-i Lugat-it Turk (a dictionary of Turk
languages) are most influential.
East Turkistan was invaded by the Manchu Empire of China
The Islamic Uyghur Kingdom of East Turkestan maintained
its independence and prosperity until the Manchu Empire
invaded the nation in 1876. After eight years of bloody
war, the Manchu Empire formally annexed East Turkistan
into its territories and renamed it "Xinjiang" (meaning
"New Territory" or "New Frontier") on November 18, 1884.
Uyghur power, stature and culture went into a steep
decline after the Manchu invasion.
After Chinese Nationalists overthrew the Manchu Empire
in 1911, East Turkistan fell under the rule of the
nationalist Chinese government. The Uyghurs, who wanted
to free themselves from foreign domination, staged
numerous uprisings against Nationalist Chinese rule and
twice (once in 1933 and again in 1944) succeeded in
setting up an independent East Turkistan Republic.
Political Background
Heavy-handed state repression of all activities
associated by the Chinese government with "Separatism"
has created a dire human rights environment for the
Uyghur Muslim minority population of northwest China.
Beijing has for more than a decade claimed to be
confronted with "religious extremist forces" and
"violent terrorists" in Xinjiang Province, a vast region
one-sixth of China's land area.
Xinjiang is in fact a large, sparsely populated area
that has been a site of heavy army and police
concentrations since 1949, and is used as a base for
nuclear testing, miliatry training, and prison labor
facilities. The population of 18 million includes
several Turkic-speaking Muslim ethnic groups, of which
the Uyghurs, numbering eight million, are the largest.
The percentage of ethnic Han Chinese in Xinjiang has
grown as a result of government policies from six
percent in 1949 to 40 percent at present, and now
numbers some 7.5 million people. Much like Tibetans,
Uyghurs in Xinjiang have struggled for cultural survival
in the face of a government-supported influx by Chinese
migrants, as well as harsh repression of political
dissent and any expression, however lawful or peaceful,
of their distinct identity.
Reports from Xinjiang document a pattern of abuse,
including political imprisonment, torture, and
disappearance. Mosques are summarily closed and the
Uyghur language is banned from use in universities.
Uyghurs are subjected to compulsory unpaid labor in the
construction of a pipeline planned to export local
petroleum resources to other parts of China. Uyghurs
also continue to be the only population in China
consistently subjected to executions for political
crimes, and these executions are often both summary and
public.
A handful of small-scale explosions aimed at government
targets over the past decade have been repeatedly
invoked by the Chinese government, particularly since
September 11, in support of its strike-hard campaign to
crack down on separatism and terrorism. In policy
pronouncements for both domestic and international
audiences, the government has sought to establish that
all separatism is tantamount to Islamic terrorism, and
in fact uses the terms interchangeably. The state's
efforts to extinguish the common desire among Uyghurs
for autonomy or outright independence appear to have
increased the alienation of the population and, some
analysts speculation, the potential for future violent
conflict.
Although human rights organizations such as Human Rights
Watch and Amnesty International express concern over the
deteriorating situation in Xinjiang, expertise on the
region is so scarce that activists agree that without
critical support from Uyghur-run human rights
organizations, very little information from within
Xinjiang will see the light of day. Some information
collection and documentation has begun in a sporadic way
in Uyghur communities across the diasporas, but the
effect will be limited without the establishment the
establishment of a human rights organization
specifically focused on the Uyghur situation. |
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