“Surprise, surprise! More 'angry Muslims' killing people!”

The recent clashes between Han Chinese and Turkic Uighurs in China’s Xinjiang province have made the front pages here in the States and around the world as of late. Headlines flashing “Tensions worsen in China’s West,” “Deadly ethnic Violence in China,” and “Uighurs vs. Han Chinese” have been the some of the eye-catching titles of some of this past week’s articles and news reports about the violence and the bloodshed in the former Islamic Uighur Kingdom.

For starters, it is interesting that most of us stand at the lower levels of literacy (usually between very illiterate to somewhat literate) when it comes to the politics and the internal affairs of the world’s most populated country. If asked about China last week, here is a sample of what I would have told you: China’s capital is Beijing, it hosted the 2008 Summer Olympics, Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan are Chinese, it’s a Communist country, there’s a Chinatown in every major city in the U.S., most cheap goods in the U.S. are made in and imported from China, and they make some damn good food (at least the Sczechuan and the Canton province dishes). That’s about it.

What I didn’t know until just recently and what most of us are still not aware of, is that like its southern neighbor Tibet, the Xinjiang province was also invaded and taken over militarily by the People’s Liberation Army (a.k.a. the Chinese Army), who came to Xinjiang to “liberate” the territory in 1949. Since that time, the country’s biggest province has been the scene of a massive settlement movement on the part of millions of Han Chinese, who have been funded and subsidized by Beijing to move and to live in the newly acquired territory.

Sound familiar?

Yeah, the same Machiavellian politics are very reminiscent of Israel’s settlement course of action and its systematic ethnic cleansing of the native population in its newly acquired territories. A detailed look at Chinese census reports show that Xinjiang’s Han population has grown from roughly 299,000 in 1953 to 5,284,000 in 1982; from 5,696,000 in 1992 to a nice round 7,497,700 in 2000, a number which snatches the majority belt from the once majority Muslim Uighurs, and all thanks to a well organized, effective and unstoppable settlement policy put in place by the government. Similar demographic shifts of Han Chinese settlement have also occurred in Tibet.

It is also worth mention that most of the recent articles and broadcasts have covered the current tensions in Xinjiang by mentioning and seeming to focus on the “angry Muslims” attacking the “ethnic majority” Han Chinese and thus provide the world with yet another flawed and misconstrued image of Muslims who just happen to be “angry” for no apparent reason, who are ready to slit some throats with “knives and bricks.” The title for this post actually comes from a co-worker of a friend who was in the mood to highlight the fact that Hey! here’s another example which goes to proving yet again, that Muslims are bloodthirsty animals who just want to go around killing people.

What most reports fail to mention is what actually started the recent Xinjiang Intifada, namely, Beijing’s handling of the deaths of two Uyghurs in “a confrontation in far southern China . . . when Han Chinese fought Uyghurs working in a factory in Shaoguan . . . after a false allegation that some of them had raped a Han Chinese woman.”

If anything, this recent explosion of anger does not stem from the fact that these people are Muslims. No, this outburst of scuffles and attacks is the manifestation of the tensions between the Han and the Uighurs in Xinjiang in recent years; it is the expression of Uighur frustration towards unjust and biased government policies namely, massive Han immigration, the substantial development that favors only the Han Chinese in Xinjiang, and the uneven economic growth this development has created; their anger is the result of an ongoing lack of equal opportunities on account of ethnic discrimination, and the dissatisfaction that ensues when employment levels go down, poverty rates go up and an entire population feels that their means of sustenance and culture are slowly being eroded while they are yet alive.

I am surprised at how little myself or anyone who is not an Asian Studies major actually knows about what is going on in Xinjiang or in China, for that matter. We all know about Palestine, we all know about Darfur and for crying out loud, we all know about Tibet (thanks to those wonderful Hippies). How many of us know about Urumqi, Kashgar and Turfan? How many have heard or are familiar with the World Uighur Congress or the East Turkestan Independence Movement and the plethora of parallels that can be drawn between their struggle and the many other movements against injustice in today’s world? Another enlightening attribute about the recent incidents in Xinjiang is the resonating silence of the International Muslim community, with the exception of probably Turkey and Muslims in India, with regard to the whole thing, especially those Islamic countries in the bordering vicinity of China and the Xinjiang province.

Where is the International community’s backlash condemning the harsh crackdown of the protests and demonstrations we saw with Iran? Where is the International Muslim solidarity with the Muslims of China? Where’s the Twitter and the Facebook?

Kabob Fest