[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 91 (Thursday, June 17, 2010)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5106-S5107]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       UIGHUR PROTESTS IN URUMQI

  Mr. KAUFMAN. Mr. President, it has been nearly a year since deadly 
ethnic rioting between ethnic Han Chinese and the native Uighur 
population engulfed the city of Urumqi in China's vast, far-western 
region of Xianjiang--one of the worst ethnic clashes in China in 
decades.
  Last year, after the protests began, I spoke on the floor, expressing 
my concern about human rights abuses and a lack of press freedom in 
Xianjiang, as demonstrated by the decision by the Chinese government to 
block access to journalists, which prevented the world from knowing the 
truth of what was occurring. Unfortunately, it is now clear that things 
were even worse than we knew at the time.
  The Chinese police, the People's Armed Police, and the military 
responded with a heavy hand, conducting many large-scale sweep 
operations in two mostly Uighur areas of the city, operations that 
reportedly continued at least through mid-August of 2009. Internet and 
text-messaging services were immediately limited or cut off, and were 
only restored last month, depriving the people of Xianjiang from access 
to news, information, means of communication, and other benefits of 
connective technology.
  The official death toll from the July 5, 2009, rioting was reportedly 
197--though human rights observers say the actual number of casualties 
is higher. At least 1,700 people were injured, and some 1,500 people, 
by the government's own account, were detained. According to an 
insightful article published in the Washington Post this week, as of 
early March, there have been 25 death sentences among the 198 people 
officially sentenced. Twenty-three of those 25 were ethnic Uighurs.
  The Post, which sent a reporter to Urumqi for a look at the city 1 
year after the riots, reports that residents ``seem most terrified of 
talking,'' and not just with journalists but also with each other. 
Uniformed and plainclothes police officers are pervasive, the newspaper 
reports. Most Uighurs are Sunni Muslims, but their religious freedoms 
have been sharply curtailed. Economically, they lag well behind the 
ethnic Han population.
  I condemn the continued repression of the Uighurs, as well as the 
violence perpetrated against all innocent civilians in China, and I 
call on the Chinese government to bring this reprehensible behavior to 
an end. I also reiterate my call from last year on the Chinese 
government to open Internet and mobile phone access, end jamming of 
international broadcasting, and lift the grave and growing restrictions 
on the press. If China is going to assume a position of leadership in 
the international community on par with its economic standing, it must 
lead by example in granting essential freedoms and human rights to its 
citizens.
  I ask unanimous consent that the Washington Post article entitled 
``One year later, China's crackdown after Uighur riots haunts a 
homeland'' published on June 15 be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

       [From the Washington Post Foreign Service, June 15, 2010]

 One Year Later, China's Crackdown After Uighur Riots Haunts a Homeland

                           (By Lauren Keane)

       Urumqi, China.--A hulking shell of a department store 
     towers over this city's Uighur quarter, a reminder of what 
     can be lost here by speaking up.
       For years, it was the flagship of the business empire of 
     Rebiya Kadeer, an exiled leader and matriarch of the Uighur 
     people. If Chinese government accounts are accurate, she 
     helped instigate fierce ethnic riots that killed hundreds and 
     injured thousands here last July--an accusation she 
     vehemently denies.
       Still a prominent landmark even in its ruin, the Rebiya 
     Kadeer Trade Center was partially confiscated by the 
     government in 2006 when Kadeer's son was charged with tax 
     evasion, although tenants were allowed to stay. After the 
     riots, it was shuttered and slated for destruction. The 
     government said the building had failed fire inspections, but 
     it seems in no hurry to set a demolition date.
       The forsaken structure makes for an effective deterrent. 
     Last summer's chaos has been replaced with a level of fear 
     that is striking even for one of China's most repressed 
     regions. Residents are afraid of attracting any attention, 
     afraid of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. But 
     they seem most terrified of talking.
       ``Every single family on this block is missing someone,'' 
     said Hasiya, a 33-year-old Uighur who asked that her full 
     name not be used. Her younger brother is serving a 20-year 
     prison sentence for stealing a carton of cigarettes during 
     the riots. ``Talking about our sorrow might just increase it. 
     So we swallow it up inside.''
       Fear is not unwarranted here. For years now, those caught 
     talking to journalists have been questioned, monitored and 
     sometimes detained indefinitely. More striking is that 
     residents now say they cannot talk even with one another.
       The Turkic-speaking Muslim Uighurs consider Xinjiang their 
     homeland but now make up only 46 percent of the region's 
     population, after decades of government-sponsored migration 
     by China's Han ethnic majority.
       The riots started as a Uighur protest over a government 
     investigation into a Uighur-Han brawl at a southern Chinese 
     factory. Several days of violence brought the official death 
     toll to 197, with 1,700 injured, though observers suspect the 
     casualty count to be much higher. Most of the dead were Han, 
     according to authorities. The government officially 
     acknowledged detaining nearly 1,500 people after the riots. 
     As of early March, Xinjiang had officially sentenced 198 
     people, with 25 death sentences. Of those 25, 23 were Uighur.
       The events forced China's national and regional governments 
     to address, at least superficially, taboo issues of ethnic 
     conflict, discrimination and socioeconomic inequality. The 
     central government in April named a different Communist Party 
     secretary for Xinjiang, Zhang Chunxian, who promptly 
     announced that he had ``deeply fallen in love with this 
     land.'' In May, the government announced a new development 
     strategy to pour $1.5 billion into the region. It also 
     restored full Internet and text-messaging access to the 
     region after limiting or blocking it entirely for 10 months.
       The riots ``left a huge psychic trauma on the minds of many 
     people of all ethnicities. This fully reflects the great harm 
     done to the Chinese autonomous region by `splittist' 
     forces,'' said Wang Baodong, a spokesman for the Chinese 
     Embassy in the United States.
       The ability to confront what happened last July, and why, 
     still eludes people of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang. White-
     knuckled, they hold their spoons above steaming bowls of 
     mutton stew, poking nervously at the oily surface. They 
     fiddle with their watchbands until they break. They repeat 
     questions rather than answer them. They glance through 
     doorways, distracted, and shift side to side in their chairs. 
     Summer's full swelter has yet to arrive, but everyone 
     starting to speak to a reporter begins to sweat. One man 
     leaves the table six times in half an hour to rinse the 
     perspiration from his face. He returns unrefreshed.
       When asked what changes the riots had brought, Mehmet, a 
     former schoolteacher who resigned last year because he 
     opposed requirements that he teach his Uighur students 
     primarily in Chinese, took a long glance around the room 
     before pointing halfheartedly out the door. ``They built a 
     new highway overpass,'' he said.
       Suspicion of fellow citizens is still common throughout 
     China but seems especially acute here. Academics accept 
     interviews only if they can avoid discussing the conflict's 
     lingering effects. An apologetic professor backed out of a 
     planned meeting after his supervisor discovered his plan, 
     called him and threatened his job. A businessman said that he 
     believed government security agents often trained as 
     journalists, and asked how he could be sure that he would not 
     be turned in.
       ``We're seeing increasingly intrusive modes of control over 
     religious and cultural expression,'' said Nicholas Bequelin, 
     a Hong Kong-based senior researcher at Human Rights Watch. 
     ``They live in fear of being overheard.''
       The Kadeer Trade Center is at the center of a protracted 
     conflict. The Urumqi government said that compensation talks 
     with tenants were still ongoing, and that it had moved the 
     tenants to a nearby location. A spokesman for Kadeer, who now 
     lives in Fairfax, said she had not been offered compensation.
       Although the government says it is striving for stability, 
     getting there is uncomfortable. On a single street near this 
     city's main bazaar, four different types of uniformed police 
     were on patrol one recent day--not counting, of course, an 
     unknown number of

[[Page S5107]]

     plainclothes security guards. They marched haphazardly along 
     the sidewalks, the different units so numerous that they 
     sometimes collided. Late into the evening, they perched on 
     rickety school desk chairs placed throughout the bazaar, 
     watching. On the corner outside Xinjiang Medical University, 
     armed police in riot gear peered out the windows of an olive 
     green humvee or leaned on riot shields under the afternoon 
     sun.
       ``It's quiet here on the surface,'' said Yu Xinqing, 35, a 
     lifelong Han resident of Urumqi whose brother was killed by 
     Uighurs during the riots. He now carries a knife with him 
     everywhere, avoids Uighur businesses and rarely speaks with 
     Uighur neighbors he previously considered friends. He says he 
     is saving money to leave Xinjiang behind for good.
       ``We don't talk about these things, even within our 
     families,'' he said. ``But our hearts are overwhelmed; we 
     hold back rivers and overturn the seas.''
       Still, every once in a while, when a resident is safely 
     alone with a neutral observer, months' worth of stifled 
     thinking tumbles out. That was the case for Ablat, a Uighur 
     businessman who sells clothing near the main bazaar; he would 
     not allow his last name to be mentioned. Ablat had been 
     speaking in vague, evasive terms for three hours, and then--
     ensconced in his car, speeding north out of town--something 
     finally released.
       ``Give us jobs, stop holding our passports hostage, and let 
     us worship the way we want to,'' he said. ``That would solve 
     these problems. That is all it would take.''

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