China's Own Muslim Nationalists

ALMATY, Kazakhstan -- The phone calls started last May, after the body of an ethnic Uighur activist was found strangled and dumped in a reservoir.

Kakharman Kozhamberdi -- himself the head of an association representing the Muslim Uighur minority from western China -- would hear a voice speaking Russian with a Chinese intonation.

"Stop all your political activity, or you'll pay with your head," the caller would say. "You're still alive now. But you want to live for a long time."

Kazakhstan's 300,000 Uighurs have come to expect pressure when they advocate independence for their ancestral homeland -- even from the relative safety of this former Soviet Central Asian republic. Uighurs are Turkic speakers originally from China's Xinjiang province, a vast region where Beijing's heavy hand has sparked discontent, unrest and even terror bombings. Now, in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks in America, Uighurs here and in China fear the pressure will increase against those who seek independence for Xinjiang, which they call East Turkistan.

"After that horrible tragedy in the U.S., the Chinese tried to work with other countries against my people," said Ablajan Laylinaman, president of the U.S.-based Taklamakan Uighur Human Rights Association. "The Chinese said, 'We have some Muslim terrorists in Xinjiang who speak the Turkish language and kill people and use knives and bombs.' The Chinese government is using this opportunity to kill Uighurs and put more Uighurs in jail."

In June, Kazakhstan joined Russia, China and three other Central Asian republics in a pact promising political, military and intelligence cooperation for the purpose of "cracking down on terrorism, separatism, extremism" and maintaining regional security. And for years, Kazakhstan has cooperated in repatriating Uighurs whom China identifies as terrorists. But politically active Uighurs here say China makes little distinction between those involved in terrorism and those who engage in even the mildest of political activity. Last year, for instance, Rebiya Kadeer, a Uighur businesswoman in China, received an eight-year prison sentence for mailing abroad official newspaper clippings about Uighur unrest.

Kazakhstan, fearful of its giant neighbor, has done its best to accommodate Chinese demands. "We used to organize protests around the Chinese Embassy," Kozhamberdi said. "But since 1996, they started to jail people for protesting."

Amnesty International -- a longtime critic of China's policy in Xinjiang -- said in an Oct. 11 statement that Beijing's call for international support in its crackdown on domestic terrorism could cause "the dismal human rights situation" in the region to deteriorate further. Since the mid-1990s, several hundred Uighurs accused of involvement in such activities have been executed and thousands of others have been detained, imprisoned and tortured. Growing restrictions have been placed on the Muslim clergy and the practice of Islam in the region.

"The Chinese authorities do not distinguish between 'terrorism' and 'separatism,'" Amnesty stated. "Separatism in fact covers a broad range of activities most of which amount to no more than peaceful opposition or dissent. Preaching or teaching Islam outside government controls is also considered subversive."

Kazakhstan is a sprawling land of steppes, mountains and newly tapped oil wealth. Five times the size of France, the nation has a population of 17.2 million, most of it nominally Muslim Kazakhs with a substantial Russian minority. Russian is the lingua franca in Almaty, the nation's largest city. It is home to mosques and onion-domed churches, but even many young Muslim women wear tight jeans and skimpy tops like Russians.

In such a society, Uighurs -- many of whom were born on this side of the border or have lived here for decades -- enjoy a high level of freedom in education and cultural affairs. Some 30,000 Uighur children are schooled in their native tongue, and the government funds a theater and dance company in the Uighur language. Uighurs in Kazakhstan use Cyrillic letters, rather than the traditional Arabic letters favored by Chinese Uighurs.

This education has helped save Uighurs from assimilation into the broader Russian- and Kazakh-speaking majority, said Shavket Umarov, director of School No. 153, a Uighur-language institution. "There is a Korean community here, but they basically lost their language," Umarov said. "Why they lost their language is because they did not have Korean schools, and they were scattered across Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. But our people live together, and we have our own education."

The Uighur-language State Republican Theater of Musical Comedy, which has both dance and acting troupes, is another focal point of ethnic identity. The company, founded in 1934, boasts 110 professional musicians, actors and dancers and performs classical and modern dances and plays.

Gulnara Saitova, the company's literary director, brushes aside questions about Uighur politics. But she too has experienced Beijing's skittishness regarding its western Muslims. Although the theater and dance company used to play to packed audiences during its trips to China, party officials have refused the theater permission to tour there since 1996.

"I don't know why this happens," she said. "Maybe they think we will bring information to the Uighurs there. Last year we planned to take 30 people there, and the Chinese cancelled our trip at the last minute."

Gulbakhar Akhmadiyeva, 45, grew up in the theater world of Urumqi, China, where her mother was a singer. When her mother was pregnant with her older brother, she ignored the first labor pangs and went onstage to sing anyway, Akhmadiyeva said. But after 11 songs, she stopped abruptly and stagehands lowered the curtain. She gave birth backstage.

Akhmadiyeva's father was a singer, too, and the couple used to tour with their children. But during the 1960s, the family fled to the Soviet Union. Akhmadiyeva still recalls leaving China in 1961, when she was 4 years old. Because her parents were famous, hundreds of people gathered in Urumqi to say goodbye. "I remember my father got up on a horse cart and sang a farewell song, and people were crying," she said. When their bus pulled out, people ran along beside them, shouting until it disappeared in a cloud of dust.

"We were very much welcomed when we went back to China in 1992," she said. "Very old men came up and said they remembered my parents. They thanked us; they thought that after so many years of separation, we would have forgotten the culture."

For those seeking independence in Xinjiang, even nonviolence hasn't meant protection. Kozhamberdi, who received the threatening phone calls, is the president of the regional Uighur association and is active in international Uighur groups. "Our goal is to fight for liberation," he said. "Our main method is a political fight."

Last year, Kozhamberdi said, two Uighurs were shot dead after they allegedly killed two policemen (though Kozhamberdi believes they were innocent). Police arrested the wife of one suspect, a young mother, until international protests forced their release last month. The family fled the country for Finland.

Three Uighur refugees whom the Chinese accused of terrorism were also repatriated last year. "After lengthy torture, they were shot last December," he said.

Uighur leaders insist that Chinese agents operate in Almaty, for they consider it a center of Uighur nationalism. In every Chinese tour group is an informant, Kozhamberdi said. And he believes the Uighur leader who was strangled and dumped in a reservoir was killed by the Chinese, though he has no proof. Strangely, the Kazakh authorities also discourage criticism of Beijing.

"They might tolerate criticism against the [Kazakh] president, but they don't tolerate it against the Chinese," Kozhamberdi said.

While Kozhamberdi advocates peaceful change, Uighur leader Yusupbek Mukhlisi boasts about his ties with violent separatists across the border. During an interview, Mukhlisi unfolded a map and explained, city by city, where the unrest has been ("In Urumqi, the last powerful explosion was in July of this year," he said). He spread out stacks of leaflets advocating independence in both Cyrillic and Arabic lettering; couriers smuggle the materials back to China, Mukhlisi said.

"The movement is very well developed there, and we will win," he said. "Twenty-two million Uighurs are all ready, even little boys. A guy I know just came from Urumqi, and he saw a little boy there with a toy gun -- a 7-year-old boy. And he was saying, 'Stop, China! I'm going to kill you.'"

The resistance has employed terror, including three bus bombings in Urumqi that coincided with the funeral of former leader Deng Xio-ping in 1997. Xinjiang security forces broke up an underground group, Hizb-ut Tahrir, that advocates setting up an Islamic state and has launched attacks in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. In April, terrorists slashed the throats of a Kashgar-area prosecutor and his wife, a family planning official, the Wall Street Journal reported. Police tracked the killers to the hills, and the resulting gun battle left three of them and one police officer dead.

Such attacks are evidence of a struggle for independence, in Mukhlisi's eyes. He cracks open a bottle of vodka, and fills the glasses of three journalists who have shown up. Even his toasts are passionate -- "to freedom!" He leaves the impression of a region engulfed in a Palestinian-style intifada.

But Xinjiang's capital of Urumqi, two hours away by plane, was nothing like that in early September. Rather, the city was bustling with a growing prosperity that may prove to be as threatening to Uighur aspirations as the People's Liberation Army.

Urumqi stands in a petroleum-rich region of deserts and towering mountains sprawling from Tibet to Mongolia. The city is being remade in the same building frenzy that is rattling the rest of China. Everywhere you turn, bulldozers are razing old neighborhoods to make way for 30-story buildings. Workers scramble up half-completed high rises with welding torches and buckets of cement. The streets are filled with shoppers buying Good Food hamburgers, Hang Ten sweaters, Haier air conditioners. A city that had no luxury hotels four years ago is now glutted with high-end accommodation.

By law, shop signs are in both Uighur and Chinese, but the majority of the people are the ethnically dominant Han Chinese. Encouraged by the government, Han have flooded into Xinjiang. Uighurs say they will soon follow the fate of Inner Mongolia, their culture drowned in immigrants. "They are trying to bring in a lot of Chinese to smother the Uighur people," Laylinaman said.

Beijing has earned the hatred of many Uighurs by using Lop Nor, in a remote area of Xinjiang, as a nuclear testing site. China has conducted 46 nuclear tests to date, and all of them took place in Xinjiang, the Taipei Times reported.

Malan, which the Chinese use as a secret nuclear base, is only 10 kilometers from an area where ethnic Uighurs and ethnic Mongolians live, the paper reported. Visitors to the area say that the bark and leaves of the trees near the nuclear testing areas have all fallen off and residents are losing their hair and suffering from skin diseases. Leukemia and throat cancer cases are rising rapidly, and there has been a steep increase in premature births and deformed babies, the paper said.

Elsewhere in Xinjiang, the Communist leadership has tried to win Uighurs' loyalty with the same method that has worked in eastern China: by boosting their standard of living. China has creating astounding economic growth by building roads, highways and airports and promoting policies friendly to businesses and foreign investors. President Jiang Zemin encouraged businessmen from eastern China to invest in Xinjiang this year by bringing a planeload of Hong Kong businessmen to scope out Xinjiang's investment possibilities.

But in rural areas and small towns, donkey carts rattle along roadways. "If you go outside Urumqi, you will see that people live no better than animals," Laylinaman said. And even in Urumqi, there is poverty and misery that shock foreigners. A filthy, scrawny teenager, his body twisted from polio, lies belly-down on a dolly and scoots along with his arms. He pushes a basket filled with donations.

Traditionally, Uighurs were nomadic herdsmen. Though China established military garrisons in the region as early as 200 BC, Uighurs passionately recall periods of independence. Most recently, a short-lived Islamic Republic of East Turkistan was formed in 1933. But the Chinese regained control when Communist troops arrived in 1949.

Beijing has long dealt harshly with stirrings of independence in Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region -- Uighur separatists eschew the name Xinjiang, which means "newly conquered territories." Beijing vowed to "deal a decisive blow to separatist forces, eliminating separatism and illegal religious activities," Amnesty International reported, and in August Beijing staged massive military exercises -- similar to those it holds near Taiwan -- in Xinjiang. Last April, 30 Uighurs were sentenced to death in four districts alone.

Often, Communist bullying sparks unrest. In February 1997, police arrested prominent Uighurs in Yining and stopped Muslims from gathering at a mosque during Ramadan, Amnesty International reported. About 1,000 Uighurs protested peacefully, but police intervened, firing tear gas to disperse the demonstrators and turning water cannons on them in freezing temperatures. During protests the following day, police and soldiers reportedly opened fire on demonstrators. Official sources stated that nine people were killed and nearly 200 injured, but Uighur activists said the death toll was several times higher. Hundreds of people were detained in Yining during and immediately after the riots, and many were executed.

Separatists have also had successes that might give some Uighur supporters pause. In 1999, rebels attacked the missile base of the 3824th Detachment of the People's Liberation Army, killing 21 soldiers and destroying 18 vehicles, the Taipei Times reported.

"They try to kill my people," Laylinaman said. "Sometimes we're going to have to fight against them. We don't have any army, and we don't have any government in the world."

Beijing hopes a younger generation will be more inspired by the economic muscle of Shanghai and Guangzhou than the pieties offered by the impoverished Islamic world. At times the argument appears to be succeeding.

In an electronics store, a young businessman introduced himself to me in English. He immediately added -- as if to establish first things first -- "I'm a Uighur." We chatted while surveying the cell phones and answering machines. The man, who asked to be referred to as Saujan, had been educated in Beijing after attending a Chinese school locally. Here, as in Kazakhstan, Uighur schools are available, he said, but ambitious Uighurs school their children in the language of the Han majority.

"What do people think about independence from Beijing?" I asked.

"Some people want it."

"What about you?"

"I'd rather not talk about that."

But after a few moments of browsing, Saujan decided he wanted to talk after all. We left the store and strolled through the streets filled with shoeshine boys and street vendors and shoppers. He doesn't want independence, he said, because life for Uighurs is improving in China. But, he added, many Uighurs are unhappy at the flood of immigrants from the east.

As he walked, Saujan frequently glanced around. He was having second thoughts about being seen with a foreigner. We ducked into a Uighur restaurant and ordered a dinner of shashlik, spicy noodles and beer.

In some ways, Xinjiang recalled Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture, a Chinese region along the North Korean border, I suggested. It once had a Korean majority, but that has been reversed with a flood of Han immigration.

But Saujan said, "I think they have much more freedom in Yanbian. I was there last year, and even at party conferences, they speak Korean to each other. That amazed me. Here, no Communist would dare speak Uighur at any official function. It's always Chinese."

For visitors to China, it is sometimes surprising to see churches and mosques being built -- albeit under state control. But in Xinjiang, only people without ambitions to advance in society dare attend worship services, he said.

In one mosque opposite the city square, several hundred Uighur men gathered to pray on a recent afternoon. Removing their shoes at the door, they bowed, knelt, stood, bowed again, while the imam prayed in Arabic.

The presence of a non-Muslim foreigner at the back drew a few glances, but no astonished stares.

Outside, the streets are bustling with a Central Asian energy. Some women wear Islamic-style headscarves, and one or two even cover their faces with veils. Street musicians beat drums and play Arabian-style pipes. In a narrow alley, carpets from Pakistan hang three stories high. A crowd gathers around a child acrobat in a red velvet costume who stands on a bed of nails, shatters a brick on his head, and performs back flips.

If the separatists have their way, this is the Xinjiang -- or East Turkistan -- that will be preserved. Demographics alone may make their cause appear hopeless -- a minority people on the edge of a billion-strong empire. But Uighur activists believe they will prevail.

Kozhamberdi said: "China is powerful. But there is no way they can stop the resistance. To do that, they would have to kill all the Uighur people."