China y sus problemas con su provincia musulmana

China bans Ramadan fasting in Muslim province
Students and civil servants in the northwestern Xinjiang province have been ordered to not observe traditional fasting.
Last updated: 03 Jul 2014 09:11
[Tienes que estar registrado y conectado para ver esa imagen]
Chinese Muslims gather to break their fast during Ramadan at the Niujie mosque in Beijing [AP]

Students and civil servants in China's Muslim northwest have been ordered by the state to avoid taking part in traditional fasting during the Islamic month of Ramadan.

Statements posted in the past week on websites of schools, government agencies and local party organisations in the Xinjiang region said the ban would protect students' wellbeing and prevent the use of schools and government offices to promote religion, the AP news agency reported on Thursday.

Statements on the websites of local party organisations said members of the officially atheist ruling party should also avoid fasting, although the month of Ramadan, which began at sundown on June 28, is observed by Muslims.
[Tienes que estar registrado y conectado para ver esa imagen]
"No teacher can participate in religious activities, instill religious thoughts in students or coerce students into religious activities," said a statement on the website of the "Number 3 Grade School" in Ruoqiang County in Xinjiang.

The news agency reported that cities in Xinjiang had set up news portals saying that fasting was detrimental to the physical wellbeing of young students, and also have called in retired teachers to stand guard at mosques in order to prevent students from entering.

Similar bans have been imposed on fasting in the past. This year's ban was unusually sensitive because Xinjiang is under tight security following a number of attacks that the government blames on Muslim rebels who allegedly have ties with foreign armed groups.

On Tuesday, authorities in some communities in Xinjiang held celebrations of the anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party and served food to test whether Muslim guests were fasting, according to Dilxat Raxit, spokesman in Germany for the rights group World Uyghur Congress.

"This will lead to more conflicts if China uses coercive measures to rule and to challenge Uyghur beliefs," Dilxat Raxit told AP.

Violence has escalated in recent years in Xinjiang. The ruling party blames rebels who it says wants independence, while members of the region's Uyghur ethnic group complain that discrimination and restrictions on religion, such as a ban on taking children to mosques, fuels anger at the ethnic Han Chinese majority.

Wary of religious activities

An attack on May 22 in the regional capital of Urumqi by four people who threw bombs in a vegetable market killed 43 people, including the attackers.

On June 22, police in Kashgar in the far west said they killed 13 attackers who drove into a police building and set off explosives, injuring three officers. Authorities have blamed two other attacks at train stations in Urumqi and in China's southwest on Muslim rebels.

The government responded with a crackdown that resulted in more than 380 arrests in one month and public rallies to announce sentences.

According to AP, the ruling party is wary of religious activities which it worries might serve as a rallying point for opposition to one-party rule. Controls on worship are especially sensitive in Xinjiang and in neighbouring Tibet, where religious faith plays a large role in the local cultures.
Source:
Associated Press

Killings by China anti-terror cops raise concerns
Armed Chinese paramilitary policemen march past the site of an explosion outside the Urumqi South Railway Station in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, May 1, 2014.: Armed Chinese paramilitary policemen march past the site of an explosion outside the Urumqi South Railway Station in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, May 1, 2014. AP Photo: Ng Han Guan
Armed Chinese paramilitary policemen march past the site of an explosion outside the Urumqi South Railway Station in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, May 1, 2014.
AP 4 days ago By GILLIAN WONG of Associated Press

share

tweet

email

BEIJING (AP) — When attackers from China's minority Uighurs killed 37 people in a July rampage in far western Xinjiang, police responded by gunning down at least 59 of them. When three Uighurs allegedly killed a top state-appointed Muslim cleric, police shot dead two of them. When security forces led a raid on 10 suspected Uighur terrorists, they fatally shot all but one.

The incidents are part of a pattern raising concerns that Chinese police are excessively using deadly force in their bid to prevent more attacks by Uighur militants, who have killed dozens of civilians in train stations and other public places over the past few years. In some cities, patrolling SWAT units have already been authorized to shoot dead suspected terrorists without warning.

An Associated Press review of articles by China's official Xinhua News Agency and other state media has found that at least 323 people have died in Xinjiang-related violence since April last year, when the unrest began to escalate. Nearly half of those deaths were inflicted by police — in most cases, by gunning down alleged perpetrators who are usually reported as having been armed with knives, axes and, occasionally, vaguely-defined explosives.

Beijing's tight controls and monopoly on the narrative make it difficult to independently assess if the lethal action has been justified. And Chinese authorities prevent most reporting by foreign journalists inside Xinjiang, making it nearly impossible to confirm the state media numbers. Uighur exile groups and the U.S.-government funded broadcaster Radio Free Asia report far more violent incidents than Chinese state media do, and in some cases, higher death tolls and police shootings of Uighur protesters. But those reports are similarly hard to verify.

To understand just how tough it can be to determine whether China's hand is being forced — or whether officials are recklessly lashing out at those who resist them — consider this recent series of confrontations in Xinjiang: On Aug. 1, police cornered a group of alleged terrorists in an abandoned house and shot nine of them dead, arresting one. In June, police gunned down 13 "mobsters" who allegedly attacked a local police station. In April, checkpoint police fatally shot a teenage Uighur motorcyclist after he allegedly attempted to grab their guns.

In many cases, the government's accounts of violence are wildly divergent from overseas reports. Of the June incident, Uighur exiles said Uighur residents were simply protesting outside the police station when police fired at them and their truck, setting off a fire. In the teenager's case, RFA reported that he had been shot after running a red light.

Who's to say what really happened? Xinjiang authorities operate with a "deeply disturbing" lack of accountability, said Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch.

"If the use of force is justified, the Chinese government should be allowing independent, credible experts to review the evidence," she said. "It should be making that evidence public."

Experts in policing, terrorism and human rights, meanwhile, point to several aspects of the authorities' crackdown that make it all too easy for security forces to open fire unnecessarily.

China doesn't have comprehensive laws defining terrorism and how authorities should respond. The Chinese leaders' use of war-like rhetoric risks inflaming patriotic fervor instead of clear-headed rationality in the security forces. Above all, the ongoing "strike hard" campaign prioritizes tough, swift action over legal protections.

Armed Chinese paramilitary policemen stand watch on a booth at a crowded railway station in Beijing, China, Sept. 3, 2014.AP Photo: Andy Wong

Armed Chinese paramilitary policemen stand watch on a booth at a crowded railway station in Beijing, China, Sept. 3, 2014.

"Under the terms of the 'strike hard' campaign, they can dispense with the usual considerations about legality," said Willy Lam, an expert on Chinese politics at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. "They don't have scruples about shooting to kill suspects and they appear to be using disproportionately heavy force and firepower."

The trend has alarmed overseas Uighur activists, who say many innocent Uighurs may have been killed.

"The use of force by the Chinese security against Uighurs is really like it's against foreign enemies," said Alim Seytoff, President of the Uyghur American Association in Washington, D.C. "The extrajudicial use of lethal force is rampant."

The Ministry of Public Security and police in Xinjiang did not respond to faxed requests for comment.

Though the death tally culled from state media is virtually impossible to independently confirm, and some foreign media have cited higher tolls, the figures still provide a sketch of the human cost of the unrest that has rocked the region over the past 17 months. The ruling Communist Party leader Xi Jinping, head of the new national security commission, has staked his political prestige on stemming the turbulence — but it has been challenging.

"They have been a lot more aggressive in using military-grade equipment to combat the terrorists and underground groups, and also summary executions," said Lam, the Hong Kong-based analyst. "I think the major reason is that Xi Jinping thinks that unless they use extraordinary or draconian methods, they cannot solve the problem quickly, and the Uighur problem has proven to be one of the major policy failures of (his) administration."

Elsewhere in China, police rarely use firearms to quell violence or mass unrest, preferring to deploy tear gas, water cannons and riot police with truncheons and shields. Although the anti-terror campaign is being carried out by SWAT and paramilitary police, the operation more closely resembles war than policing.

"It's exactly the opposite of a criminal case. In a criminal case, we say we only get the guy if they're guilty. Otherwise, if there's a slight bit of doubt, let them go," said Professor Kam C. Wong, an expert on Chinese police at Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio. "In the case of terrorists, even when in doubt, we will get them."

"In China, terrorists are to be treated as a contradiction between enemies and not contradictions amongst the people. They are afforded very few protections under the law," Wong said.

In that sense, China's counterterrorism effort bears similarities to the United States' anti-terror practices post-9/11, including assertions that deadly military force against terrorists— even if U.S. citizens — might outweigh their constitutional rights, he said.

Xi has cast the campaign in patriotic, militaristic terms, in one instance evoking the memory of a Ming-era Chinese military leader who fought Japanese pirates. "Sweat more in peacetime so you will bleed less in wartime," Xi said in a pep talk to Xinjiang police during a high-profile April tour.

Special police units in cities such as Beijing and Guangzhou have recently been authorized to fire without warning at suspected terrorists engaged in violence. The eastern city of Xiamen and the province of Jiangsu went a step further — saying SWAT officers were allowed to shoot dead such alleged perpetrators. The government hasn't specified how threats are to be assessed.

Xi has called for a "people's war" — an effort to mobilize the public to act as informants, with rewards in some instances. But without a counterterrorism law in place, "and with emotions running high, the people would act like vigilantes," said Wong.

Public information tends to be based on personal prejudice, racial profiling and ethnic animosities, making it unreliable and of dubious use, with innocent people likely to be implicated, Wong added.

Part of the problem might be Xi's choice of words, saying he wants terrorists to be like "rats scurrying across the street, chased by all the people."

"They're using rhetoric that's very dehumanizing toward people," said William Nee, Amnesty International's China researcher. "It encourages an atmosphere in which excessive use of force is condoned."

Catching terror suspects alive is a better approach anyway, because then you can interrogate them, said Raffaello Pantucci, a London-based terrorism researcher at the Royal United Services Institute, a defense think tank. "You can find out who their networks are, you can find out more information and you can then investigate that."

"That's counterterrorism practice 101."

ChinaFile
Xinjiang, Unsettled
ChinaFile Capturing the often-wrenching change in one of China's most fraught regions.

BY Gilles Sabrié
SEPTEMBER 5, 2014

Share +

China
TLN
East Asia

Photographer Gilles Sabrié has been traveling to Xinjiang, a nominally autonomous region in China's west, since 1995, capturing what he finds on camera. Sabrié tells ChinaFile's David Barreda:

"When you travel in Xinjiang, you see two communities living side by side but rarely interacting. Relations between Uighurs [a Turkic-language-speaking, mostly Muslim minority that predominantly lives in Xinjiang] and the [majority] Han Chinese have soured to the point where little dialogue seems possible. The 2009 Urumqi riots, in which a Uighur mob went on a killing spree that ultimately resulted in at least 194, mainly Han, deaths, was a turning point. Beijng’s 'strike-hard' policy in the aftermath of the riots, which continues to this day, has only created more resentment, hatred, and misunderstanding.

"On top of economic alienation, Uighurs feel culturally threatened. The shutdown of Uighur-language schools and websites and the new rules curtailing the practice of Islam have only reinforced the sense of a Uighur identity, which wasn’t as strong a few decades ago. Twenty years ago, there weren’t many women wearing the jilbab in Kashgar [China's westernmost city] or men wearing beards. Religious repression has only increased the appeal of a stricter form of Islam.

"One of the most recent and dramatic changes in Xinjiang is the ubiquitous presence of armed police everywhere. Dozens of surveillance cameras are at every corner. You have the feeling of a region under siege, a police state."

Click on any image below to enlarge. —The Editors

[Tienes que estar registrado y conectado para ver esa imagen]
Han and Uighur visitors to the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region Museum look at a map of Xinjiang, in 2008. The western Chinese province is home to close to a dozen ethnic groups. Combined, the Uighur and Han populations account for more than 80 percent of the region's total population, though the Uighur proportion of the population shrinks as more Han migrants flood the province.


[Tienes que estar registrado y conectado para ver esa imagen]
Two days after an episode of interethnic violence in July 2009, a group of Uighur demonstrators in Urumqi, mostly women, confronts the police, demanding information about the disappearance of their husbands, brothers, and sons. According to New York-based NGO Human Rights Watch, in the days following the riots, dozens of Uighur men and teenagers were detained by police and have not been heard from since.


[Tienes que estar registrado y conectado para ver esa imagen]
Uighurs walk beneath a video surveillance camera, which monitors street activity at a weekly marketplace in the city of Kuqa, on September 12, 2008.

[Tienes que estar registrado y conectado para ver esa imagen]
Uighurs pass by a propaganda poster featuring the People's Liberation Army in Kuqa, some 2,200 miles west of Beijing, in 2008.

[img]http://www.foreignpolicy.com/files/fp_uploaded_images/140904_0007-Xinjiang.png/img]
Donkeys and horses rest and tractors are parked on a dry riverbed at the weekly market in Kuqa. Southern Xinjiang is one of China's poorest regions, where for many the main source of income is farming and animal husbandry.

[Tienes que estar registrado y conectado para ver esa imagen]
A resident of Kashgar's old city heads to a local mosque for evening prayer in the summer of 2009. On the wall of the mosque next to a board promoting AIDS awareness is a legal reminder in both Uighur and Mandarin: "Individual pilgrimage is strictly prohibited. Take the path of organized pilgrimage." The pilgrimage to Mecca, one of the pillars of Islam, is strictly controlled by the government. In general, it is much more difficult for Uighurs than for Han Chinese to obtain a passport and travel overseas.

[Tienes que estar registrado y conectado para ver esa imagen]
In what is seen as an act of defiance in today's political climate, Uighurs pray near a shrine of Imam Asim, who, in the 11th century, according to legend, successfully fought off the encroachment of Buddhist forces at the edge of the Taklamakan Desert near Hotan.

[Tienes que estar registrado y conectado para ver esa imagen]
Next to a construction site in the old city of Kashgar, inhabitants of a traditional courtyard house stand by the wall of their house, demolished a few hours earlier, in June 2009. The residents were left to clean up the rubble. The city, one of the oldest on the Silk Road, has been demolished and rebuilt, with many of its inhabitants forced to move to the outskirts.

[Tienes que estar registrado y conectado para ver esa imagen]
The slums of Urumqi -- which have largely been demolished since this photo was taken in 2010 -- once stood a world away from the high-rises that make up the skyline of Xinjiang's provincial capital. Many Uighurs who migrated to the urban center of Xinjiang lived in these slums, and government officials pinned the July 2009 riots on members of this community. Most of these slums have since been removed to make room for a high-speed train linking Urumqi to the rest of China.

[Tienes que estar registrado y conectado para ver esa imagen]
Han migrant workers from Henan dance in the grassland of Tashgurkan at the end of the day in the summer of 2013. Massive investment in the development of Xinjiang has resulted in an influx of Han workers, but, many locals say, has not benefited the local population.

Photo: Gilles Sabrié

China at a Crossroads in Gilgit-Baltistan
By Senge H. Sering
Issue Net Edition | Date : 27 Sep , 2014
[Tienes que estar registrado y conectado para ver esa imagen]

Pak-China Economic Corridor

With large outcry in Pakistan against recent Palestinian killings, one wonders at the nation’s pronounced silence on the continued Uighur genocide in China’s restive Xinjiang Province.

This absence of protest by Pakistan on Muslim oppression in China is not without reason. China is Pakistan’s major defense and trade ally. China has major investments in much of the country including the UN-declared disputed region of Gilgit-Baltistan which borders Xinjiang.

There are complaints against Chinese firms for denying jobs and financial compensation, and damaging farmland and infrastructure.

In Gilgit-Baltistan, China is involved in the construction of large-scale dams, telecommunication development, mining and port management. It is constructing highway and railroad systems between Xinjiang and the port cities of Karachi and Gawadar. This corridor will enable the flow of Iranian fuel northward into Xinjiang as well as Kazakh and Russian gas into Pakistan. Both the Chinese and Pakistani governments characterize these efforts as revolutionizing economic development of Pakistan. Despite these rosy claims, many such projects have led to increased insecurity and confrontations between the Chinese and the locals in Gilgit-Baltistan.

One such skirmish broke out on July 5 over control of a dry port joint venture between the Sino-Trans Chinese Company and the Sost Dry Port Trust. The trouble began when the Gilgit-Baltistan court ordered the reluctant Chinese officials to transfer port authority to the newly elected local chairman, Mr. Zafar Iqbal.

According to Mr. Iqbal, a Chinese national, Mr. Ju Yi, attacked him with a knife causing chest injury, after he arrived at the port office. Demonstrations erupted in Sost after the incident as local leaders and shareholders demanded stern action against the Chinese official. Given the importance of its relationship with China, Pakistan’s Prime Minister took notice of the situation at once and summoned both parties to Islamabad for talks.

In the wake of the incident, heated accusations have flown back and forth. According to local attorney Zahoor Karim, the Chinese have failed to disburse port revenue to local shareholders for the past fifteen years. Port Director Mr. Ikramullah Beg, accuses Chairman Yang Jiamin of behaving as “the King of Hunza” and using port operations as cover for smuggling endangered wild life.

As China pays its political and economic dues in Islamabad; there is an expectation that the cooperation of the people of Gilgit-Baltistan is implicit in the bargain.

According to the local newspaper, Daily Baadeshimal, Chinese firms violate local laws and have failed to contribute to regional development. Babajan Hunzai, a prominent local politician, challenged China’s control over the port and accused it of behaving as the imperialist East India Company. He declared the port a national asset of Gilgit-Baltistan and demanded royalties for all locals. It is clear that there is brewing tension between the state sponsored Chinese presence and local rule.

These conflicts between Chinese firms and locals of Gilgit-Baltistan are not new.

To date, dozens of locals face sedition, arrest and torture for resisting Chinese mining projects for gems, uranium, gold, copper and heavy metals. There are complaints against Chinese firms for denying jobs and financial compensation, and damaging farmland and infrastructure. Many accuse China Roads and Bridges Corporation, a Chinese firm currently blacklisted in Turkey and Malaysia, of devastating environmental practices in its expansion of the Karakoram Highway in Gilgit-Baltistan,

Locals assert that the core issue is a lack of enforcement and the loosening of regulations for the Chinese by Pakistani authorities. As China pays its political and economic dues in Islamabad; there is an expectation that the cooperation of the people of Gilgit-Baltistan is implicit in the bargain. Yet, this bargain denies the people of Gilgit-Baltistan fair representation from their own government and media against a foreign entity intent on usurping local resources. Locals call for a strong judicial system to enforce labor and resource ownership laws against foreign investors. Greater political autonomy to determine capital management and trade matters allows local ability to negotiate fair agreements with investors.

World Bank experts believe that as many as 85 million manufacturing jobs will be shed in China in the coming years due to fast rising wages for unskilled workers.

The challenge faced by Chinese enterprise in Pakistan may well be an opportunity to move its exploitative development model towards sustainable participatory practices which strengthen local production systems and human resource. Locals support investments in solar, wind and medium scale hydel projects to create a sustainable labor market and a much needed energy source for existing and future industry with low environmental impact.

This will promote modernization of the agricultural, cottage and tourism industry and enhanced manufacturing and retail business. By developing strategies which focus on skills training and value added goods rather than export of raw material, China stands to create local sustainable jobs and communities where more than half of the population lives below the poverty line.

World Bank experts believe that as many as 85 million manufacturing jobs will be shed in China in the coming years due to fast rising wages for unskilled workers. If planned in advance, thousands of such jobs will benefit Gilgit-Baltistan. Currently, China is working with Uganda’s government to create a manufacturing base and strengthen the labor market. In Ethiopia, Chinese investments have created more than 300,000 local jobs in last ten years.[xxi] This success in Africa is a potential road map to transform China into a people friendly development leader in Gilgit-Baltistan.

Courtesy: http://www.sharnoffsglobalviews.com
Rate this Article
Share
Mail Print
Read Next :

Gilgit Baltistan National Congress held event in Baltimore, MarylandGilgit Baltistan National Congress held event in Baltimore, Maryland

About the Author
Senge H. Sering

Senge H. Sering is president of the Washington D.C. based Institute for Gilgit Baltistan Studies and hails from Baltistan

China planea contratar ex soldados para mantener seguridad
Pekín | Viernes 28 de noviembre de 2014 | EFE | El Universal | 00:51
El régimen chino ha aumentado las medidas de seguridad en la región de Xinjiang, donde los enfrentamientos entre la población uigur y las autoridades son frecuentes

La ciudad de Urumqi, capital de la región noroccidental china de Xinjiang, donde son frecuentes los enfrentamientos entre la población minoritaria uigur y las autoridades, planea por primera vez reclutar a 3 mil ex soldados para mantener la seguridad.

Según publica hoy el diario oficial Global Times, todos los soldados que hayan abandonado el servicio este año, que tengan menos de 30 años, que "estén en contra del separatismo y las actividades religiosas ilegales" y que no tengan credenciales criminales pueden postular al puesto.

Así lo anuncia la página web del Buró de Asuntos Civiles de Urumqi, que añade que los combatientes candidatos tendrán que rellenar una solicitud, la cual incluye un examen político y un chequeo médico.

Una vez contratados, recibirán un sueldo de 3 mil yuanes (alrededor de 500 dólares) al mes, y obtendrán el "hukou" local, el permiso de residencia chino.

"El reclutamiento es una forma de mantener la estabilidad, así como de ayudar a soldados sin empleo a obtener un trabajo", dice la web, en la que supone la primera vez que se produce una iniciativa de este tipo en la potencia asiática.

Según el diario, la medida refleja la determinación de las autoridades en combatir el terrorismo y el separatismo, que se ha convertido, dice, en un problema cada vez más serio en Xinjiang en los años recientes.

"La situación en Xinjiang cada vez es peor, y el Gobierno necesita más gente para prevenir futuros conflictos", apunta al rotativo Pan Zhiping, director del Instituto de Investigación de Asia Central de la Academia de Ciencias Sociales china.

Agrega que los soldados que hayan acabado el servicio y que tengan una alta experiencia política y militar "serán capaces de prevenir a grupos de organizar actividades terroristas", ya que ahora dice que son los ciudadanos, en su mayoría mujeres, los que con frecuencia patrullan las calles por la noche.

No obstante, advierte de que aumentar la presencia de fuerzas de seguridad también puede disparar las tensiones, si la población uigur se siente más vigilada por las autoridades.

Con alrededor de dos centenares de muertos dentro y fuera de Xinjiang en lo que va de año, Pekín culpa de estos episodios de violencia a grupos de influencia yihadista que buscan que la provincia se convierta en el estado independiente de Turkestán Oriental.

Sin embargo, comunidades uigures en el exilio aluden a la represión política, cultural y religiosa que sufren por parte de las autoridades chinas como causa de los conflictos y niegan la existencia de organizaciones terroristas.

El régimen chino ha aumentado en los pasados meses las medidas de seguridad en la región, que para algunos grupos de derechos humanos van dirigidas sólo contra los uigures, y han endurecido las sentencias, en ocasiones dictadas a la vez contra grandes grupos y fuera de los tribunales, como en estadios de fútbol.

Así, decenas de personas han sido condenadas a la pena capital desde mayo por su supuesta implicación en ataques terroristas.

jlc