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Madinat al-Muslimeen Islamic Message Board
| Muslims refuse to be pushed out of Beijing |
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| Sabr |
| 02/25/03 at 07:48:38 |
| [slm] Muslims refuse to be pushed out of Beijing Economic migrants from Xinjiang keep returning, despite official intimidation By GEOFFREY YORK Saturday, February 22, 2003 - Page A18 BEIJING -- Even as bulldozers destroy their homes and the police launch another wave of raids and arrests in their street, the Muslims of Xinjiang are stubbornly refusing to be erased from China's capital. Demolition crews were smashing through their homes again yesterday, wrecking the brick walls of the shabby buildings in Beijing's last remaining Xinjiang neighbourhood. Policemen raided the same street the night before, breaking down doors, arresting a dozen Muslims and putting them on trains back to their restive homeland in northwestern China. Yet they keep returning to Beijing, no matter how often they are harassed or persecuted by authorities who allege that Xinjiang is a hotbed of separatism, bombings, assassinations and kidnappings. Ever since the terrorist attacks in the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, the Chinese government has enjoyed a much freer hand in its crackdown on Xinjiang Muslims. Human-rights group have warned that China is exploiting the terrorism issue and the global antiterror campaign as an excuse to crush any dissent in Xinjiang, where many Muslims have formed underground groups to push for separatism. Yesterday, the Muslim migrants from Xinjiang were huddled around little coal fires on their street, trying to fend off the winter chill, while plainclothes police kept a close eye on them. When night falls, many of them sleep among the garbage in the abandoned buildings, or doze fitfully under the night sky on cheap cots and mattresses in the rubble of the demolished street. "I live in constant fear," said a 22-year-old man from Xinjiang who scrounges a living by grilling skewers of lamb at Muslim restaurants. "I just want to earn some money in Beijing and go back home. It's impossible to find any job in Xinjiang, so sometimes I work in Beijing. But whenever we go out, even to shop, the police always stop us and ask for our identification." Less than four months ago, he was arrested and forcibly placed on a train back to Xinjiang. "I felt very angry," he said, "because I hadn't done anything wrong." At the end of December, he defiantly returned to Beijing. But now the crackdown is under way again, and the demolition of his neighbourhood will soon be finished. The Muslims, who belong to the Uighur ethnic minority, are a slowly diminishing presence in the capital. "They want all the Xinjiang people to go home," an Uighur woman says. "They don't want us to live or work in Beijing." None of the Xinjiang people were willing to give their names to a journalist. When they were interviewed in a restaurant, the owner soon evicted the reporter. "If you keep asking these questions," one Muslim said, "I could become a political prisoner." Their little neighbourhood, known as Xinjiang Village, is the last stand of the Beijing Uighurs. A few years ago, they lived in another neighbourhood, famed for its restaurants and kebab vendors. But their street was demolished in 1999, forcing hundreds of Uighurs to move to the new village. Now even this last street is being destroyed, leaving them homeless. Landlords are unwilling to rent homes to them, Uighurs say. Xinjiang, a strategically important energy-rich region in the deserts of northwestern China, is a traditionally Muslim area on the Silk Road to Central Asia. But after massive migration by China's ethnic Han majority in recent decades, only about half of the region's 18 million people are Muslim today. According to human-rights groups, Xinjiang is the only region of China where political prisoners are still regularly executed. Police torture, beatings and arbitrary arrest are also widespread in the region, the groups said. Mosques and Uighur-language schools have been heavily controlled or even shut down. The Xinjiang people laugh derisively at the idea that they might be terrorists. "Most of us don't even have places to live, so how could we be terrorists?" one man asked. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20030222/UCHINM//?query=Muslim |
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