China Shines Torch in Xinjiang's Face

Posted July 23, 2008

On a recent night in Yarkand, a town in the southwest of the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, I spied about a dozen members of the People's Liberation Army wielding clubs resembling baseball bats near my hotel. While the soldiers looked more bored than menacing, they served as a reminder that Xinjiang is, and will remain, part of China.

I have been traveling around the province for two weeks now, and would describe the atmosphere in Xinjiang as jittery. The two bomb blasts that tore through two buses killing two in Kunming, the capital of Yunnan Province, have only added to tensions. While investigations by authorities there show no links to terror groups, nonetheless the blasts bring back memories of similar explosions in 1997 carried out by the East Turkestan Islamic Movement.

ETIM is a radical Uighur Muslim group that advocates that Xinjiang become an independent nation. Beijing authorities are determined that ETIM, or other similar groups, do not exploit the upcoming Olympic Games to draw attention to their cause by carrying out terrorist attacks. Just a couple of weeks ago, for example, the Chinese police announced it had broken up 12 Uighur, “terrorist cells.” Shortly thereafter, two Muslims were executed as “terrorists.” Thus the bus bombings remind us that terrorism from Xinjiang is a concern in China.

Beijing’s solution to potential threats in Xinjiang—increasing its military presence and imposing new travel restrictions—has raised tensions in Uighur areas and made travel in the province more difficult for tourists.

I came to Xinjiang for the desert, mountains, and the food, but as I traveled from oases to mountain lakes, the most consistent thing I encountered were checkpoints. When I traveled from Urumqi to Kashgar, the bus stopped at least six times at police or military checkpoints; from Kashgar to Tashkurgan I went through two more military checkpoints, and from Kashgar to Yarkand, I went through three more. I was rarely asked for my passport—in general, an army or police officer would simply board the bus, walk the aisles, and stare into the faces of the Uighur passengers. Perhaps the officers were looking for specific terrorist suspects, but the effect was to appear as if they were trying to intimidate the Uighur population.

One evening in Kashgar, while having beers with a few Uighurs, I noticed a man on scooter watching us for about 30 minutes. He drove off, and then returned across the street to watch us some more. It is likely he was a government agent from the Public Security Bureau keeping tabs on who was talking to foreigners. The next night I witnessed around two dozen troops marching through the Old City. It would seem, the Chinese government is sending a clear signal to Xinjiang’s Uighurs: Any dissent will be put down harshly.

In addition to the increased military visibility, China has imposed new, vague travel restrictions in Xinjiang, which have irritated tourists due to the rules’ lack of consistency about when and where tourists are allowed to go. Two days after I stayed at Karakul, an alpine lake along the Karakoram Highway, the government started turning away all tourists without special stamps at a military checkpoint en route to the lake. I also tried to spend the night in the Taklamakan Desert, but when I arrived I was told the government had just banned foreigners from touring that day. My desert guide—whose livelihood will be lost if the ban continues—was told that the Chinese army was actively rooting out terrorists who were using the Taklamakan to sneak into China to disrupt the Olympics.

There is a very real risk of terrorism, but China is doing itself no favors by angering both its Uighur population and foreign tourists. If tourism continues to drop on the Southern Silk Road route, the economy will suffer creating the kind of poverty that could breed terrorism.

None of the Uighurs I spoke with would comment on the record, but one tourist from Hong Kong captured the problem for tourists: “I don’t know how China expects people to come to Xinjiang when the police are always shining flashlights in your face.”

Mr. Christopher Shay is a free-lance writer based in Hong Kong.