Shaping International Opinion: Holy War or a Dispute over a Seat?

This last week saw a return of many of the usual themes of official public discourse on Xinjiang. This is of course in the lead up to the third anniversary of the violence of July 2009, which saw Uyghurs and Han killing each other in Ürümchi. The authorities blamed an international terrorist plot for the violence committed by Uyghurs and chose not to acknowledge the violence committed against Uyghurs. So this week, China Daily ran with the very brief story of Guo Boxiong, vice chair of the Central Military Commission, announcing that the military and paramilitary forces will maintain stability and stressed the need for a “high level of ideological,political, and action unity”. Meanwhile, two Uyghurs were arrested on Renmin Lu in Ürümchi for giving out leaflets, allegedly on the charge of “incitement to split the country”. Outside of state-media, Radio Free Asia was running the story of Rabigul Yasin. Rabigul is seeking compensation after being “wrongfully shot” by paramilitary forces when hiding in a bin to get away from the July troubles. She was handcuffed and shackled during treatment and then had to bribe the police to release her son. This wouldn’t quite fit with the China Daily’s angle!

The biggest story of the last week was the alleged “attempted hijack” of a place by “terrorists” leaving Hotan for Ürümchi, foiled by SWAT police and passengers. For no real reason, the China Daily made extra effort to mention the anniversary of July 5^th 2009 and not the 7^th when Han residents organised in gangs to kill Uyghurs. The Huffington Post interviewed Dilxat Raxit of the World Uyghur Congress, who claimed the “hijack” was actually just a fight over seat assignments – not an uncommon incident in China! Caixin noted the good fortune of having 20 policeon board at the time with one Chinese blogger claiming 40 SWAT personnel were present. One witness commented on Weibo that this was “good screenwriting, good directing,and great acting”!

As is always the case we should take the party-state’s media organs on this subject as a source of discourse rather than facts: they tell stories which fit ‘facts’ to ideology. The Global Times quoted a “Regional Information Officer” stating that this was “a violent terrorist attack” despite admitting that any links to any terrorist organisation were unclear. The paper, which was once seen as relatively independent in China is now generally mocked by intellectuals. It managed to use the word terrorism 7 times in the brief article making it pretty clear that they want you to think of this as terrorism. They used Li Wei, a security “expert” based in Beijing, to perform mind-bending logical somersaults to state:

Premise: “separatists” want to make noise before 18^th national congress of the Chinese Commmunist Party.

Conclusion: this “hijack” was “motivated by exile groups overseas and their connection is close and underground”!

Convinced? Probably not. Perhaps the saddest part of the story is how international media uncritically regurgitate party-state press releases to a global audience on Xinjiang news. Key codewords, such as “terrorism”, “Islam”, “restive region”, and “ethnic”, which signify “danger”, are disseminated across the world, frightening readers with little or no knowledge of Xinjiang. This suggests people ought to think of Xinjiang as a “dangerous place” and Uyghurs as a “problem” but without any real evidence, background, or discussion. The Guardian, a very well respected broadsheet in the UK, referred to Hotan as “a heavily ethnic Uyghur area”. The article mentioned “holy war” and explained the party-line but without acknowledging that we really have no idea what happened here. Whatever “heavily ethnic” is supposed to mean, it sounds frightening! Internationally respected newspapers would do well to take their responsibilities more seriously in discussing the press releases of governments, particularly when they are used to justify politicised crackdowns on people giving out leaflets or hiding in bins.


EDIT: On the 2nd July, the Global Times confirmed two Uyghurs had been killed in the incident but offered little by the way of explanation, rehashing the "terrorist" narrative before we really know what happened.