China’s Uighurs --a Minority Seeks Equality

Dawut was pacing the floor of his home, trying to describe the size of the tiny prison cell in which he had been confined.

The experience, Dawut told his visitors, was worse than being imprisoned by Adolf Hitler’s Nazis.

“I read about a Polish journalist in World War II who said he was kept in a cell five paces long,” he went on. “Well, ours were only three paces long. We were always handcuffed, and our legs were chained to leg irons that weighed 15 kilograms (33 pounds). The only food was rice and corn. We were kept there for three years, and then sent out to do hard labor.”

Dawut (not his real name) is an intellectual of the Uighur nationality. His people, who speak a Turkic language and are Muslims, are a tiny minority in China. But they are the largest ethnic group in Xinjiang, China’s extremely sensitive northwestern province, which has a 1,925-mile border with the Soviet Union and covers roughly a sixth of China.

5.9 Million in Province

According to the 1982 census, there were about 5.9 million Uighurs in Xinjiang and only about 5.3 million Hans, or ethnic Chinese. The province’s total population was put at 13.1 million.

For the past three decades, the province’s official name has been Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, and the authorities are preparing a massive celebration in October for the region’s 30th anniversary. But a visit to Xinjiang and interviews with some of the Uighur activists make it plain that the Uighurs have little in the way of autonomy.

Despite some recent advances, there is still serious racial trouble between Hans and Uighurs. Events in the near future, among them the expected retirement of Gen. Wang Enmao, a Chinese who as provincial Communist Party leader has ruled Xinjiang for most of the past 36 years, could exacerbate the problem.

Influx of Chinese

“Xinjiang is our land, our territory,” Abliz (not his real name), another young Uighur intellectual, told two reporters.

He spoke in hushed tones, and only after being assured of anonymity and after turning up the volume on a television set in the room where the interview took place.

“The Chinese brought lots of (Han) people here in the 1950s,” he went on, “so now the population ratio is nearly 50-50. But for important jobs and money, it’s not anything like 50-50.”

Uighurs in Xinjiang like to tell a wry joke about a Uighur shoemaker who meets a fellow worker, a Han, who is newly arrived in the province. The next day the Han is appointed boss over the Uighur, and the next he is made director of the factory. A week later he becomes a member of the provincial Communist Party committee.

Attend Separate Schools

Generally, Uighurs and Hans attend separate schools at the elementary and secondary levels. At Xinjiang University, in Urumqi, Uighurs and Hans are assigned to separate dormitories and separate dining rooms.

Prof. Cao Xiangui, a language professor at the university, who “answered the call of the party” and came out here from Peking in 1955, explained the segregation: “The local people, they have mutton; we eat pork. They don’t like the smell of our food. It’s not convenient to eat together.”

In Kashi (Kashgar), a town on Xinjiang’s western border, most Hans live in modern, concrete-block apartment buildings, while Uighurs live in old, mud-walled houses. The houses have no running water; children, many of them caked with dirt and sores, walk several blocks over dirt paths to fill buckets and carry them home on shoulder yokes, much as people did in the Middle Ages.

As a matter of pride, some Uighurs refuse to speak the Chinese language. An 18-year-old Uighur girl who approached American visitors spoke a few words of English, but when a reporter tried to talk with her in Chinese, she demurred, saying, “I no Chinese.”

Later, in her home, she displayed an English-language textbook that showed she had been studying English not from Uighur but from Chinese. She proudly showed a picture of her father, and said he was a Uighur activist who had died in prison in the 1960s after being branded a counterrevolutionary.

Called Undisciplined

Hans, for their part, complain that the Uighurs are not disciplined enough, that they spend too much time at parties and not enough at the hard work to which Chinese are accustomed.

“The Uighurs don’t bring up their children correctly,” a young Chinese woman said as she passed a Uighur child on the street. “The parents let the kids eat anything they want.”

Justin Jon Rudelson, 23, a native of Los Angeles who has been working in a scientific institute in Urumqi since January and is one of a handful of Americans who speaks Uighur, said he has found that “by choice, there’s very little mixing” by the Hans and Uighurs of Xinjiang province.

“The Hans who came here to Xinjiang were genuinely trying to help their country,” he said, “and the Hans who came here are much more open than Chinese elsewhere. . . . But they do not learn the Uighur language or Central Asian history. It’s like Jews going to the Middle East and not learning Middle Eastern history, trying to be European.”

The Uighurs were the first Central Asian people to have a script of their own. More than 12 centuries ago, they were the dominant force across much of Central Asia. But in AD 840, the Uighurs were overwhelmed and dispersed by another Central Asian people, the Kirghiz. Many Uighurs settled here in what is now Xinjiang.

Turkish Origins Noted

Turkey’s Prime Minister Turgut Ozal observed, in the course of a recent visit to Peking, that the Turkish nation originated in this area. His government hopes to open a consulate here.

At the time of the Communist takeover, in 1949, only 5% of Xinjiang’s 4.3 million people were Hans. The Uighurs were by far the largest ethnic group in the province. But in the 1950s the Communist Party began a massive campaign of settling Xinjiang with Hans from other parts of China. Thousands of young men and women were assigned to jobs on farms and factories in Xinjiang.

They came singing propaganda songs they had learned in cities like Peking and Shanghai. The most popular was called “Xinjiang Hao Difang,” and the lyric went like this:

“How nice is Xinjiang; fine pastures both in south and north; the desert has turned into fertile fields.

“How sweet are the grapes, apples and melons, and the whole area is covered by coal, iron, gold and silver.”

Change in Writing

Cao, the language professor, said: “Before the liberation, I lived a poor life. If it were not for the liberation (the Communist takeover), I would not have gone to college. I thought to myself: The party has done so much for me, I should do what the party asks.”

The authorities also tried to force the Uighurs to give up their written language. At first, efforts were made to try to have the Uighurs use the Cyrillic alphabet, as Central Asian people are required to do in the Soviet Union. Later, as relations between China and the Soviet Union deteriorated, a campaign was initiated to get the Uighurs to use the Roman alphabet. This, too, has been abandoned.

For the first two decades under Communist control, Xinjiang was run by Wang, a lieutenant general in the People’s Liberation Army who entered the province with the first of Mao Tse-tung’s troops sent to take over from the Nationalist forces in 1949.

It was Wang who made sure that Xinjiang did not fall under the influence of the Soviet Union, and it was Wang who kept calm in the province while Hans were being brought in from the rest of China. But during the Cultural Revolution of the late 1960s, young Red Guards complained that Wang had created an “independent kingdom” in Xinjiang, and in 1969 he was forced to step aside.

Books Were Burned

Uighur activists say that the Cultural Revolution was the most difficult period for them. Red Guards burned books outside mosques and prevented Uighurs and other Muslim peoples, such as the Kazakhs, from practicing their religion. Those who tried to keep the Uighur language and culture alive were arrested and imprisoned.

“They just said we were counterrevolutionaries,” said Dawut, who was not freed until the 1970s. “The judge was a Uighur, but he was an ignoramus.”

After Mao’s death and the end of the Cultural Revolution, the central government began easing its policies toward the Uighurs and other minority peoples. But from 1979 to 1981, Xinjiang was in turmoil.

Uighurs battled Hans in a series of violent incidents. In Kashi, the assassination of a young Uighur peasant by a Han official touched off communal clashes in which two people were killed and many others were wounded. At one point, about 200 armed Uighurs tried unsuccessfully to storm an army base near Kashi.

Deng Restored Leader

Meanwhile, thousands of Hans who had been sent from Shanghai to work in Xinjiang began pressuring the authorities to let them go home. In the most serious incident, in 1980, tens of thousands of Shanghai natives occupied government offices in the town of Aksu, and some of them took part in a hunger strike to dramatize their plight.

China’s top leader, Deng Xiaoping, made a nine-day inspection tour of the province in mid-1981, and later that year he decided to put in new, if familiar, leadership for the province. Wang Enmao was brought back.

Since his return, the situation seems to have stabilized. Uighur intellectuals now say they feel it is unrealistic to get into a head-on confrontation with the government and the army.

“Some people would like to, but there is no hope,” Abliz said.

He is desperately anxious to preserve the Uighur culture, but he said, with a note of sadness in his voice, that he will probably send his children to Han schools so that they will not lose the chance for advancement.

Dawut said he is not taking part in any direct political activity. “Before,” he said, “I was stupid. Now, I am smart.” He said he believes the gradual opening of Xinjiang to tourists and other foreigners will help “to let the world know about the Uighurs.”

Economic Reforms Praised

Several of the Uighurs interviewed in Xinjiang said they are pleased by Deng’s economic reforms, which have meant more money and more freedom for individual enterprise.

“Deng is good for our stomachs,” a young Uighur teacher said.

Nevertheless, there are still signs of problems in Xinjiang. Last March, the provincial public security department issued a public notice about damage to broadcasting lines in the province. It warned that “lawless elements who deliberately sabotage these wires” would be punished.

Several changes, some of them already undertaken, could upset the delicate balance between Han and Uighur.

According to informed sources, Wang, 73, will step aside this fall as party first secretary, the top post in the province. And it is not clear whether another Han will be sent in or whether the post will go, for the first time, to a Uighur.

Over the years, Wang has promoted several Uighur officials to high-ranking positions. Two provincial party secretaries, Ismail Amat and Tomur Dawamat, are Uighurs, and both are members of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.

May Reduce Troops

The reduction in tension between China and the Soviet Union may also have an impact. Over the past five years, China has kept as many as 275,000 soldiers in Xinjiang, along with half a million military personnel in the Construction and Production Corps. Most are Hans from other provinces. They are stationed in Xinjiang to protect China’s borders, but they have been available to help maintain internal security.

A Uighur activist, asked how he feels about the improvement in China’s relations with the Soviet Union, replied: “It’s good. It means maybe some of the troops will leave.”

Early this year, work began on a new rail line that will run eventually from Urumqi to the Soviet border, where it will link up with the Soviet rail system. Then, for the first time, goods from Xinjiang can be moved easily to the Soviet Union and on to Eastern Europe.

“When that railroad opens, it will be another Silk Road,” a young official said, referring to the ancient caravan track that linked China to the West.

Oil, Coal Development

Other economic-development plans may also affect relations between the Uighurs and ethnic Chinese. Intensive efforts are under way to develop oil, coal and mineral reserves in Xinjiang. Companies such as Bechtel, Inc., the large U.S. engineering firm, have been asked to help plan and build mining and refining facilities.

Any discovery of new oil or mineral deposits in Xinjiang could touch off new disputes over how much the Uighurs will share in the wealth--controversies comparable to those involving American Indians in the United States.

According to a Uighur joke in Xinjiang, when the first rail line was completed to Urumqi, in the early 1960s, the trains coming into the province made a sound like “ chi chi chi ,” which in Chinese means “eat, eat, eat.”

On the way out, as the joke has it, the trains seemed to be saying, “Chi bao le, chi bao le, chi bao l e “-- “I’m full, I’m full, I’m full.”