After terror attack, China's Uighurs fear prejudice

Calum MacLeod | USA TODAY

BEIJING — In the past year, his first in the Chinese capital, street vendor Imam Hasan has hardly experienced a warm Beijing welcome.

Authorities have regularly confiscated the flat-bed tricycle on which he sells walnuts, raisins and other snacks from his native Xinjiang, in China's far northwest.

As an ethnic Uighur and Muslim, Imam has faced discrimination by Beijing's landlords and hotels. He could find accommodation only in the distant suburbs, a daily two-hour cycle ride from central market areas.

And now he faces new hassles.

"Police checked my ID three times since Monday, but I have nothing to do with that incident," Imam, 34, said Thursday. "They just check me because I am from Xinjiang. I worry life will get worse here for Uighurs, the Han are often prejudiced against us," he said of China's majority Han community, who comprise 92% of the nation's 1.3 billion population.

In a bloody first for Beijing, a suicide attack Monday lunchtime killed the three occupants of the car and two tourists, injured 40 and brought terrorism into the political and symbolic heart of Communist China. Beijing police Wednesday called the deliberate crashing and igniting of the vehicle beside Tiananmen Square an act of terrorism by suspected Islamic extremists from the Xinjiang region.

Five suspects were detained the same day.

China's state-controlled and stability-obsessed media have allowed very limited coverage. Yet the vicious attack, and its apparently Uighur perpetrators, look set to deepen widespread suspicion among the Han that Uighurs engage in terrorism and other unlawful behavior.

China's 10 million Uighurs are less well-known internationally than the Tibetans, who also chafe against strict Chinese rule, but the Turkic-speaking Uighurs arguably present a greater challenge to Beijing. Authorities often blame the frequent violent episodes in Xinjiang on hostile foreign forces. Critics say Beijing exaggerates this threat to justify tight controls and frequent crackdowns, further angering Uighurs upset at what they perceive as state-backed discrimination.

Amid increased security measures in both Beijing and Xinjiang, police are still searching for suspects — and causing resentment among the capital's Uighurs. "I am also upset. They crashed a car, and we end up being harassed by police every day now, saying that we Xinjiang people are like that," Rozi Ura Imu, a 48-year-old jade trader from Kashgar, China's westernmost city, told the Associated Press Wednesday.

Rebiya Kadeer, the exiled president of the World Uighur Congress, called the attack tragic but pinned the blame on Beijing. "If the Uighurs did it, I believe they did it out of desperation because there is no channel for the Uighur people to seek redress for any kind of injustice they had suffered under Chinese rule," she told Reuters Wednesday, without accepting the official account. "Chinese claims simply cannot be accepted as facts without an independent and international investigation of what took place in Beijing on Monday," said Kadeer, who Beijing accuses of sponsoring "separatist" acts to create an independent Xinjiang.

Such an investigation seems unlikely. "China hasn't had a great record in transparency with regard to Xinjiang and Uighur involvement in radical organizations," said Michael Clarke, an expert on Xinjiang at Australia's Griffith University. Most of the recent, violent incidents "were based on local issues and grievances rather than connections to wider, radical Islamist movements," said Clarke, although Beijing must worry that such issues could be linked to wider currents in countries neighboring Xinjiang, and that the relative "success" of Monday's attack inspire further strikes, he said.

Uighur disenchantment is fueled by the feeling that Uighurs and other ethnic minorities have been sidelined by the Han-led economic modernization agenda, said Clarke. They also suffer ethnic discrimination in state policy from education through to the religion, where restrictions on Islamic schools are seen by some as a direct attack on Uighur identity, he said.

Poverty pushes Uighur migrants like Imam Hasan to Han cities like Beijing, where he says he can earn more than in his village in the Kashgar area. Uighurs often work as street vendors, traders, or run restaurants, as Han Chinese enjoy Uighur dishes including lamb kebabs and noodles. Long before the terrorist label, some Han commonly accused Uighurs of petty crimes in urban areas.

This week a police micro-blog in an eastern Shandong town warned about "thieves from Xinjiang."

Even fellow Chinese Muslims can be guilty of prejudice. Ma Junjie from the Hui ethnic group, who practice Islam but are otherwise ethnically and culturally similar to Han Chinese, rarely ventured outside during time off from a restaurant job in the Xinjiang capital Urumqi a decade ago. "But when I later made friends with Uighur people, I found most of them not scary, they are warm-hearted and generous, and only a tiny minority are like the criminals who crashed at the Gold Water bridge" beside Tiananmen, he said.

"As long as they have more communication with the outside world, their living conditions will improve," Ma, 27, said Thursday from the Xinjiang restaurant he runs in south Beijing. "I wish the government could give them more support, and Han people could show more understanding."

Contributing: Sunny Yang