by Nathan Schmidt

語言:
English
Photo Credit: Bernt Rostad/WikiCommons/CC

BORN THOUSANDS of miles apart along China’s desolate frontier, two men would embark on a decades-long journey, leaving behind the broken promise of a new dawn for the country’s minorities and venturing across the seas.

Their story of reaching Australia illustrates the parallel histories of China’s imperial conquests. One of them forgotten and maligned in the Western world, the other the central piece of a new great power struggle.

This is the story of Kalsang and Nurmuhammed: the story of Tibet and Xinjiang.

“When I became a teacher I tried to educate students in a way that they are not taught according to our curriculum” – Nurmuhammed

MORE THAN two hours outside of Lhasa, the regional capital of Chinese-administered Tibet, Kalsang was born to a family of small landholders. His village, like many in largely rural Tibet, was hidden away in the mountains and isolated from the larger political machinations that swept through the country since the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) first began occupying the kingdom in 1949.

Traditional dress, language, and customs were alive when Kalsang was a child in a way that they weren’t in Lhasa. Preferring to use only his first name for the safety of family still in Tibet, Kalsang says his father would still tell stories of life in former imperial Tibet when he was a child.

Lhasa. Photo credit: Dieter Schuh/WikiCommons/CC

Amid the waning days of the Chinese Civil War, PLA forces marched into Tibet –and also into Xinjiang– bent on dismantling what they saw as the feudalist structures that ruled over the largely independent state that had long been on the Chinese periphery.

Its people were deeply religious, as they are now, but with education –and in turn power– concentrated in the hands of the clerical establishment and a small feudal elite. Most people were poor and there were few schools in the country other than Buddhist temples. But they were happy, Kalsang says.

By September 1950, communist forces were outside of Lhasa. An agreement reached between the Tibetan government and the newly-minted PRC –known as the Seventeen Point Agreement– would allow China to annex the territory, but for the pace of “modernization” to be set by Tibet, as well as for the government to maintain retention of rights to manage internal and religious matters.

In the Chinese canon, this annexation is known as the “Peaceful Liberation of Tibet” and mirrors other so-called benign movements spreading through the Chinese frontier. By that same spring, when for the first time Mandarin-speaking militiamen marched through the streets of Lhasa, so too were they preparing to seize another former capital, Urumqi.

The ancient city on the silk road –known at the time as Dihua in the Turkic language– was the capital of the short-lived Second East Turkestan Republic (ETR), proclaimed only five years prior. Representing the majority-Turkic Uyghur population that had called the desolate plains home since Mongol times, the ETR had been pressured by the Soviets into surrendering to the PLA.

Less than a month after they entered the Tibetan capital, PLA troops were moving into Xinjiang. It all came as a great shock to the society there. While they may have been more than 2000 kilometers from Lhasa, the parents and grandparents of Nurmuhammed Majid in Hotan, Xinjiang province, were bracing for a similar unknown as Kalsang forebears.

When the PLA moved in, Nurmuhammed’s family quickly became targets. They had been wealthy landowners, the very sort of people the PRC wanted to destroy.

Like Kalsang, Nurmuhammed grew up in a village, removed from the difficulties of life in the urban centers of Urumqi or Kashgar, which underwent mass Han-izations in the decades after annexation. Tradition was alive but his family wealth was long gone.

The village had only one Chinese language class when Nurmuhammed attended school. His subjects were taught by Uyghur teachers in the Uyghur language, something unimaginable to urban-dwellers. It was the early 1980s. Change was coming. After decades of ideological supremacy, the death of Mao Zedong promised a new era for China’s minorities.

“There was a kind of easement in terms of religious practices, cultural practices or ethnic language and organization, due to the Chinese foreign policy at the time,” he says of his youth.

Meanwhile in Tibet, throughout the 60s and 70s, waves of resistance and retaliatory repression had shaken the country. The promises of peaceful transition had been mostly betrayed by the PRC who demolished temples—as they did mosques in Xinjiang–, sidelined Tibetans and flooded the country with Han Chinese.

The Dalai Lama, a spiritual leader believed to be a reincarnation of Buddhist figures who Tibetans turn to for guidance, had gone into exile in India during uprisings in Lhasa in 1959.

But by the 1980s—when Kalsang was also born—this was starting to change, too. The PLA had broken the back of the resistance, and with the death of Mao, the Gang of Four agreed to blame the failures in Tibet on their deceased Chairman.

Even more critically, in 1980, Deng Xiaoping ushered in a new age of openness. The repression enacted by his predecessors was toned down and new promises were made to safeguard the religious and cultural freedom of Tibetan and Uyghur people.

In Tibet, signs and street names were listed in Chinese and Tibetan. Jobs held by party cadres were handed off to locals. “It was almost too good to be true,” writes author Mary Craig. For the first time since “liberation”, it was possible for Tibetans to leave their village without a permit, as long as they didn’t travel more than ten miles.

Kalsang attended school, which was something his parents and grandparents were deprived of under the former Tibetan state. But it wasn’t easy. Unlike in Xinjiang, Kalsang’s curriculum was taught in Chinese. For a boy raised in a rural area, Mandarin was rarely spoken if at all. His day-to-day life was conducted in Tibetan.

“I couldn’t catch up with the rest of the students,” Kalsang says.

Photo credit: Jack Versloot/WikiCommons/CC

And yet, the stakes were never higher. In Tibet, Kalsang says performance in school determines one’s future. High achieving students continue their education and might receive mid-level government jobs. Failing students, which Kalsang was at risk of joining, would be forced to return to their villages and farms. And, for a family whose landholdings had been tugged at and taken apart by PRC land reforms, this was almost a death sentence.

“I didn’t expect to get through the system and get through to graduation to get a public service job,” he says. Not to mention that a background check would have revealed Kalsang’s brother had been arrested: a black mark against his name in any circumstance.

“So, I asked my mum about going to India and I just kept pushing them and they finally accepted.”

This was the year 2000, a new millennium, and Kalsang was only fourteen, but saw his whole life mapped out before him. And so, with his eight-year-old sister in tow, Kalsang would leave his village to begin a perilous journey through some of the world’s most extreme landscapes.

Meanwhile in Xinjiang, it would be education, too, that would force Nurmuhammed to leave China. He graduated from university in Beijing and became a teacher in Urumqi. In doing so, he started to develop connections with foreign nationals working or studying in the country and decided to set his own course when it came to educating younger generations.

“When I became a teacher I tried to educate students in a way that they are not taught according to our curriculum,” he says. He began teaching them about the occupation of East Turkestan, their former leaders, and the territory they had lost.

He would also regularly attend Friday prayers – another black mark. And, in time, found himself increasingly in trouble with the authorities and was regularly called in to see the school’s principal.

“The security department officers interviewed me on many occasions, asking me if I had any connections in Beijing or any foreign students. And, at some stage, another teacher at the same school that I worked was arrested. On his arrest, I became the next target,” he says.

He knew he had to leave. After a couple of months traveling in mainland China, and with help from a brother living in Europe, Nurmuhammed secured a passport to leave for a new life.

“I never had any issues with the Chinese government,” he says. “Only the ideology. I was not accepting that China is the legitimate authority of our country.”

In 2004, Nurmuhammed left China for Australia. He would never return.

“The Chinese government has successfully targeted and destroyed the religious element of the East Turkestan religion, completely reshaping the religious identity of Uyghur Muslims” – Nurmuhammed

WHEN PLA FORCES marched into Tibet, they ushered in a reign of destruction that would last for decades. Ancient temples that had stood for centuries were leveled. Places of higher learning brought to rubble. Monks forced into reeducation.

When the uprisings starting in 1959 swept through Lhasa, even the ancient capital’s three most significant monasteries –the Sera, Ganden, and Drepung temples– were seriously damaged by army shelling, with Sera being left almost beyond repair.

Growing up, Kalsang remembers distinctly how his grandmother would pray. She had lived in a Tibet free from Chinese occupation, unlike Kalsang. As a boy, Kalsang says she would sleep in the same room, and before going to bed would always utter the same words in Tibetan.

“The Chinese are going to occupy Tibet,” she would say.

“They are going to destroy all of the Tibetan religion.”

In Tibet, religion is so much more than just a belief system. It embodies Tibetan culture and history. Their version of Buddhism is merged with an ancient Tibetan religion known as Bon.

Its highest figure was the Dalai Lama and throughout the 60s and 70s, he still held a special place in the hearts and minds of Tibetan people. His authority was unrivaled, even by Chairman Mao. Amid the waning days of the Tibetan kingdom, two-year-old Gyalwa Rinpoche was chosen as the 14th Dalai Lama, and was only a teenager when he fled the country.

But the decades had taken their toll. A visiting delegation in 1980 determined that 1.2 million Tibetans, or half of the population, had been killed or had died of starvation; 6254 monasteries and nunneries had been destroyed; two-thirds of Tibetan territory had been absorbed into China proper, and; one in every ten Tibetans had been forced into labor camps, writes Mary Craig.

Dharamshala. Photo credit: John Hill/WikiCommons/CC

By the time Kalsang was born, the generations that had revered the Dalai Lama were fading away—as he remained in exile in Dharamshala, India. And despite having become internationally renowned, It wouldn’t be until Kalsang also arrived in India in his own exile that he would first hear of the holy figure.

The subject was deemed too taboo and dangerous to broach by his father, Kalsang assumes and was kept secret. The freedoms of village life had their limitations. After crossing the Indian-Tibet border and arriving in little Tibet, Kalsang finally discovered the Dalai Lama in his decades-old diasporic haven of Dharamshala—and home to his government-in-exile.

Ever since the Chinese occupation began, Kalsang believes the religion in Tibet underwent a metamorphosis. Like the Dalai Lama, a lot of high lamas were imprisoned by the PRC or forced into exile in 1950, he says. And upon their release during the brief spring of the early 1980s when Kalsang was born, they found their monasteries were destroyed.

“But they didn’t care much about how the monastery looked. Most of them have been destroyed, but still, they came back. It’s just a place that facilitates peoples’ learning from [the monks, and] to practice their religion,” says Kalsang.

“You can practice anywhere as long as you’re committed.

“That’s why the religion has survived.”

Restrictions on the monasteries even today limit the ability of monks to teach or practice their faith. Their numbers were rigidly controlled and those that remained were forced to attend reeducation that could last, Kalsang says, anywhere between six months to three years. Even the traditional task of tending to their temples was instead mandated by the state to ordinary workers.

In the end, though, Kalsang says this only empowered the faithful in Tibet. In fact, according to Freedom House, it’s even gaining members by the millions. The young, he says, are still carrying the faith.

Unlike in the past when monasteries had something of a monopoly on faith, Kalsang says people now practice their faith in public or at home. While they are not allowed to keep pictures of the Dalai Lama or Buddha, their faith itself has become fluid and has evolved under persecution by the PRC.

The relationship between the PRC and local religion is well documented. Unlike in other territories coveted by the PRC, including inner Mongolia, religion was a significant cultural force in Tibet and in East Turkestan

In the latter, now Xinjiang, where the Islamic faith before annexation, Nurmuhammed believes, was adhered to by almost 100 percent of the population, religion in particular was targeted during the Cultural Revolution.

“They used that black wave of thought to target the religion primarily, which is why all the Muslims in East Turkestan treat their religion as private practice.

The situation echoes that in Tibet. By 1978, Nurmuhammed says there was not a single mosque in all of East Turkestan except for the Id Kah Mosque in Kashgar.

“The mosques were completely destroyed and were turned into the pig stables. And all the religious leaders in the communities were killed. Murdered.”

The opening up under Deng Xiaoping had an impact in East Turkestan, too. In the 1980s, Nurmuhammed says the first Koran was published in the Chinese language. Meanwhile, mosques were being built and the first pilgrimages were being made to the Islamic holy city of Mecca. Travel was also opened up to Muslim-majority countries like Egypt and Yemen.

Wary of the disenfranchisement among ethnic communities in Xinjiang and Tibet that had been building up over decades, the new PRC leadership instituted an economic program known as the “Great Western Development Drive“.

While the primary focus of economic liberalization at the time was to develop the coastal areas, including special economic zones in Guangdong, the “Drive” was intended to alleviate poverty in the West and better integrate ethnic communities into the Han majority.

In East Turkestan, this instigated a renewed interest in exploiting the region’s vast and mostly-untapped natural resources, which included large oil reserves and agricultural land suitable for cotton. Grand infrastructure projects to better connect Xinjiang with the East were developed by the PRC to capitalize on these resources, as well as the construction of new urban infrastructure.

At the same time, the promise of autonomy was being lifted from the ashes. In East Turkestan and Tibet, self-determination was promised in the early years after annexation. The provinces would voluntarily merge with China proper at the right time, the logic went.

Photo credit: Zhanyoun/WikiCommons/CC

Rhetorically, the PRC emphasized the historical “brotherhood” between Beijing, Lhasa, and Urumqi. But as the years and decades came and went, it became clear true autonomy would remain elusive as the PRC forced Tibet and Xinjiang further into the fold.

In 1984, the PRC sought to change this. On paper, at least. The central government promulgated the Law on Regional National Autonomy, the “basic law for the implementation of the system of regional national autonomy prescribed by the Constitution.” It tacitly encouraged greater autonomy but refused to go so far as to yield real decision-making to local governments.

The rapid economic development had an adverse effect as well, meanwhile. The better connection between East and West also allowed for a massive influx of Han Chinese into the region. The cracks were showing again.

“In spite of the region’s vast natural resources, the central government did little throughout the 1980s to develop Xinjiang’s potential, leading to the view that Beijing was failing to give the region adequate attention,” writes Matthew D. Moneyhon for the Denver Journal of International Law and Policy.

Just as Tibetans were facing a renewed brutality and repression toward the late 1980s, it was clear the opening up in Xinjiang also would not last and the level of repression was once again ramped up. People who exercised their brief freedoms were targeted. And, the PRC’s policy of population control was expanded upon.

“The Chinese government has completely restricted the natural growth of the population in East Turkestan,” says Nurmuhammed.

And, “Because the Chinese government knew that the restriction could cause resistance from the local communities, they prepared for a new wave of crackdowns, starting in the 1990s.”

Just as the PRC had controlled the monks and their teachings in Tibet, Nurmuhammed says they sought to also dismantle the Muslim faith by rooting out centers of knowledge in East Turkestan throughout the late 80s and 90s. Adherents were being left without any knowledge. When asked simple questions about their faith, they could not answer.

“The Chinese government has successfully targeted and destroyed the religious element of the East Turkestan religion, completely reshaping the religious identity of Uyghur Muslims.”

China’s minorities were once again under the thumb of the PRC, and they were fighting back.

“One morning [my father] was just about to wake up and then the bullets came flying through the windows” – Kalsang

A WAVE OF violence tore through East Turkestan in the late 1990s. It started in February 1997. Police had decided to crack down on groups of youth engaging in Meshrep, an activity that merged traditional dance, poetry, and politics. At the same time, news leaked of the arrest and execution of at least 30 prominent Uyghur activists. The fuse was lit.

For two days, protestors marched through the streets of Ghulja. They chanted “God is great” and called for independence. In response, the PLA opened fire. Chinese reports say nine demonstrators were killed. Opposition figures say it’s closer to 100.

Just three weeks later and the bloodletting began again. This time, it was Uyghur groups who claimed to be behind the violence. Three bombs detonated on three different bus lines in Urumqi resulting in the deaths of at least nine people, including three children.

Urumqi. Photo credit: Radosław Botev/WikiCommons/CC

Throughout the 1990s, Han migration to East Turkestan increased exponentially. Uyghurs had new Han neighbors who didn’t share their language or their faith. They pushed Uyghurs out of work and transformed the ancient cities of the silk road with new industry and commerce. The Urumqi of old was replaced with glitz and modernity.

The specter of separatism—real or imagined–has long haunted the corridors of old Kashgar, Hotan, and Urumqi. It’s been used time and time again, Nurmuhammed says, as justification for gross violence and repression.

The state’s heavy-handedness, Nurmuhammed believes, was “orchestrated by the Chinese government to instigate the hatred between Han Chinese and ethnic people in Tibet and Xinjiang to cause unrest to make sure the government successfully implements that next level of crackdown policies.”

“They especially targeted the minority groups in a systematic way that claims they are orchestrating some sort of anti-Chinese national-unity activism.

“But everything is made up by the Chinese government in order to establish or install such policies that have been prepared to suppress the ethnic groups.”

And then the unimaginable happened. A passenger plane halfway around the world collided with the tallest building in the heart of the world’s –self-professed–most powerful country. Anti-terrorism was suddenly in vogue. Countries around the world were allowed a new carte blanche approach to rooting out “terrorism”, crushing opposition in the name of global terror.

From 2016 onwards, these policies were overseen by Chen Quanguo. He was appointed to Xinjiang after serving for four years in Tibet. When he first arrived in Lhasa, he instituted a sweeping system of mass surveillance and intimidation.

The very same month as his promotion, Chen hired an additional 2,500 police officers who helped erect large concrete police stations that would allow them to effectively surveil the entire city, 24/7.

His “double-linked household management” policy surveilled another 81,140 households –more than three million people– in Tibet. The Orwellian system encouraged neighbors and family members to spy on one another.

Under his administration, the rates of self-immolation went up staggeringly. Often carrying illegal pictures of the Dalai Lama, 156 monks self-immolated in Tibet up until December 2019. Even more temples and nunneries were demolished and their residents forced into reeducation camps.

And in a final insult, in 2015 before the end of his tenure, Chen authorized 280,000 Han Chinese to settle in Lhasa.

Even before Chen arrived in Xinjiang, violence there had continued through the decades. In March 2008, another bus bomb tore through commuters in Urumqi. That August, police were attacked in Kashgar. By 2013, violence in that city allegedly transpiring between militants and local police had left at least 21 dead.

Many of these acts were being blamed on the Turkey-based East Turkestan Liberation Organization and other “separatist” groups. Established in the late 90s, the organization has had a string of violent attacks attributed to it throughout the years, not just in China.

Chen was promoted to Party Secretary of Xinjiang in 2016 after his “success” in Tibet. He implemented many of the same policies, just on a much larger scale, says Nurmuhammed.

After Chen took office, he issued a written military order to premier Xi Jinping, putting forward a simple, maximalist slogan:

“In Xinjiang, if there is no stability then all our efforts are for nothing.”

He greatly expanded detention camps in the region. By 2021, they are estimated to be holding more than one million people for “reeducation” or “vocational training”. He also stifled dissenting party members who feared his actions would stoke ethnic tensions, including one party leader who was jailed after quietly releasing thousands of inmates from reeducation.

Photo credit: Xinjiang Juridical Administration

He even razed Uyghur cemeteries.

But, just as in Tibet, Chen also oversaw a period of rapid industrial growth. In Lhasa, he helped the region achieve growth of 12 percent in 2014, making it first in the country at the time. In Xinjiang, GDP increased from 752.9 billion CNY in 2012 to 1.38 trillion CNY in 2020, with an average annual growth rate of 27.5 percent.

Most of these jobs went to Mandarin-speaking Han immigrants. But, as Kalsang explains, there also started to develop an emerging Tibetan middle class.

“Each year at least 10 million Han Chinese are being transferred into East Turkestan, whereas local Uyghurs and Tibetans are continuously arrested and killed under unknown circumstances” – Nurmuhammed

IN RECENT YEARS, the repression and violence in Xinjiang has been well documented. It’s become a global talking point at the heart of a new clash of civilisations. So long as Washington, London and Canberra are at loggerheads with China, then the unfolding genocide will stay relevant.

But then again, throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Tibet was also in the news. The US supported Tibetan guerrillas until it was no longer politically prescient. It was still sponsoring Taiwan at the time. But in today’s political parlance, Tibet is barely a whisper. Never to let politics and human rights get in the way of business.

From the slums of little Tibet to the high streets of modern Sydney, the diaspora have been forgotten. Their rallies are not covered. Their protests are ignored. Many have never even seen Tibet. While others, like Kalsang, are always walking on a tightrope—lest their family face repercussions.

It’s been a decade since Kalsang has even spoken to his mother directly. Messages are instead shared by his siblings in the country. He knows all their phones have been tapped. One day, Kalsang was speaking with a sister still in Tibet. She vented her frustrations about her child’s difficulties in class with Chinese language.

“And then a couple of hours later, she got a call from local authority and also asked her to come over to the town and the police station.”

Technology has made it even easier for the PRC to track Tibetans, Uyghurs and any dissenting voice. But Kalsang believes, when change comes to Tibet, it won’t come from outside the country. It will be ordinary Tibetans that will lead the way. And despite the sheer challenge they are faced with, he is cautiously optimistic.

As a new Tibetan middle class in China balloons, they become more aware of their second class status, says Kalsang. While public jobs stifle their ability to speak up out of fear of losing their privileged position, private-sector jobs created by booming economies under secretary Chen have meant there are new spaces for discussion and new freedoms.

“As long as they don’t really have to rely solely on public service, or as long as you know there’s some sort of security in terms in terms of wealth, I think they might start to raise the Tibet issue,” Kalsang says. 

“Even if you’ve got cars and a mobile phone–you’ve got everything– you can’t go to America. People will realize, in a matter of time, how they are treated as a second class in China.

“So, I’m pretty sure that that’s going to be a big issue.”

In Xinjiang, Nurmuhammed believes the opposite might be true. The situation there has its obvious differences. For starters, Nurmuhammed says, there are millions more Uyghur than there are Tibetans. The army presence in Kashgar, Urumqi or Hotan, is much more profound as a result, he says. Efforts to limit Uyghur populations –whose birthrates are much higher than Han Chinese– are also extreme, and include forced sterilizations.

In 2016, Nurmuhammed claims census data put the number of Uyghur in Xinjiang at 11.3 million. By 2019, he says that dropped to eight.

“Streets that were crowded just six years ago are empty today,” in the old cities of East Turkestan, he says.

According to Chinese sources, the GDP in Xinjiang in 2019 was 1.36 trillion yuan (US197 billion). In Tibet the same year, it was only 170 billion (US24.6 billion). Xinjiang accounts for 87 per cent of China’s cotton production. Uyghurs in forced labor produce products for an array of leading brands, including Apple, the Gap, Nike, Samsung, and Volkswagen. More than 80,000 of those workers were transferred to factories outside of Xinjiang.

Unlike in Tibet which is guarded by dangerous mountain passages, Nurmuhammed says that all that separates East Turkestan from mainland China is desert plains. Products are ferried across the country by trains whose tracks were laid during the 1980s.

Xinjiang has a greater intrinsic value, and threat, than Tibet. In the 1990s, when Central Asia was gaining independence from the Soviet Union, the Uyghurs became restless, Nurmuhammed says. Their religion connects them to their neighbours in Kazakhstan, Afghanistan or Tajikistan, and to global Islamic movements.

Yet, Nurmuhammed believes, that value might be its undoing.

“The Uyghurs, though they are in reeducation, in prisons or in a suppressive community life, still have aspirations for independence. This is only relevant to an opportunity which can be created whether from the external powers or from the internal ignition,” he says.

And it’s often those external factors, Nurmuhammed admits, that have played a significant role in shaping independence movements globally.

That’s not to say foreign actors such as the East Turkestan Liberation Organization and the Turkestan Islamic Party, according to Nurmuhammed, are the answer. These groups have little real impact on the ground and instead are embroiled in foreign wars such as the ongoing conflict in Syria. Nor are Muslim-majority countries like Turkey, cowed as they are by Chinese money.

A pressure point now being applied to China, Nurmuhammed believes, might be the right one. And it is certainly getting a response. Calls to ban Chinese cotton have been responded to with tirades splayed across Twitter from Chinese diplomatic missions around the world. Which marks a considerable ramping up of their propaganda campaign.

“China has shown arrogance. It has diplomatic relations with about 100 countries in the world. But can you point to which country is the ally of China?” he asks.

Photo credit: Colegota/WikiCommons/CC

“The international community has not abandoned us entirely. I do believe politics is a game. [The US] are waiting for an opportunity. 

“No atrocities can be committed forever. No dictator can survive forever.

“In the next five years, maybe the international politics will be reshaped again.”

If countries begin to boycott China and move away from it economically, will it really be worthwhile to hold on to Xinjiang? Nurmuhammed ponders. Already companies like H&M are raising concerns about products made with forced labour, and are facing boycotts for their trouble.

And if that doesn’t work, there’s no way the Uyghurs will give up anytime soon, Nurhamummed believes.

“We’re still able to carry guns, ready to fight, ready to die.”

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