Turkish Forum

Category: East Asia & Pacific

  • China calls time on dollar hegemony

    China calls time on dollar hegemony

    You can date the end of dollar hegemony from China’s decision last month to sell its first batch of sovereign bonds in Chinese yuan to foreigners.

    By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
    06 Oct 2009

    The Chinese yuan: friends take a photo in front of a sculpture of a one-hundred yuan banknote in Beijing
    The Chinese yuan: friends take a photo in front of a sculpture of a one-hundred yuan banknote in Beijing

    Beijing does not need to raise money abroad since it has $2 trillion (£1.26 trillion) in reserves. The sole purpose is to prepare the way for the emergence of the yuan as a full-fledged global currency.

    “It’s the tolling of the bell,” said Michael Power from Investec Asset Management. “We are only beginning to grasp the enormity and historical significance of what has happened.”

    It is this shift in China and other parts of rising Asia and Latin America that threatens dollar domination, not the pricing of oil contracts. The markets were rattled yesterday by reports – since denied – that China, France, Japan, Russia, and Gulf states were plotting to replace the Greenback as the currency for commodity sales, but it makes little difference whether crude is sold in dollars, euros, or Venetian Ducats.

    What matters is where OPEC oil producers and rising export powers choose to invest their surpluses. If they cease to rotate this wealth into US Treasuries, mortgage bonds, and other US assets, the dollar must weaken over time.

    “Everybody in the world is massively overweight the US dollar,” said David Bloom, currency chief at HSBC. “As they invest a little here and little there in other currencies, or gold, it slowly erodes the dollar. It is like sterling after World War One. Everybody can see it’s happening.”

    “In the US they have near zero rates, external deficits, and public debt sky-rocketing to 100pc of GDP, and on top of that they are printing money. It is the perfect storm for the dollar,” he said.

    “The dollar rallied last year because we had a global liquidity crisis, but we think the rules have changed and that it will be very different this time [if there is another market sell-off]” he said.

    The self-correcting mechanism in the global currency system has been jammed until now because China and other Asian powers have been holding down their currencies to promote exports. The Gulf oil states are mostly pegged to the dollar, for different reasons.

    This strategy has become untenable. It is causing them to import a US monetary policy that is too loose for their economies and likely to fuel unstable bubbles as the global economy recovers.

    Lorenzo Bini Smaghi, a board member of the European Central Bank, said China for one needs to bite bullet. “I think the best way is that China starts adopting its own monetary policy and detach itself from the Fed’s policy.”

    Beijing has been schizophrenic, grumbling about the eroding value of its estimated $1.6 trillion of reserves held in dollar assets while at the same time perpetuating the structure that causes them to accumulate US assets in the first place – that is to say, by refusing to let the yuan rise at any more than a glacial pace.

    For all its talk, China bought a further $25bn of US Treasuries in June and $25bn in July. The weak yuan has helped to keep China’s factories open – and to preserve social order – during the economic crisis, though exports were still down 23pc in August. But this policy is on borrowed time. Reformers in Beijing are already orchestrating a profound shift in China’s economy from export reliance (38pc of GDP) to domestic demand, and they know that keeping the dollar peg too long will ultimately cause them to lose export edge anyway – via the more damaging route of inflation.

    For the time being, Europe is bearing the full brunt of Asia’s currency policy. The dollar peg has caused the yuan to slide against the euro, even as China’s trade surplus with the EU grows. It reached €169bn (£156bn) last year. This is starting to provoke protectionist rumblings in Europe, where unemployment is nearing double digits.

    ECB governor Guy Quaden said patience is running thin. “The problem is not the exchange rate of the dollar against the euro, but rather the relationship between the dollar and certain Asian currencies, to mention one, the Chinese Yuan. I say no more.”

    France’s finance minister Christine Lagarde said at the G7 meeting that the euro had been pushed too high. “We need a rebalancing so that one currency doesn’t take the flak for the others.”

    Clearly this is more than a dollar problem. It is a mismatch between the old guard – US, Europe, Japan – and the new powers that require stronger currencies to reflect their dynamism and growing wealth. The longer this goes on, the more havoc it will cause to the global economy.

    The new order may look like the 1920s, with four or five global currencies as regional anchors – the yuan, rupee, euro, real – and the dollar first among equals but not hegemon. The US will be better for it.

    Telegraph

  • UIGHURS: A tale of two cities under siege

    UIGHURS: A tale of two cities under siege

    Watch Video
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8291904.stm

    Three months after the fierce outbreak of ethnic violence in the Western Chinese region of Xinjiang, when more than 200 ethnic Chinese and predominantly Muslim Uighurs were killed, our world affairs editor John Simpson has visited Xinjiang’s two main cities, Urumqi and Kashgar.

    Chinese soldiers man a checkpoint along a street in Urumqi, China (file image from Aug 2009)

    Urumqi is a city under siege – there are patrols of soldiers and armed police in full riot gear everywhere.
    In a 10-minute walk along the city streets you are likely to encounter four or five of them, each composed of a dozen or so men.
    The tension is evident – few people are prepared to speak about what happened here, and none openly.
    One Uighur woman spoke to us in secret about the events of 5 July.
    She witnessed the murder of two ethnic Han Chinese by a gang of Uighurs.
    “People were going crazy,” she said. Altogether, 198 Chinese died that day.
    Then, two days later, Chinese gangs carried out revenge killings of Uighurs.
    No official figures have been issued, but the woman thought about 10 Uighurs had been killed.
    House arrest
    The authorities are very nervous about the presence of foreign journalists.

    Women in China's Xinjiang province

    Access to ordinary people was limited by authorities

    Everywhere we went in Urumqi my television team and I were followed, sometimes by three unmarked police cars at a time.
    And when we flew on to Kashgar, where many of the more militant Uighurs involved in the riots came from, the police detained us at the airport.
    We were allowed to stay in Kashgar until the next morning, but everywhere we went a contingent of police followed us and prevented our filming or interviewing anyone.
    It was clear they thought we had come to meet Islamic fundamentalists, and were determined to stop us.
    That night, we were kept under house arrest at a hotel in the centre of Kashgar.
    Ethnic violence is something that worries the Chinese government deeply. It threatens the cohesion of the entire country.

    Most disturbing of all for the Chinese authorities, though, is the growing influence of extremism

    The immediate cause of July’s rioting seemed small enough – rumours spread that two Uighur workers had been killed by Han Chinese in south-east China, thousands of miles away.
    Yet the hostility towards Han Chinese which many Uighurs in Xinjiang feel is so intense that trouble broke out at once.
    The origins for this hostility are complex. The Chinese government has often treated Uighurs generously, offering promising students places at good universities and making it easy for them to work elsewhere in China.
    Yet many remain wretchedly poor. Now the poverty-stricken areas of cities like Urumqi and Kashgar are being knocked down and new housing is being built, but this often increases local resentment.
    People see it as a direct attack on their traditions and culture.
    Worried
    Over the years, ethnic Chinese immigration into Xinjiang has sometimes been encouraged by Beijing and sometimes not, but the net result is that in Urumqi, their own capital city, Uighurs are now a minority.
    There are increasing signs of separatist feeling among them. The discovery of oil has convinced many Uighurs that if they were independent, they could be a viable state.
    Most disturbing of all for the Chinese authorities, though, is the growing influence of extremism.
    Uighurs say it scarcely existed before the mid-1990s, and that China was slow in waking up to the challenge.
    Now there are plenty of mosques, particularly in Kashgar, where fundamentalist Uighur imams are active.
    The Chinese Communist Party, always nervous when any rival organisation or movement starts to attract support, has responded with the creation of new task forces.
    Known as “social stability teams”, they act partly as social security workers, addressing grievances, and partly as the eyes and ears of the authorities. Many Uighurs have been recruited to the teams.
    We came across some of them in the slum area of Gulistan, a Uighur stronghold in Urumqi, as they were going from door to door.
    They work closely with the undercover police, and in Gulistan they co-operated with the eight or more in plain clothes who were following us around.
    Urumqi itself is quiet now. The big deployment of soldiers and police has ensured that.
    But in Kashgar the authorities seem far less confident. Three months after the rioting, it is all too clear that the Chinese authorities have not yet got the situation under full control.
    And they are plainly worried.
    Three months after the fierce outbreak of ethnic violence in the Western Chinese region of Xinjiang, when more than 200 ethnic Chinese and predominantly Muslim Uighurs were killed, our world affairs editor John Simpson has visited Xinjiang’s two main cities, Urumqi and Kashgar.

    Chinese soldiers man a checkpoint along a street in Urumqi, China (file image from Aug 2009)
    Urumqi is a city under siege – there are patrols of soldiers and armed police in full riot gear everywhere.
    In a 10-minute walk along the city streets you are likely to encounter four or five of them, each composed of a dozen or so men.
    The tension is evident – few people are prepared to speak about what happened here, and none openly.
    One Uighur woman spoke to us in secret about the events of 5 July.
    She witnessed the murder of two ethnic Han Chinese by a gang of Uighurs.
    “People were going crazy,” she said. Altogether, 198 Chinese died that day.
    Then, two days later, Chinese gangs carried out revenge killings of Uighurs.
    No official figures have been issued, but the woman thought about 10 Uighurs had been killed.
    House arrest
    The authorities are very nervous about the presence of foreign journalists.
    Everywhere we went in Urumqi my television team and I were followed, sometimes by three unmarked police cars at a time.
    And when we flew on to Kashgar, where many of the more militant Uighurs involved in the riots came from, the police detained us at the airport.
    Women in China's Xinjiang province
    We were allowed to stay in Kashgar until the next morning, but everywhere we went a contingent of police followed us and prevented our filming or interviewing anyone.
    It was clear they thought we had come to meet Islamic fundamentalists, and were determined to stop us.
    That night, we were kept under house arrest at a hotel in the centre of Kashgar.
    Ethnic violence is something that worries the Chinese government deeply. It threatens the cohesion of the entire country.

    Most disturbing of all for the Chinese authorities, though, is the growing influence of extremism

    The immediate cause of July’s rioting seemed small enough – rumours spread that two Uighur workers had been killed by Han Chinese in south-east China, thousands of miles away.
    Yet the hostility towards Han Chinese which many Uighurs in Xinjiang feel is so intense that trouble broke out at once.
    The origins for this hostility are complex. The Chinese government has often treated Uighurs generously, offering promising students places at good universities and making it easy for them to work elsewhere in China.
    Yet many remain wretchedly poor. Now the poverty-stricken areas of cities like Urumqi and Kashgar are being knocked down and new housing is being built, but this often increases local resentment.
    People see it as a direct attack on their traditions and culture.
    Worried
    Over the years, ethnic Chinese immigration into Xinjiang has sometimes been encouraged by Beijing and sometimes not, but the net result is that in Urumqi, their own capital city, Uighurs are now a minority.
    There are increasing signs of separatist feeling among them. The discovery of oil has convinced many Uighurs that if they were independent, they could be a viable state.
    Most disturbing of all for the Chinese authorities, though, is the growing influence of extremism.
    Uighurs say it scarcely existed before the mid-1990s, and that China was slow in waking up to the challenge.
    Now there are plenty of mosques, particularly in Kashgar, where fundamentalist Uighur imams are active.
    The Chinese Communist Party, always nervous when any rival organisation or movement starts to attract support, has responded with the creation of new task forces.
    Known as “social stability teams”, they act partly as social security workers, addressing grievances, and partly as the eyes and ears of the authorities. Many Uighurs have been recruited to the teams.
    We came across some of them in the slum area of Gulistan, a Uighur stronghold in Urumqi, as they were going from door to door.
    They work closely with the undercover police, and in Gulistan they co-operated with the eight or more in plain clothes who were following us around.
    Urumqi itself is quiet now. The big deployment of soldiers and police has ensured that.
    But in Kashgar the authorities seem far less confident. Three months after the rioting, it is all too clear that the Chinese authorities have not yet got the situation under full control.
    And they are plainly worried.

  • Turkish Airlines and Asiana Airlines form code share agreement

    Turkish Airlines and Asiana Airlines form code share agreement

    Published by Ozgur Tore   
    Tuesday, 06 October 2009
    Turkish Airlines has signed a new code share agreement with Asiana Airlines from South Korea as part of an expansion program. The new code share agreement which will go into effect on October 25th, 2009 will enhance the flow of trade and tourism between Turkey and Korea.

     As an outcome of the new code share agreement signed between Turkish Airlines and Asiana Airlines, passengers from Seoul will be able to connect on Turkish Airlines’ network to any of its 119 international destinations including routes to Turkey, Europe, North America, South America, Russia, Central Asia and the Middle East.

    Passengers from Istanbul will also be able to enjoy the convenience of Asiana Airlines’ wide network of connections to South Korea, and other popular destinations in Japan, China and South-East Asia. Asiana Airlines’ network covers 82 international destinations.

    A1

     

    FTNNEWS

  • China publishes white paper on Xinjiang

    China publishes white paper on Xinjiang

     2009-09-21 15:14:40

    Full text: Development and Progress in Xinjiang

        BEIJING, Sept. 21 (Xinhua) — The Chinese government Monday published a white paper on the development and progress in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, stressing national unification, ethnic unity, social stability are the “lifeblood” for the region’s development and progress.

        The paper, released by the State Council Information Office, reviewed the profound changes that have taken place in the past 60 years in Xinjiang, which accounts for about one sixth of the country’s land territory.

        It also slammed the “East Turkistan” forces for seriously disrupting Xinjiang’s development and progress by trumpeting separatism and plotting and organizing a number of bloody incidents of terror and violence.

        The 52-page document is divided into seven sections: Swift Economic Development; Remarkable Improvement in People’s Lives; Steady Development of Social Programs; Preservation of Ethnic Cultures; Upholding Ethnic Equality and Unity; Protecting Citizens’ Rights of Freedom of Religious Belief; and Safeguarding National Unity and Social Stability.

        The great development and progress “should be attributed to the concerted efforts by all peoples of Xinjiang under the banner of solidarity of all ethnic groups, as well as to the success of China’s policies on ethnic minorities,” it said.

        Since the first century B.C., Xinjiang, historically the passage for land transport and civilized contact between Asia and Europe, has been an important part of China, and played a significant role in the construction and development of a unitary multiethnic country, it said.

        Prior to the founding ceremony of the People’s Republic of China on Oct. 1, 1949, Xinjiang witnessed its peaceful liberation. Peoples of Xinjiang, who had undergone great sufferings together with the people in other parts of the country, became the masters of the state, it said.

        Since 1949, particularly after China’s reform and opening-up in the late 1970s, Xinjiang has entered an era of rapid economic and social progress, with the local residents enjoying the most tangible benefits, according to the paper.

        The local GDP in 2008 stood at 420.3 billion yuan, which is 86.4 times higher than that of 1952, three years before the establishment of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, up 8.3 percent on average annually, it said.

        In 2008, the per-capita net income of farmers in Xinjiang was 3,503 yuan, which is 28 times more than that of 1978, while the per-capita disposable income of urban residents reached 11,432 yuan, which is 35 times more than that of 1978, it said.

        The great economic achievements are the results of concerted efforts by all peoples of Xinjiang, and of support from the central government and the entire nation.

        From 1950 to 2008, the central government invested 386.23 billion yuan in Xinjiang, accounting for 25.7 percent of the total investment in the region, it said.

        Huge progress was also made in areas including education, science, arts, health and medical services, employment, social security, as well as the preservation of ethnic cultures, according to the paper.

        In Xinjiang, citizens of every ethnic group enjoy the rights prescribed by the Constitution and laws, including freedom of religious belief, and rights to vote and stand for election, it said.

        According to the Constitution and laws, they also enjoy the rights to equally administer state affairs, to receive education, to use and develop their own spoken and written languages, and to preserve and advance the traditional culture of their own peoples, according to the paper.

        The number of Xinjiang’s cadres from minority ethnic groups was46,000 in 1955. It shot up to 363,000 in 2008, accounting for 51.25 percent of the total number of cadres in Xinjiang, it said.

        Most people of Xinjiang’s 10 major ethnic minority groups, with a total population of over 11.3 million, believe in Islam now, it said.

        The number of Islamic mosques has soared from 2,000 in the early days of the reform and opening-up drive to 24,300 now, and the body of clergy from 3,000 to over 28,000, according to the paper.

        “All these achievements would have been impossible for Xinjiang without national unification, social stability, or ethnic unity,” the paper said.

        However, for years, the “East Turkistan” forces in and outside Xinjiang have been trumpeting national separatism, and plotted and organized a number of bloody incidents of terror and violence, seriously jeopardizing national unification, social stability and ethnic unity, thus seriously disrupting Xinjiang’s development and progress, it said.

        “The ‘East Turkistan’ forces pose a severe threat to the development and stability of Xinjiang,” the paper said.

        The “East Turkistan” forces have seriously violated the basic human rights to life and development of all the peoples of Xinjiang, seriously interrupted the region’s economic development, and pose a threat to regional security and stability, it said.

        According to incomplete statistics, from 1990 to 2001, the “East Turkistan” forces both inside and outside China created more than 200 bloody incidents of terror and violence in Xinjiang, by means of explosions, assassinations, poisoning, arson, attacking, riots and assaults, it said.

        As a result, 162 citizens, including people of various ethnicities, cadres at the grassroots level and religious personnel, lost their lives, and over 440 were wounded, according to the paper.

        In 2002, they again organized several bloody incidents of terror and violence in Xinjiang. The most recent “July 5” riot in Urumqi caused huge losses in lives and property of the people of various ethnic groups, it said.

        By July 17, 2009, 197 people died (most being innocent victims)and over 1,700 were injured, with 331 shops and 1,325 motor vehicles destroyed or burned, and many public facilities were damaged, figures from the paper showed.

        “Ethnic unity is a blessing for all peoples, while separatism would be disastrous,” it said.

        “It has become clearer for the people of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang that national unification, ethnic unity, social stability, plus the coexistence and development in harmony of all peoples who share weal and woe are the lifeblood for the region’s development and progress,” the paper said.

  • Uyghur Leader: ‘Entire Turkic-Speaking World Rallied To Support Us’

    Uyghur Leader: ‘Entire Turkic-Speaking World Rallied To Support Us’

    79DF19BD 7A0B 4BCA BFD9 D8389A0391F1 w393 s

    Rebiya Kadeer said that after the September 11 attacks in the United States, the Chinese government “used this opportunity to label us as terrorists because we are Muslims and [because] we are a Turkic nation.”

    September 17, 2009
    Rebiya Kadeer, the U.S.-based head of the World Uyghur Congress, is a controversial figure in her native land.

    Kadeer was once held up by Chinese authorities as a model for the promotion of interethnic harmony. A woman, a Muslim, and an ethnic Uyghur, she is a member of a nation that has for centuries inhabited the area now called the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, part of western China.

    The mother of 11 started a Laundromat in 1976, gradually expanded the business into a department store, then to a huge trade center, and by the mid-1990s was one of the five richest people in China.

    Kadeer was an active philanthropist, helping other Uyghur women start businesses and championing the cause of equality for Uyghurs and other minorities in China.

    Her criticism of Beijing’s handling of riots in the western Xinjiang city of Yining (also called Kuldja) in 1997 sparked her downfall. She lost her place in the National People’s Congress and the Political Consultative Conference and was forbidden to travel abroad.

    In 1999, she attempted to send newspaper articles to her husband, who was living in exile in the United States and promoting Uyghur rights. In August that year, Kadeer was detained as she prepared to meet a U.S. Congressional delegation looking into the situation in Xinjiang.

    She was convicted of divulging state secrets and endangering state security in 2000, and jailed until her early release on medical grounds in March 2005.

    Kadeer was elected president of the Uyghur American Association in May 2006 and president of the World Uyghur Congress (WUC) in November of that year. Shortly afterward two of her sons in China were jailed and a Chinese court imposed a large fine on a third son for tax evasion.

    When rioting erupted between ethnic Uyghurs and Han Chinese in July this year the Chinese government said Kadeer and the WUC instigated the unrest.

    RFE/RL Kyrgyz Service director Tyntchtykbek Tchoroev and Tatar-Bashkir Service correspondent Metin Karismaz spoke with Kadeer while she was in Prague for an international conference on “Peace, Democracy, and Human Rights in Asia” recently.

    Asked about Chinese authorities’ attempts to brand Uyghur nationalists as terrorists, Kadeer said:

    “In a period after the ‘world terrorism’ term was introduced [in the West after September 11, 2001), the word ‘terrorist’ has been given to us as a negative label by the Chinese government. The government used this opportunity to label us as terrorists because we are Muslims and [because] we are a Turkic nation. They are saying that the Eastern Turkestan organization [Eastern Turkestan Liberation Front] is planning to carry out terrorist activities. They use the word as a tool to repress us [all Uyghurs].

    “Regarding the Eastern Turkestan terrorist organization, now even the Western world is studying whether it exists or not. Is there such a terrorist organization or not? America and the rest of the world are checking the information on that.”
    Dressed in traditional Uyghur clothing and with her hair in braids, the energetic and animated 62-year-old grandmother did not look the part of a “terrorist.” Speaking in a medieval cathedral in Prague (the venue for the conference), Kadeer said her goals and those of the WUC remain the same as they have been for years.

    “The World Uyghur Congress is struggling for the freedom of Uyghurs, for freedom, democracy, and human rights of all the Turkic nations in East Turkestan [the historical name of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region]. This organization is not terrorist. We are totally against any terrorist activities in the world. We are against any kind of violence.”

    Chinese authorities have labeled the Eastern Turkestan Liberation Front, which is not affiliated with the WUC, as a terrorist organization and made connections between that group and well-known terrorist organizations such as Al-Qaeda. Beijing has hinted that the WUC might be connected to Al-Qaeda also.

    Kadeer dismissed such accusations:

    “How could we have such a ties [with Al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations]? You see we live in America, and America helps us financially and supports us, and we are sitting here today attending a [respected] international forum. If we had ties with [terrorists], then they would not invite us to this kind of forum.”

    Chinese authorities have blamed Uyghurs for the string of “syringe attacks” that have taken place in Xinjiang since July. Chinese medical officials said this week that none of the victims they treated were infected with any diseases or injected with poisons.

    Kadeer (right) with former President Vaclav Havel (left) and the Dalai Lama in Prague
    Kadeer said the WUC has never promoted such a response to Chinese crackdowns on the Uyghur community in Xinjiang, and that the figures for such attacks are in any event inflated due to opportunists.

    “As far as I have heard, in the event of a needle case, a victim would get 200,000 yuan ($30,000) from the Chinese government. That is why there were some cases when some Chinese pretended to be victims of such an attack. Now, even the Chinese government is itself checking into such claims. But we don’t have any relation to such attacks.”

    Not ‘Uyghuristan’

    Kadeer insisted she only wishes that the traditional lands of Turkic peoples in inner Asia be governed by Turkic peoples again.

    “This land belongs to all the Turkic nations living there. There was West Turkestan and East Turkestan. There had been a [united] Turkestan in the past. East Turkestan is the common land for all of us who are living there.

    “We don’t say that it belongs only to Uyghurs. That is why we are using the term East Turkestan, otherwise we would say only Uyghuristan. We live together with our [historic] relatives. That is why we are for [the people of] East Turkestan to [be able to] live together with our relatives.”

    Kadeer said she understands why governments in neighboring Central Asian states were reluctant to give public support to Uyghurs in China and in some cases have handed over fugitive Uyghurs to the Chinese authorities.

    “I did not think that it was a right decision. However, I don’t blame them because they were led by politics. They did it due to politics. But their people don’t do such thing toward us. Their people, our brothers, don’t do it.

    “Today’s world is where we live now. Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Tatarstan is tomorrow’s day. If today China is oppressing us, maybe [the same] will come to them tomorrow. Our brothers have to understand this [danger].”

    But Kadeer said Uyghurs, and other Turkic peoples in Xinjiang, have the support of the people in the region once called Western Turkestan.

    “The whole Turkic-speaking world rallied to support us. The Tatar brothers held a demonstration in Crimea. Our brothers in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan held demonstrations or silent pickets supporting us.

    “That is why I feel that I am not alone. We have brothers supporting us. That is why I believe that the Uyghur Turks will not disappear [as a nation from the historic stage].”

    https://www.rferl.org/a/Uyghur_Leader_Entire_TurkicSpeaking_World_Rallied_To_Support_Us/1824878.html

  • Chinese protestors have injured hundreds Uyghurs by syringes

    Chinese protestors have injured hundreds Uyghurs by syringes

    a5

    The Uyghur American Association (UAA) calls on Chinese authorities to
    guarantee the safety of all people in East Turkestan, also known as
    Xinjiang, in the wake of fresh unrest in the regional capital of
    Urumchi.

    According to a report[i] issued by Reuters quoting an eyewitness, up
    to 3,000 Han Chinese gathered in People?s Square in Urumchi on
    September 3, 2009 to demand the resignation of Xinjiang Communist
    Party Secretary, Wang Lequan. The protest was prompted by rumors of a
    spate of stabbings in Urumchi, in which victims have been allegedly
    injured by syringes. The assembled protestors were upset that
    Communist officials had done little to protect citizens against such
    attacks. According to the eyewitness interviewed by Reuters,
    protestors shouted slogans such as: ?Resign Wang Lequan, the
    government is useless!? and ?Wang Lequan apologize to the Xinjiang
    people?. Mr. Wang was seen to address the protestors and to reassure
    them that action was being taken. Mr. Wang stated that 30 arrests had
    occurred in relation to the alleged stabbings, a figure which
    contradicts numbers[ii] from the official Chinese media. Protestors
    were also reported to have thrown objects, such as bottles, at Mr.
    Wang as he spoke.

    The Reuters report also related eyewitness accounts which described
    the beating of Uyghurs, as well as the destruction of Uyghur-owned
    businesses in Urumchi by Han Chinese during the day of the protest. A
    Uyghur, who was suspected of carrying out one of the alleged
    stabbings, was beaten so severely that he was taken to the hospital
    according to a resident. Officials at the regional health office
    stated that in the past two weeks 476 people, of which 433 are Han
    Chinese, have gone to hospitals in Urumchi with complaints stemming
    from the alleged stabbings. However, a lack of confirmable information
    surrounds the reports of stabbings and Human Rights Watch expert,
    Nicholas Becquelin, is quoted in the Reuters report as stating that
    [t]hese kinds of rumors do happen in China after unrest?[t]here?s
    always bizarre rumors that spread after violence.?

    In a statement, Uyghur democracy leader, Rebiya Kadeer, said: ?I call
    on Chinese officials to guarantee the security of all people living in
    East Turkestan, including Uyghurs and Han Chinese. I also call on the
    Chinese Communist Party to act quickly so as to prevent the escalation
    of Han Chinese attacks against Uyghur civilians.? She added: ?It is
    disappointing that Wang Lequan did not listen to the legitimate
    grievances of Uyghur protestors when asked to on July 5th. Such a move
    would have significantly eased tensions in East Turkestan. Wang
    Lequan’s public apology to Han Chinese protestors and the mere fact
    that Han Chinese protestors were permitted to voice their concerns
    shows that the Chinese authorities are applying a double standard. A
    precondition for peaceful coexistence between Uyghurs and Han Chinese
    is the resignation of Wang Lequan, leading to the appointment of
    moderate officials, who understand the legitimate grievances of the
    Uyghur people and the needs of the Han Chinese.?

    The unrest in Urumchi comes during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan in
    which a number of restrictions have been placed on Uyghur worshippers.
    UAA believes that the restrictions imposed by Chinese authorities have
    only exacerbated tensions in East Turkestan. The restrictions[iii]
    include restaurants forced to open during the daylight fasting period,
    pressure exerted on government workers of Uyghur ethnicity to sign
    ?letters of responsibility? promising to avoid fasting, and a state-
    led campaign to offer free food to government employees during the
    hours of the fast.

    The imposition of restrictions on religious activity during Ramadan is
    a recurring source of tension among Uyghurs. The Uyghur Human Rights
    Project reported[iv] that 2008 saw ?an unprecedented tightening of
    religious control throughout East Turkestan. Students and government
    employees were not permitted to fast during Ramadan or attend mosques
    in general. Restaurants were also forced to open during fasting hours.?

    UAA urges Chinese authorities to remove the restrictions placed upon
    Uyghurs during Ramadan as a first step in addressing Chinese
    government policy failures towards Uyghurs and in improving the
    political climate in East Turkestan. UAA also urges the Chinese
    government to talk with Uyghur democracy leader, Rebiya Kadeer, and
    with the World Uyghur Congress to seek ways to ease current tensions
    in East Turkestan and to discuss the realization of human rights and
    democracy in the region.

    ttp://tibettruth.wordpress.com/2009/09/05/1890/