Category: East Asia & Pacific

Urumqi Tense, Quiet after Violence

2009-07-05

China blames overseas Uyghurs for inciting rioting in the northwestern city, saying at least 140 people died in the violence.

Sent by a witness

On this picture sent to RFA by a witness, cordons of Chinese riot police face up to demonstrators on July 5, in Urumqi.

UPDATED JULY 5, 1722 GMT

HONG KONG—Chinese authorities in the northwestern Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) said the capital Urumqi was calm under tight security following deadly weekend riots, with tensions still simmering below the surface, as the United Nations chief called for restraint and peaceful dialogue.

The clashes, which left at least 140 dead and hundreds injured, flared after an initially peaceful demonstration took to the city’s streets in protest at how the authorities handled recent violence between majority Han Chinese and Uyghur factory workers in the southern province of Guangdong, eyewitnesses said.

According to the official Chinese Xinhua news agency, 57 dead bodies were retrieved from Urumqi’s streets and lanes, while all the others were confirmed dead at hospitals.

Security forces were now manning checkpoints at strategic points throughout the city, and ethnic minority officers were being drafted from outlying regions to help interrogate detained suspects, police said.

XUAR police chief Liu Yaohua told reporters Monday that apart from the 140 confirmed dead, 828 people were injured in the deadly violence that erupted Sunday night, and that the death toll would “continue to climb.”

Liu said rioters burned 261 motor vehicles, including 190 buses, at least 10 taxis and two police cars, with vehicles still visibly aflame on the city streets early Monday.

Rioters destroyed 203 shops and 14 homes, and several hundred people had been detained, he added.

“Police have tightened security in downtown Urumqi streets and at key institutions such as power and natural gas companies and TV stations to prevent large-scale riots,” Xinhua quoted Liu as saying.

International concern

Armored police car in an unknown Urumqi street, on July 5.

In Geneva, United National Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called Monday for restraint, while Italian President Giorgio Napolitano raised the issue of human rights with Chinese President Hu Jintao and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s government voiced concern over the violence. In Washington, U.S. officials declined to comment.

“Wherever it is happening or has happened, the position of the United Nations and the secretary-general has been consistent and clear: that all the differences of opinion, whether domestic or international, must be resolved peacefully through dialogue,” Ban told a news conference.

“Governments concerned must also exercise extreme care and take necessary measures to protect the life and safety of the civilian population and their citizens and their properties, and protect freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and freedom of information,” he added.

Fear of escalation

Uyghur witnesses said the protest began when as many as 1,000 Uyghurs gathered to demand a probe into the deadly fight in Guangdong late last month.

Before the demonstrators reached the People’s Square in central Urumqi, armed police were in position and moved to disperse them, one witness said.

Police “scattered them [the protesters],” he said. “They beat them. Beat them, including girls, very, very viciously,” he said. “The police were chasing them and captured many of them. They were beaten badly.”

‘Electroshock weapons’

“When the demonstrators reached the People’s Square, armed police suppressed them using electroshock weapons and so on,” he said, adding, “after that, other protests erupted in Uyghur areas of town.”

A shopowner in Urumqi who declined to give his name said he had had to close for business as police swarmed through the city.

“We closed our doors from last night. Armed police dispersed the protesters in about two hours. Firefighters were also dispatched and last night police were all over the city,” he said in an interview Monday.

“Riots took place in bus stations, in tourist spots, and in shopping areas. Scores of Uyghurs were killed. Armed police were carrying automatic assault rifles and machine guns. There were thousands of soldiers. It had a tremendous impact, and we won’t be able to go to work for three days,” another resident said, also speaking on condition on anonymity.

A young Uyghur man is being taken away by two helmeted Chinese policemen in an Urumqi street, on July 5.

“When the protest started… I was near the Bank of China in Nanmen. There were many people. Police surrounded the areas from Döngköwrük to Nanmen,” one youth said Sunday. “There were police, paramilitary. They were fully armored, and they had steel helmets, too.”

“One was giving a speech in front of the bank and people were applauding him… Most of them were students,” he said.

“Police circled around them, and we couldn’t get inside.”

Another youth said the protest began peacefully but became violent after police fired on the crowd, and protesters then attacked cars and shops. His account couldn’t be independently confirmed.

City ‘now calm’

A police officer contacted by telephone early Monday said a curfew had been imposed on Uyghur areas.

“People are dead. This might have planned by evil-minded people,” the officer said.

Urumqi is home to 2.3 million residents, including many Uyghurs, who have chafed for years under Chinese rule. The city is located 3,270 kms (2,050 miles) west of Beijing.

Uyghur sources said the protest was organized online and began early July 5 with about 1,000 people but grew by thousands more during the day.

Online messages meanwhile called on Uyghurs in other major cities to stage protests Monday to show support for the Uyghurs who died in Shaoguan.

“We decided to hold a demonstration and stressed that it shouldn’t be violent,” an organizer of Sunday’s demonstration said in an interview.

Security in Urumqi is always tight, including strict controls over information. Witnesses spoke Sunday on condition of anonymity.

Exiles blamed

In a televised speech on Monday, XUAR Governor Nur Bekri explicitly blamed the clashes on Rebiya Kadeer, a former businesswoman who was jailed by Chinese authorities for subversion before she was paroled and admitted to the United States.

Kadeer now serves as leader of the Washington-based Uyghur American Association and Munich-based World Uyghur Congress, and she has been accused repeatedly of fomenting separatism among Uyghurs against the Chinese authorities.

“This riot is typical, directed from overseas but carried out inside [China], organized and premeditated,” Nur Bekri said. “On July 5, Rebiya made a phone call to China to incite the riot and by 7 p.m. protests erupted in Urumqi, and in some locations there was violence.”

Smoke rise above Urumqi from a location near South Gate (Nan Min) on July 5, as demonstrators clashed with police.

Both Kadeer and a spokesman for the World Uyghur Congress, Dilshat Rashit, have rejected the charge.

The Uyghur American Association, in a statement late Sunday, cited reports that 1,000 to 3,000 protesters marched through the Döngköwrük [Erdaoqiao] area of Urumqi on Sunday, “some of whom were waving the flag of the People’s Republic of China.”

Chinese authorities deployed regular police, anti-riot police, special police, and the People’s Armed Police to contain them, it said, citing unnamed witnesses as saying that an unknown number of Uyghur protesters died after police fired on them.

Kadeer said the violence “could have been avoided if the Chinese authorities had properly investigated the Shaoguan killings.”

In separate interviews, three Uyghur youths now under Chinese government protection said the fighting in Shaoguan began when Han Chinese laborers stormed the dormitories of Uyghur colleagues, beating them with clubs, bars, and machetes.

The clashes began late June 25 and lasted into the early hours of the following day. At least two people were killed and 118 injured, and witnesses said the numbers could be higher.

Underlying resentment

Screen shot from a message board in Uyghur showing a message in an image, calling for a demonstration in Kashgar, in front of the mosque, on July 6.

Like Tibet, which erupted in protests in early 2008, the XUAR has long been home to smoldering ethnic tensions related to religion, culture, and regional economic development that residents say has disproportionately enriched and employed majority Han Chinese immigrants.

China has accused Uyghur separatists of fomenting unrest in the region, particularly in the run-up to and during the Olympics last year, when a wave of violence hit the vast desert region.

The violence prompted a crackdown in which the government says 1,295 people were detained for state security crimes, along with tighter curbs on the practice of Islam.

XUAR Party Chief Wang Lequan was quoted in China’s official media as saying the fight against these forces was a “life or death struggle,” and he has spoken since of the need to “strike hard” against ethnic separatism.

Activists have reported wide-scale detentions, arrests, new curbs on religious practices, travel restrictions, and stepped-up controls over free expression.

Original reporting by Mamatjan Juma, Shohret Hoshur, and Mehriban for RFA’s Uyghur service and by Qiao Long fro RFA’s Mandarin service. Translated from the Uyghur by Mamatjan Juma and from the Mandarin by Jia Yuan. Uyghur service director: Dolkun Kamberi. Mandarin service director: Jennifer Chou. Written and produced in English by Sarah Jackson-Han. Edited by Luisetta Mudie.

https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyghur/riots-07052009153209.html

July 6, 2009
Uighurs need media attention

Dear friends,

According to a resident, internet has been disconnected through out Xinjiang, a sign that the Chinese gov. has and will murder many more innocent Uighurs. They have confiscated phones, cell phones, computers and any other form of communication devices for they do not want the world to hear the protesters’s cries for help. It is now our job to communicate the message that these brave Uighurs are sacrificing their lives to communicate to the rest of the World. We need as much media attention as we can get, please contact your local media and give them information about he protest and let them know that this was a peaceful protest that is violently suppressed by the Chinese gov. Email them, call them, mail them, send them photos, links, youtube videos, please be presistant remind them that the people are dying by the second and we can not afford to waste any time. It may be hard to divert media attention from the ever so important Michael Jackson’s death, but please be persuasive, try to evoke their compassion if they have any, with videos and photos of this horrific event!!!!!!

Thank you and God bless!

July 6, 2009
Kashgar Facing Threat Of Bulldozers

Demolition has begun in parts of Kashgar’s Old City.

June 30, 2009

By Antoine Blua

The ancient Silk Road trading hub of Kashgar, in China’s northwest Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, is being threatened by an ambitious government redevelopment plan that some say has a hidden political agenda.

Kashgar’s old city has survived the centuries, and remains an important Islamic cultural center for the Uyghurs, the Turkic ethnic group living in Xinjiang.

According to Matthew Hu Xinyu, an adviser to the nongovernmental Beijing Cultural Protection Center, the densely packed houses and narrow lanes of old Kashgar are the best-preserved examples of a traditional Islamic city in all of China.

Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Province in northwest China

But the government’s reconstruction plan, Hu says, is threatening to destroy the picturesque labyrinth that makes up old Kashgar.

“Last fall, I heard that the plan would be carried out through the next three years. I thought we would have some time to organize experts or architects to work on a constructive plan — to suggest a more conservative plan — so that the city’s heritage can be preserved,” Hu said. “But early this year the total investment for the plan has been increased to [$440 million], and the demolition of the old houses started very quickly.”

City officials have been moving a number of families out of Kashgar’s city center, saying they need to rebuild old, dangerous houses and improve infrastructure. In total, the government says it plans to renovate or reconstruct more than 5 million square meters of old homes and resettle some 45,000 households.

Officials say the project is necessary because an earthquake could destroy old buildings, putting residents at risk. Indeed, earthquakes frequently rock Xinjiang. In 2003, a quake killed some 270 people.

Reports say wrecking crews razed the historic Xanliq madrasah, one of the province’s protected cultural sites, on June 15. Mahmud al-Kashgari, the 11th-century scholar, is believed to have studied at the madrasah.

Traditional Lives

Dominated by a gigantic statue of Mao, old Kashgar has seen many changes in recent decades, including the construction of a main street running through the old town center. Cars, buses, and trucks clog the city streets.

Still, many residents manage to live a far more traditional life. They live in tumbledown mud-brick rentals or two-story homes that open onto courtyards. Artisans hammer metal bowls, pans, and pots, carve wood, and hone brightly decorated knives.

Street vendors sell hand-made candy, fresh mutton, or hand-sewn skull caps. Donkey-cart drivers navigate the narrow streets.

It’s unclear what will remain of the design and way of life of the city, which is hundreds of years old, after the reconstruction project is completed. The city says important buildings will be preserved, while many homes will be rebuilt to better withstand earthquakes while still preserving Uyghur building styles. However, several sectors are expected to be rebuilt with modern apartment buildings, public plazas, and schools.

Officials say infrastructure such as water, electricity, and sewers systems also will be installed.

No Details Forthcoming

The Beijing Cultural Protection Center says nobody denies Uyghurs the right to development, modernization, and security. But the center worries that it has been unable to obtain any details of the reconstruction plan, which Hu says should ensure the preservation of the city’s unique heritage.

A gate in Kashgar’s Old City

“If we look at every single one of these Uyghur people’s homes [individually], it’s not significant, [although] some of them have very interesting carvings on the door frame or on the architecture, the wooden parts,” Hu says.

“But this group of [homes] shows a way of life [and] a way of urban planning — how the city can be organized around different mosques. If we have the houses removed and rebuilt, then this layout will disappear, and the significance of the city will disappear,” he said.

China and Central Asian states support a plan to propose major Silk Road sites for inclusion on the UNESCO World Heritage List, an incentive for governments to preserve areas of historical and cultural significance.

Beijing, however, has not included old Kashgar in its list of proposed sites.

Henryk Szadziewski, manager of the Uyghur Human Rights Project in Washington, D.C., taught for several years in Kashgar in the 1990s. He tells RFE/RL that there’s no clear indication of what is going to be done with the remaining old city.

“As far as we understand the project, a remainder of the old city would be left, I imagine, to attract tourists. But who is going to manage that area and profit from the tourist revenue?” Szadziewski asks. “The tourist industry is worth about [$90 million] a year in Kashgar. We also have to remember that we have no indication that there was any meaningful participatory process that meant that the old city residents were party to the decision making.”

Political Aspects Seen

The preservation of Kashgar’s old town is facing challenges similar to those facing the preservation of other Chinese cities. But many see a political aspect to the redevelopment project in Kashgar, which Chinese officials consider a breeding ground for Uyghur separatism.

Chinese officials in recent years have alleged that Kashgar harbors terrorist cells. Uyghur extremists were blamed for a fatal attack on border police; two of the alleged organizers were executed this spring.

Uyghurs at a bazaar in Kashgar

Many see the Kashgar project as an attempt to remove the cultural roots of Uyghur separatism.

“There’s definitely a difference between what’s happening in eastern China and in Kashgar. That’s largely due to the sensitivity over the Uyghurs and their particular concerns over human rights issues,” Szadziewski says.

“The [Kashgar] project appears to be a tool to assimilate Uyghurs and to actually stifle peaceful dissent by putting old city residents from an organic living arrangement into a regimented, government-organized living arrangement. The [Chinese] authorities are able to monitor the activity of any peaceful dissent among Uyghurs,” he says.

Szadziewski says the assimilation process is taking place on many different fronts.

“One particular area is language, and we’ve seen a marginalization of Uyghur language in the economic sphere and the educational sphere,” he says. “A ‘China Daily’ report said that learning Mandarin Chinese will help fight terrorism. The statement in itself may cast a sort of aspersion on Uyghur language itself, that it was a suspect language.”

Critics accuse Beijing of using claims of terrorism as an excuse to crack down on peaceful pro-independence sentiment and expressions of Uyghur identity.

http://www.rferl.org/content/Chinas_Ancient_Silk_Road_City_Of_Kashgar_Facing_Chinese_Bulldozers/1765682.html

June 30, 2009
When China Rules the World

By Martin Jacques

Reviewed by John Gray – 18 June 2009

It is clear that the rise of China marks the end of western global hegemony, but just what the coming Chinese ascendency will look like is another matter.

The civilisation state

On his first visit to China as US treasury secretary, at the start of this month, Timothy Geithner attempted to reassure an audience at Peking University that there is no need to worry about the enormous holdings China has built up in US government bonds. “Chinese assets are very safe,” he declared. Geithner’s statement produced loud laughter from the largely student audience.

Unlike most western commentators, who still give the Obama administration the benefit of the doubt, China’s emerging elite know there is no prospect that the United States will pay back its debts at anything like their current value. The only way the US can repay its vast borrowings is by debasing the dollar – a process in which China will inevitably be short-changed. Significantly, the students’ response was not anger, but derision – a clear sign of how the US is now perceived. Resentment at US power is being replaced by contempt, as the impotence and self-deception of the American political class in the face of the country’s problems become increasingly evident.

In a characteristically incisive formulation, Martin Jacques writes that the “rise of China and the decline of the United States are central to the present global depression”. Although China remains a fast-emerging, rather than a developed, economy and even though it is nowhere near acquiring America’s worldwide military reach, the crisis has speeded up a shift in the balance of power between the two countries that has been taking place for decades. The importance of China’s advance goes far beyond the incontrovertible fact of America’s relative decline, however. If Jacques is right, the rise of China will bring the end of the western world as we have known it over the past several hundred years.

Western commentators on China fall into two main camps. The first, which we may called the China sceptics, rejects out of hand the notion that China can ever become the world’s dominant power. The second – which is increasingly vocal and influential, especially in the US – sees the rise of China as a major threat to the existing, western-dominated global system. Though the two views are not finally compatible, they can quite often be found in the same person. The awkward fact with which both of them struggle is that China’s industrialisation – the largest in history – has been achieved indigenously. China’s success is widely praised by western governments, but it has been based on a rejection of western advice.

Like climate-change sceptics, China sceptics tend simply to ignore evidence that does not fit their world-view. Even if they accept that China’s success over the past 30 years has been achieved by following a distinctive path, they can only insist that China will be compelled to westernise at some point in the future – overlooking how it is western neoliberalism, and not Chinese capitalism, that has collapsed. Or else, they must admit that China can go on developing, and even overtake the west, while remaining as different from the west as it has ever been. This last is a terrifying scenario, as it implies that if a country westernises, that does not ensure its economic success – if anything, it may be an impediment. In other words, China may be so successful because it is so different from the west. At this point, the first view of China morphs into the second and we start to hear hysterical warnings of the threat posed by China’s inexorable rise. Inside every China sceptic is a prophet of the New Yellow Peril waiting to be let out.

The common conviction of nearly all these commentators is that no country can modernise without following a western path. The message of When China Rules the World – by far the best book on China to have been published in many years, and one of the most important inquiries into the nature of modernisation – is that this assumption blinds us to the way the world is being reshaped before our eyes. Jacques’s comprehensive and richly detailed analysis will be an indispensable resource for anyone who wants to understand contemporary China; but its primary value is in overturning the assumption – almost universal in the west, and held by some in China – that, as a country develops, it is bound to evolve into something like a western state. As Jacques points out, China “may seem like a nation state, but its geological formation is that of a civilisation state”. When China was weak it had little alternative but to accept western terms of reference. As it grows richer and stronger, China is more and more affirming the inherent value, if not the actual superiority, of its ancient civilisation. Far from turning its back on its history, the country is returning to the past in order to forge a new version of modernity.

“The emergence of China as a global power,” Jacques writes, “in effect relativises everything.” The author is not endorsing any kind of fashionable postmodernism here. He is clear that there are universal human values. His argument is rather that there are many ways of recognising universal values in a modern society. All the same, the version of modernity which appears to be emerging in China does come with some rather dark spots. The deep sense of China as a unitary civilisation, together with a pervasive belief in Han superiority, leaves little tolerance for the claims of other cultural groups.

Some way may be found, the author suggests, whereby the Tibetans can coexist with the Chinese state. But, as he admits, the dominant sense of Chinese identity is essentially racial, and most Chinese look down on Tibetans with loathing. In line with this, and also for strategic reasons, “China has encouraged large-scale Han migration in an effort to alter the ethnic balance of the population and thereby weaken the position of the Tibetans who for the most part live in the rural areas and in segregated urban ghettos.” It is hard to avoid the conclusion that, in building the Chinese civilisation state, Beijing is systematically destroying a unique civilisation.

A resurgent China will be problematical in a number of ways. It remains very unclear how China’s rulers view the international system. Will they try to reshape it in their own image, and if so what will the world then look like? Jacques argues that something like the tributary system that existed in the past can be re-created, but that system applied mainly to China’s nearer and smaller neighbours. It is impossible to envisage such an unequal relationship being acceptable to India or Russia or, for that matter, Japan. Again, can China extend its control of world markets while retaining its grip on its own economy? Control of capital flows has been one of China’s strengths in the current crisis. Will it be ready to compromise this advantage in order to supplant the failing dollar as the world’s reserve currency?

There are no clear answers, if only because China’s ruling elite have almost certainly not begun to answer these questions themselves. What is undeniable is that China’s ascendancy is bringing with it an international environment potentially more volatile than any in the recent past. So far, says Jacques, “The changes wrought by China’s rise have done little to disturb the calm of global waters, yet their speed and enormity suggest that we have entered an era of profound instability; by way of contrast, the Cold War was characterised by relative predictability combined with exceptional stability.”

The witless, end-of-history triumphalism that shaped western attitudes in the post-Cold War era is nowhere more misplaced than in regard to China. History is on the move again – and it is not the delusional, teleological, self-congratulating history dreamt up by liberal rationalists, which somehow always ends with themselves as the winners. The rise of China is the real thing, a world-changing event that marks the end of western hegemony.

New Statesman

June 22, 2009
‘Obama Is Certainly A European’, Prof Ash

Interview: ‘Obama Is Certainly A European’

Oxford historian Timothy Garton Ash discusses the demise of Europe’s social democrats, threats to the European Union posed by populist nationalists, the imminent change of government in Great Britain and America’s rapid slide to the left.

SPIEGEL: Professor Garton Ash, in the midst of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression voters have turned away from the social democrats and socialists in European elections. Isn’t this paradoxical?

Timothy Garton Ash: I think there’s an explanation for it. First, voters apparently feel that the conservatives and liberals are more competent when it comes to economic policy. Second, we are witnessing a return to nationalism as a reaction to the great crisis. And when that happens, voters tend to move to the right rather than to the left, in some cases quite far to the right.

SPIEGEL: It would seem that leftists, the critics of capitalism, would stand to benefit from a crisis of capitalism.

Garton Ash: In essence, you have two social democratic parties in Germany, just as we do in Great Britain – with some minor differences. David Cameron’s Conservatives are taking (former Prime Minister) Tony Blair’s approach, except when it comes to European policy. And there is no decisive difference between the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats in Germany, at least not by the standards of the last century.

SPIEGEL: In other words, we lack ideological differences, and we are all social democrats?

Garton Ash: I think so. We are not talking about capitalism as such, but about the question of which form of capitalism works best in our country. And then there is the question of competency. Our governments are behaving more and more like managers. After 10 years, voters are dissatisfied with the current management, and along comes a new one.

SPIEGEL: The left lost its identity as a result of politicians like Tony Blair and (former German Chancellor) Gerhard Schroder, who believed in the free market and abandoned old social democratic principals. Isn’t that the reason for their defeat throughout Europe?

Garton Ash: I don’t think so. In each case, the voter is voting for a version of European social liberal democracy. Perhaps a party that calls itself conservative can provide him with the better social democracy.

SPIEGEL: At least 15 percent of the new European parliament will consist of right-wing extremists, protest parties and joke parties. What does this mean for Europe’s future?

Garton Ash: If I remember correctly, Bertolt Brecht said: “The womb is fertile still, which bore this fruit.” We are deluding ourselves if we believe that the temptation of xenophobia and national populism no longer exists, and we shouldn’t be surprised to see these forces being strengthened in the course of a major economic crisis. We must make the social market economy credible again as the central solution for the middle class.

SPIEGEL: How?

Garton Ash: There are two major domestic policy challenges for the European Union. First: Creating meaningful work for the majority of society. And second: the integration of fellow citizens of non-European descent. These are two sides of the same coin. After all, what are the populists and xenophobes saying, from Latvia to Portugal, and from Finland to Greece? They are saying: We’re in bad shape, and the others are at fault. Both parts of that sentence must be addressed politically.

SPIEGEL: In Great Britain, the racist British National Party has won two seats for the first time.

Garton Ash: The same thing also happened in Romania, Finland and Hungary. There are comparable developments everywhere. Until now, the Conservatives in Great Britain have always managed to neutralize the extreme right, just as the CDU/CSU has done in Germany. This time, not only has the BNP won its first two seats, but the anti-European U.K. Independence Party (UKIP) has even won more votes than Labor. Now that’s unsettling.

SPIEGEL: Do the successes of right-wing extremists and the defeat of the left also indicate a decline in solidarity among voters?

Garton Ash: Solidarity is certainly a European value, but our willingness to display solidarity also has narrow limits, especially toward the poor, and even more so when they are of non-European origin. This stems partly from the fact that we have developed social welfare states that are difficult to sustain, especially in global competition. The integration of immigrants in the United States is easier, because there is no social welfare state there.

SPIEGEL: While Europe slips to the right, the United States, under Barack Obama, is discovering the social market economy – and is slipping to the left.

Garton Ash: Soon they’ll be more European than we are.

SPIEGEL: How do you explain that?

Garton Ash: Six years ago, we had the manifesto of Jurgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida in connection with the discussion of the Iraq crisis, pitting Europe, with its socially progressive values against the United States. In that respect Obama, in terms of his system of values, is certainly a European. This is because the middle class in the United States has experienced the brutality and injustice of the unbridled Anglo-Saxon free market economy firsthand – in the healthcare system, for example.

‘The True European Elections Will Take Place in Germany in September’

SPIEGEL: The election was a European election, and yet Europe wasn’t really the issue at all. Instead, the election was about national politics. Does this demonstrate that Europe is not united at all, but in fact divided?

Garton Ash: I like to say that the true European elections will take place in Germany at the end of September. The German parliamentary election is certainly more important for the future of the European Union.

SPIEGEL: Why?

Garton Ash: At issue is the behavior of the most important member of the European Union, which is obvious. The competencies of the European Parliament have certainly grown, and I believe that voters underestimate its true influence. Nevertheless, the European Union is no direct democracy, nor will it become one anytime soon. I believe that voters sense this, and in this regard their behavior is completely rational.

SPIEGEL: The competencies of the European Parliament have been expanded, partly in the hope that this would increase voter turnout, and yet it was lower than ever this year.

Garton Ash: I believe that voter turnout will not improve in the foreseeable future, at least not as long as we are not prepared to take the big step toward a United States of Europe, and toward direct democracy. Almost nowhere in Europe are we prepared to do this. The parliament will remain a part of the European system, but the decisive elements will continue to be the European Council, the council of ministers and the cooperation among democratically elected governments.

SPIEGEL: Doesn’t the voters’ lack of interest show that political Europe has disengaged itself from its citizens?

Garton Ash: I believe that the European project is a victim of its own success. In each country, the pro-European argument, all national differences aside, took the same form: We were doing poorly, but thanks to Europe our lot will improve. But then comes the moment when we take Europe for granted, which raises the question: What is the purpose of this Europe?

SPIEGEL: And what is it?

Garton Ash: We need, for example, a common European foreign policy, so that we can defend our interest in an increasingly non-European world.

SPIEGEL: Are the words of Henry Kissinger still applicable …?

Garton Ash: … who was searching for a phone number for Europe? I believe, by the way, that he never said that. We did a lot of research at this university and were unable to find a source for the quote. In the end, I wrote to Henry Kissinger myself, and asked: Where did you say this? His response was wonderful. He wrote: I think I must have said it. I just don’t remember when and where. Of course, there is a kernel of truth to the remark. From Washington’s standpoint, or from Beijing’s or Moscow’s, Europe does not exist as a foreign policy player. And we must begin to exist.

SPIEGEL: Do you really believe that Germany or France would give up its own foreign policy? Don’t national interests always trump European interests?

Garton Ash: Why always? Why should something that was true in the past continue to apply in the future? The deutsche mark was the epitome of German identity, and yet the Germans gave it up. The history of the European Union over the last 50 years is a history of impossible things that happened, after all.

SPIEGEL: And how do we arrive at a common foreign policy?

Garton Ash: We don’t need a United States of Europe for that. What we need, most of all, is the political will of a strategic coalition of member states. It must include Germany, France and Great Britain, but others, as well. When that happens, it will be possible to pursue a common foreign policy.

SPIEGEL: But there is a big difference between giving up a currency and giving up one’s own foreign policy. Economically speaking, the Union is accepted as a success story, but political Europe is criticized. In Great Britain and Eastern Europe, skeptics of the European Union are calling for a return to a purely economic union.

Garton Ash: We already have a common foreign policy in the E.U. today – with regard to Tehran’s nuclear program, for example. And it is also accepted by the public. Now it is time to explain why it makes sense to pursue a common Russia policy, or a China policy, and why we are stronger together than individually.

SPIEGEL: Isn’t it a vote of no confidence against Europe when voters elect someone like the Romanian Paris Hilton, the president’s daughter, Elena Basescu, to the parliament, as well as Sweden’s Pirate Party, and jokesters and odd characters like Austrian populist Hans-Peter Martin?

Garton Ash: This is an indication of two things. First, voters are saying to themselves that the European Parliament isn’t all that important, so we can afford to elect a couple of pirates. Second – and this is something we see everywhere in Europe – there is a growing, deep dissatisfaction with the political class, to the point of a pre-revolutionary mood. The scandal over the expense accounts of British politicians we are currently experiencing is only one example among many.

SPIEGEL: What is the source of this deep dissatisfaction?

Garton Ash: I keep hearing the same thing from a wide range of people throughout Europe: The parliament is a self-service shop, and the political class is merely there to pursue its own interests.

SPIEGEL: But that view is borne out by the scandal surrounding British members of parliament who used government funds to buy plasma TVs and porn films.

Garton Ash: It’s really more complicated than that. The reason for this scandal is that politicians, almost 30 years ago, lacked the courage to approve better pay for members of parliament. That’s why they created this absurd system of so-called expenses, which were in fact allowances. As a result, all MPs became expense knights. And some of them were even real knights, right?

SPIEGEL: At the moment, it looks as though David Cameron will be the next British prime minister.

Garton Ash: Indeed.

SPIEGEL: Cameron is threatening to hold a referendum over the Lisbon Treaty. That would be a declaration of war on Europe. Do you think he’ll do it?

Garton Ash: If you were to inject a truth serum into David Cameron, he would probably have to confess to his secret hope that the treaty will be ratified by then. Then the referendum would no longer be necessary. I believe that, deep in his heart, he is not a euro-skeptic when it comes to Europe. The majority of his MPs and his foreign policy spokesman, William Hague, are euro-skeptics out of conviction. He has to use this rhetoric, especially because the UKIP did so well in the European election. And that’s why it is important for the European Union that the end of the Gordon Brown administration be drawn out for as long as possible.

SPIEGEL: Cameron is now trying to forge an alliance with Polish and Czech opponents of Europe in the European Parliament.

Garton Ash: Farce begets farce. Unfortunately, the man carelessly stated a position on the question of the European Parliament in 2005, when he was fighting for the leadership of the Conservatives. Aside from that, though, he learned an important lesson from Blair: Never commit to anything. But that’s why he must now remain true to himself, and is thereby compromising the British Conservatives. Suddenly they’re in bed with Latvian friends of the Waffen SS, Polish homophobes and Czech deniers of climate change.

SPIEGEL: Is Gordon Brown truly, as they say, the worst British prime minister since Neville Chamberlain?

Garton Ash: By no means. He isn’t a bad prime minister, as far as the content of his policies is concerned. I don’t know if the inexperienced David Cameron would have handled this major crisis more effectively. But as a personality, Brown is undoubtedly one of the weakest politicians. He makes one mistake after the next. He lacks the talent to sell his policies. He looks ridiculous when he tries in vain on YouTube, where he looks like a grandfather, to sell the people a solution to the expenses affair. He is hampered by the machinery of politics.

SPIEGEL: Does he lack the charisma?

Garton Ash: He lacks it completely. He hasn’t even managed to simply come across as a direct and upright character, which is something Angela Merkel has mastered. He could have been the Scottish Mr. Merkel. But he’s too Blairist for that. He wants to manipulate public opinion, and perhaps the worst thing is to try and fail in that endeavor.

SPIEGEL: Who is responsible for the demise of New Labor? Tony Blair or Gordon Brown?

Garton Ash: If this is its death, then it certainly had a nice life. In fact, it was quite successful: three legislative periods in a row, which is something Labor didn’t manage in 100 years. Besides, the Labor government is leaving behind a fairly substantial legacy – including Conservatives, who for the better part have adopted New Labor’s approach.

SPIEGEL: Couldn’t Labor be successful again, after all, perhaps with Alan Johnson as a new party leader?

Garton Ash: As a historian, I know that everything is possible in history, except cheating death. But I would bet a bottle of champagne that even the best Labor leader in the world will not win the next election.

SPIEGEL: What kind of a bottle?

Garton Ash: A magnum bottle, I would say.

You can read this Spiegel interview with Historian Timothy Garton Ash in context here:

www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,631359,00.html

This interview was in German, it was translated from the German for Spiegel by Christopher Sultan.

Source: www.reeinternetpress.com, 21.06.2009

June 22, 2009
End of the Silk Road for historic trading hub of Kashgar

Jane Macartney in Kashgar

Today is the last day for residents of one of the last surviving ancient cities in China to claim a bonus for agreeing to move out to make way for the wrecking ball.

After the offer expires, the only inducement may be force.

Bulldozers are already crashing through the packed-mud walls of centuries-old homes. Yellow-helmeted workers toss bricks into wheelbarrows as they clear the rubble.

The demolition of swaths of the Old Town of Kashgar is being carried out in the name of modernisation and safety. The famed trading hub on the Silk Road, on which caravans carrying silk and jade from China crossed with merchants from Central Asia bringing furs and spices, will effectively disappear.

Walls throughout the town are stencilled with signs exhorting residents to support the makeover to prevent the damage wrought by last year’s massive earthquake in southwestern Sichuan province that killed 90,000 people.

Many residents of the old quarter, members of the Muslim Uighur minority, are unconvinced.

One old man, his beard white, taps a mud-and-straw wall. “These houses have withstood earthquakes for 2,000 years. They have wood inside to absorb the shock.” He gestures to a renovated building next door. “People are supposed to use these hard bricks. But look at the cement. There are gaps and it’s poor quality. Maybe this would fall more quickly.”

City authorities have decided that most of these one and two-storey buildings must be razed. A small area visited by tourists seeking a flavour of Kashgar’s rich history will be preserved. Uighur residents, already distrustful of a Government that many regard as an occupation force, even doubt that.

An elderly businessman, who refused to be identified for fear of retribution, said: “They don’t tell us anything. We don’t understand why they do this. Anyway, I don’t believe anything they say.” He is too frightened even to say who “they” are. He uses two letters, “GV “. He means the Government.

Residents of the old city are reluctant to talk. Their fear is palpable. One gestures down the street. “The police are here. We must be careful.” In a house destined to disappear, a young girl slams the door into her rose-filled courtyard on visitors who ask about her home.

The Government plans to spend $440 million (£270 million) to move 65,000 Uighur households – about 220,000 people – into modern housing. The aim is safer housing but other factors are at work.

With a huge government stimulus package to boost the economy, authorities now have the money to tear down a warren of narrow alleys in which they fear Muslim Uighurs could foment separatist unrest. Days before last year’s Olympics two Uighurs rammed a lorry into a group of young police officers on a morning jog and then leapt out and attacked them with knives, killing 17. This month officials said that they had wrapped up seven terrorist cells in Kashgar.

Non-governmental organisations are anxious that yet another remnant of China’s rapidly disappearing past is to vanish. The Beijing Cultural Heritage Protection Centre has issued an appeal to save the Old Town, saying that the threat to Kashgar is more serious even than that to the Chinese capital’s old alleyways or to Lhasa.

It said: “Primarily due to its relatively distant location, information… is very hard to come by, hence so little monitoring and criticism on the poor preservation work of the local government.”

Wu Dianting, a Beijing professor of regional planning who has studied the city, says that such large-scale raw-earth towns are now rare anywhere in the world. He describes them as well adapted for the desert region, being warm in winter and cool in summer. He has asked city authorities to reconsider. “Demolition would be a terrible pity.”

Families are less concerned about their cultural heritage than about having a roof over their heads, and one under which they have sheltered for generations.

Those who can afford to strengthen their existing homes and add a second storey may stay. The elderly businessman said: “Most people don’t agree. But they are poor. They have to move.”

The extent of resistance is reflected in the forest of banners and wall slogans exhorting support for the improvements. One offered a bonus of 200 yuan (£20) a square metre for those who left by June 6; those staying until June 18 will be eligible for only 100 yuan. After that they will get nothing.

Not all are opposed. One elderly Muslim merchant in an embroidered skullcap chatted between stalls selling grilled mutton kebabs as flat bread baked in earthen ovens and artisans beat copper pots. He said: “The new houses are much cleaner. They have a bathroom and a kitchen. It’s good to have proper sanitation.”

He will still come down to the Old Town to gossip with friends around the main Id Kah Mosque. His son shrugs about the prospect of life in a block of flats. “What can you do? What can you do? We have no choice.”

Times Online

June 20, 2009