Why shouldn't the Uighurs riot?

Question: Why is it cause for celebration and cheer in the West when the Tibetans riot against Chinese oppression, but a cause for alarm and condemnation when the Uighurs do the same thing?

It isn't - but the folks at the National Review Online seem to think it is.

I wonder what WFB would have thought about that.

Rod. Back when you supported the Invasion of Iraq, I said the same to you all (NOR droids) the exact thing I'll say here, and now.

The meta- narrative they've fed us is sheer b*llsh*t. I know. I've lived in Turkey, Egypt, studied at AUC, served in Army Intelligence, yada blah yada blah. My sister in law, mother of my God Daughter is a Turk and virulently apostate Muslim..

You ought listen to me.

This Islamo- Fascism blather is propagandic phantom nonsense.

Utter b*llshit.

Leave Israel aside.

They're all human, Rod. You should empathize with all of them. Even the violent ones.

If we don't empathize (I'm not saying sympatize) we're going to lose.

We need to love them, listen to them, and talk to them.

Mercy (Himself) demands it.

We should be on the side of those who stand up against injustice and oppression whether they be Palestinians, Tibetans, Darfur residents or Iranians. But we don't because of politics. Politics always triumphs morality. Sad but true.

The tension that has existed for decades can not and should not be distilled down to this one event, as JJ above me has tried to do. This is not a one-time event. There is much for them to protest, and their voices continue to be unheard by the west (and even among the Muslim world, their voices are not championed) because they have no political power, no country, no government to take up their cause. They are without a voice (for the most part) as even within China, their educational opportunities are severely limited (even moreso than the Han, whose own *real* job opportunities are slim). In comparison to all of the injustice committed against them over the past 6 or more decades, the Uighurs have been quite restrained and peaceable. They are consistently maligned as "terrorists" by the Chinese government, but (for the most part) this is political jargon rather than a realistic assessment.

There is a desperate need for the West to understand the issues in this region.

Firestly, I utterly hate Islam, more than any other major religion or culture. I think the Koran is one of the most EVIL books ever written, right up there with the Torah. I also think that Muslim immigrant-derived minorities present a major problem for assimilation in the West, mainly for reasons that are their own fault.

Having got that out of the way, I think one should, morally if not materially, support oppressed peoples, such as Uighurs and Palestinians. I suspect that Uighurs are largely only nominally Muslim - most of the women I saw on TV had T-shirts and bare heads - and that any Islamic fundamentalism is due to a need for allies. The same is true with Palestine - the Zionist cause has no basis other than religious bigotry, whereas the PLO, for example, was secular, with many Christian and non-religious members. There are some analogies between Islam and Communism, in that a horrible global cause has swept up just local causes.

In practical terms, I don't see the West giving material support to the Uighurs, anymore than to the Tibetans, but we should at least acknowledge where right and wrong lie.

More widely, I would like to see debate as to what gives people the right to have a state. Is it the case that any region or ethnic group that wants independence automatically has a right to secede? If London + Commuter Zone were to secede from the rest of the UK, it would instantly be one of the richest countries on earth - would that be legitimate? Perhaps a nation has to have historic existence, but how is that to be defined? What about ethnic identity? Do we even have a clear definition of an ethnic group? The US people most analogous to the Uighurs are probably the Hawaiians - to what degree would their violent rioting be jutified? What is objectionable about movements for the secession of the South, or Alaska, or California? These issues came up a while back when I commented that Ireland has no legitimate pre-1920 history of nationhood - I was misunderstood as defending the English (and Scottish) record in Ireland.

I just asked Sister Jeanne, a twenty something political refugee (she's a part of the underground Chinese Church, and had to leave before they threw her in jail) Chinese Catholic nun from Beijing, what she thought about all of this, over lunch. I had to get this Swiss girl to help me pronounce "Uighur" correctly. I've only ever read about them, until now, and, well..

You how know reading a few thousand words about something and knowing that it (or in this case, they) exists makes you a bloody expert in America. I have plenty of friends who work at the CIA, NSA and all that other jazz, I should know.

You wonder why our foreign policy sucks so much? Because our intelligence is being done by people like me, and they're not even paying attention to us. Send in the groundpounders to shoot everyone, and bomb them all "back into the stone age" (which is where they're still living anyway, so we're wasting our ammo); it'll be much more effective.

But whatever.

So, anyhow, Sr. Jeanne had no idea what I was talking about. She laughed. I laughed. Then she said this: That sometimes the foreign press makes things up, or distorts things, and that "the truth is most often in the middle of things." Au milieu des choses, she literally said. In medias res, as I think Cicero says.

I smiled, and said nothing to that.

Because I think that she's right. The little refugee ought to know.

Short answer: we don't have a dog in this fight, we know little about the history, culture and peoples of this region, and we have no direct interests in what goes on. We also have more and greater problems closer to home that require our attention, starting with a rapacious and callous regime in Washington DC that is oppressing (economically) people more like us that we do know and love.

Time for us to get out and stay out.

Your servant,

Lord Karth

My long answer, which I don’t have time to address, is more complex. My short answer is that I basically agree with jj.

Why is there never any sympathy for the victims of Muslims? It’s true even if the victims, as in Iran and Darfur, are themselves Muslims. Let’s worry about people who want freedom in Iran and let the Chinese handle this.

Mad Jack,

I have sympathy for the victims of Muslims (the Uighurs in this case). But I have greater sympathy for those innocent Chinese civilians, who were attacked and killed by Uighur protesters.

In any case, attack on civilians is a cowardly act.

Probably the only commenter here to say she has actually been to Urumqi [called WuLuMuQi by the locals] and has personal interest in what happens to the people of that city/autonomous region. Its not a province folks. When I traveled to Xin Jiang ten years ago, I was told as I was getting off the plane, that they had riots every 10 to 15 years. My first question was, when was the last one?

I hate to say this, but the Han Chinese are inculcated from a young age to consider any other ethnic group as "dirty, stupid, liars, and prone to stealing". The ancient roaming grounds of the ethnic groups has been paved over for tourism, oil exploration, gold mining, and coal mining. They are some pretty desperate people.

I hate to say this, but the Han Chinese are inculcated from a young age to consider any other ethnic group as "dirty, stupid, liars, and prone to stealing"

Its good to know that China is now one of the top countries as far as numbers of immigrants to the US then, isn't it?

Not all Muslims are "Terrorists" and Uighurs are definitely not among them. "Terrorism" is a by product from the break up of Ottoman empire under Anglo-french effort with support from Arab nationalists. Oil money fallen in the hand of a subjugated backward people (read Arabs) with no experience of self rule for 5-8 centuries, has proven to be a dangerous cocktail.

9/11 participants: Arabs
Osama, Jwahiri: Arabs
Taliban extremism: funded by Arab wahabi's and CIA during fight against soviets in Afghanistan
Israel problem: created by Arabs when they betrayed and back stabbed Ottoman Turks, so they should blame themselves, instead now they suddenly start brotherhood and Hizb-ut-Tahrir (all started by Egyptian and Palestinian Arabs) and want to establish Caliphate?!!

Non-Arab Muslims are generally not prone to this disease of random violence. It is the Arab treachery and back stabbing in the historical context armed with oil money that reinforces itself on world stage as "Islamic terrorism". And indeed these oil rich states are protected and propped up by none other than the US army. So, now lets see, where does this problem come from then?

I am totally against violence, especially against civilians.
but funny thing Ken said Uyghur of protesting, form rebel military force
indicates how naive Ken is and ignorant of Chinese totalitarian regime.
the protest started peacefully to begin with and lasted for two hours when armed riot police started harsh crackdown, in turn fueling violent response.
don't you think thousands of people taking to the street demanding human right mean something?
I am an Uyghur myself. I suggest that you search websites and investigate whether China tolerate dissents towards Communist party.
with your western mind and experience, you need to do some research before you can come up with a better perspective about Chinese attitude toward towards disfranchised people like Tibet and Uyghur.