The following deleted weibo was selected by CDT Chinese editors from FreeWeibo.

19 suspects have been arrested after 21 people died in clashes between Han Chinese and Uyghurs last week in Kashgar, the far western city in Xinjiang Province. The Chinese authorities call the incident an “act of terror,” comparing the attack on police officers to the Boston bombing. But locals say the fighting began when a young Uyghur was shot during an illegal home search.

Police harassment continues. In the deleted weibo below, “Tamerlane Dawa’er Maiti” shares a photo of an officer in a Uyghur woman’s living room, pointing to neat stack of books on the floor. The woman looks at her sandals and holds one finger in her fist. “Tamerlane” explains the situation:

帖木儿达瓦尔买提: This isn’t shaming, this is terrorizing! She faces an unknown fear.

这不是羞愧，这是惊悚！她面对的将是未知的恐惧

April 30, 2013 at 8:28 a.m.

Unfortunately, none of the book titles are visible. They could be banned books. Then again, the officer could just be using them as a tool of fear.

Via CDT Chinese.

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: censorship, Internet censorship, kashgar, Ministry of Truth, River Crab Archive, Uyghurs, weibo, Xinjiang
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The “Nine Gentlemen”: Nine activists were arrested last week after demanding that public servants disclose their financial assets, including Zhao Changqing and human rights lawyer Ding Jiaxi. Another protester, Li Wei, is missing, as activist Hu Jia explains:

@hu_jia: Li Wei is missing. No official documentation of his arrest has been received, as opposed to the other nine. RT @tengbiao: Yuan Dong, Zhang Baocheng, Ma Xinli, Hou Xin, Zhao Changqing, Ding Jiaxi, Wang Yonghong, Sun Hanhui, Li Wei, and Qi Yueying. However you count it, there are 10. The last two must have been detained as criminals. Were others arrested for calling for financial disclosure? #ninegentlemenoffinancialdisclosure

李蔚失踪，没有接到刑事拘留的法律文书。而其他九位都有。RT@tengbiao 袁冬、张宝成、马新立、候欣、赵常青、丁家喜、王永红、孙含会、李蔚、齐月英。怎麼算都是10個啊。後兩位應該也確定是被刑事拘留了。不知道還有沒有其他因為呼籲財產公示被刑拘的？#财产公示九君子

— Hu Jia 胡佳 (@hu_jia) April 28, 2013

• financial disclosure+nine gentlemen (财产公示+九君子)
• Zhao Changqing (赵长青)
• Ding Jiaxi (丁家喜)

Yuan Dong, one of the “nine gentlemen” arrested after publicly calling on officials to disclose their financial assets. (@azurefoxlee)

“Terrorist” Attack in Xinjiang: 21 died last week in clashes between the police and ethnic Uyghurs in Kashgar, a prefecture-level town which borders Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. The Chinese authorities and have accused the U.S. of a double standard for refusing to call this a “terrorist act.”

• Selibuya (色力布亚): The town in Kashgar Prefecture where the officers were killed.
• World Uyghur Congress (世维会)

Other:

• 25th anniversary (25周年): It is unclear why this is blocked. Reader suggestions are welcome.

Additionally, the following search terms have been blocked as of April 27.

Chengdu Environmental Protest: Chengdu netizens have objected to the construction of a petrochemical plant planned for Pengzhou, a town within the city limits. A number of netizens have suggested demonstrating against the project on May 4th, Youth Day, on Jiuyan Bridge, the site of May 4, 2008 protests against a p-Xylene (PX) plant in Pengzhou. On Weibo, the Chengdu authorities announced that they had arrested those calling for the demonstration, which they condemned as “inciting illegal assembly.”

• Chengdu PX project (成都PX项目)
• May 4th+Jiuyan Bridge+take a walk (5月4日+九眼桥+散步)
• Pengzhou+PX (彭州+PX)
• Pengzhou+petrochemicals (彭州+石化): retested

Other:

• Real Estate Party (地产党): A reference to the property owned by Party officials, both at home and abroad.

All Chinese-language words are tested using simplified characters. The same terms in traditional characters occasionally return different results.

Browse all of CDT’s collected sensitive words in this bilingual Google spreadsheet.

CDT Chinese runs a project that crowd-sources filtered keywords on Sina Weibo search. CDT independently tests the keywords before posting them, but some searches later become accessible again. We welcome readers to contribute to this project so that we can include the most up-to-date information. To add words, check out the form at the bottom of CDT Chinese’s latest sensitive words posts (April 27 and April 29).

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: censorship, Chengdu, Chengdu PX, Ding Jiaxi, environmental protests, financial disclosure, Internet censorship, Ministry of Truth, protests, PX, Sensitive Words Series, Uyghurs, weibo, Xinjiang, Zhao Changqing
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China Central Television said Monday that another group of suspects had been captured and interrogated, though it didn’t say how many. It also said explosives were seized. The report quoted the state anti-terrorist office and Meng Hongwei, the vice public security minister.

Also Monday, CCTV broadcast images of a memorial service for the 12 men and three women police officers and officials killed in the clash. It said Meng attended, along with more than 1,000 people from local party and government departments.

A leading Uighur activist has questioned the official account of the incident. Local sources said that police sparked it by shooting a Uighur youth during an illegal search of homes, according to Dilxat Raxit, a spokesman for the German-based World Uyghur Congress.

Authorities previously said 10 of those killed on the government side were Uighurs, three were Han, and two were from the Mongolian ethnic group. It said two other Uighurs were hurt. The ethnicity of the assailants wasn’t given.

While the details of the attack are not clear, local residents have cast doubt on the government’s version of events that claims it was a terrorist attack. BBC reporter Damian Grammaticas traveled to the town of Selibuya where the attack occurred:

Rather than “terrorists”, local people told us the violence involved a local family who had had a long-standing dispute with officials.

The family, we were told, were very religious. Officials had, for a long time, been pressuring the men in the family to shave off their beards, and the women to stop wearing full veils covering everything but their eyes.

Local government regulations, we were told, stipulate that women must not wear full veils, and only men who are over 40 years old are allowed to grow beards.

We cannot identify those who talked to us, as they are at risk of official reprisals, but one person said “community workers asked the family not to have their women cover their faces”.

“They’d been telling them for a long time. They never agreed,” the person added.

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Post tags: muslims, terrorism, Uyghurs, Xinjiang
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US State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell also urged that “due process protections” be given to all Chinese citizens, including ethnic Uighurs.

…

“We urge the Chinese authorities to conduct a thorough and transparent investigation of this incident,” Mr Ventrell said.

He asked China to provide Uighurs with all the protections “to which they are entitled not only under Chinese constitutional laws but the international human rights commitments as well”.

He also called on China to safeguard religious rights.

Chinese officials called out the U.S. on Thursday for refusing to condemn the attack, which the state-run Global Times had compared to the Boston Marathon bombing. From Reuters:

The U.S. refusal to condemn the attack showed double standards, considering that it had been the recent victim of a terrorist attack, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told reporters.

“We simply oppose the U.S. reversing black and white, confusing right and wrong, and continually refusing to condemn violent terrorist incidents, and instead, making wild accusations about Chinese policy toward ethnic minorities,” she said.

“We hope the U.S. will turn a mirror on itself and all its own domestic problems instead of pointing fingers at other countries.”

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Post tags: boston marathon bombing, kashgar, terrorism, United States, Uyghurs, Xinjiang, Xinjiang violence
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Among the dead in the Tuesday afternoon fighting were 15 police officers and local government officials, the Xinjiang government propaganda office said in a news release. It said six assailants were killed on the spot and another eight were captured alive.

“Initial investigations show this was a gang plotting to carry out terrorist acts and the case is now being further cracked open,” the release said.

A leading activist from the region’s indigenous Turkic Muslim Uighur ethnic group questioned the official account, saying local sources said that police sparked the incident by shooting a Uighur youth during an illegal search of homes.

CNN provided more details on the alleged terrorist activity:

[…] Hou Hanmin, spokesperson for the Xinjiang government […] told CNN that some of the captured assailants said under interrogation that they had watched videos “from overseas” that featured violence and acts of terrorism.

“Then they made those large, lethal knives and wanted to use them for Jihad,” she said, referring to the Arabic term meaning “struggle.”

“They had been training in their own house for several months. They were affected by extremism and hoped to commit themselves to Jihad.”

But Human Rights Watch’s Nicholas Bequelin urged caution about claims that terrorism was involved. From Tania Branigan at The Guardian:

“China has made many unproven and questionable statements about terrorism in the region. That does not mean there isn’t anti-state violence happening there, but we should take with a lot of caution any claim of terrorism,” said Nicholas Bequelin, senior Asia researcher at Human Rights Watch.

He added: “There are a lot of deaths and a dearth of explanation about them. Every time an incident has been investigated, it brings up elements that challenge profoundly the version put out by authorities.”

He noted that there were criminal gangs in Xinjiang that could not necessarily be linked to terrorism, and added: “Anything that is outside of state-controlled religion is viewed by the Chinese government as illegal religious activity – and anything viewed as illegal religious activity is in turn associated with terrorism.”

Bequelin added, on Twitter:

The 6 Xinjiang suspects are at v. high risk of torture. Police likely in need of “confessions” to back murky claims of terrorism.

— Nicholas Bequelin 林伟 (@Bequelin) April 24, 2013

Commentators in the U.S., meanwhile, have been embroiled in their own disputes over the terrorism label following last week’s Boston Marathon bombing and the dramatic ensuing manhunt. For Zhu Zhangping at China’s Global Times, the attack’s Chechen connection highlighted America’s “double standards on terror”:

[…] For the US, the sole power enjoying global leadership, it faces terrorism threats from overseas and it fights against terrorism actually only for the sake of its own and its allies’ safety.

As to Chechen separatists and Eastern Turkistan activists, the big headaches for Russia and China respectively, the US always takes two approaches.

On the one hand, the US defined some Chechen separatists as terrorist entities. On the other hand, the US often blamed the Russian government’s violation of ethnic groups’ human rights.

[…] The US does the same to the Xinjiang separatists. The US has only put the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement, one of about 50 Eastern Turkistan groups, on its terrorist list. [AP's Christopher Bodeen notes that ETIM was "later quietly removed […] amid doubts that it existed in any organized manner.“] On the other hand, it praises separatist head Rebiya Kadeer as a “prominent human rights advocate” and finances her group. Such double standards are often interpreted as making trouble to contain China’s rise, while hitting the most dangerous group that is most closely linked to Al Qaeda.

[…] Before it can trace any hints that the Xinjiang separatists may attack the US, the US will not easily abandon these troublemakers in its attempts to slow China’s rapid development and expanding power projection.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: boston marathon bombing, human rights watch, kashgar, terrorism, Uyghurs, Xinjiang, Xinjiang violence
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The Tianzi Road Project is an important source of political capital for local Party leaders in Xinjiang and there has been pressure in recent months to complete phase two. On April 16, just two days before the on-site accident, local media reported that work on the project had been accelerated.

One source in Xinjiang, who requested anonymity given the local sensitivity of this story, said many problems had been exposed at the Tianzi Road Project and that the local government had violated normal construction procedures for the sake of “political point scoring” (政府为了政绩违背建设规律一味最求速度). The source also alleged that the Urumqi Evening Post had sent two inexperienced interns to the Tianzi Road Project worksite because it believed they would be more amenable to the propaganda goals of the local leadership.

According to the Xinjiang source, the accident on April 18 happened on a section of the project directly across from Urumqi’s famous bazaar, the “Dabazha.” The source also told CMP that the reporting intern killed in the accident, Bailu (拜璐), belongs to China’s muslim Hui minority.

The priority nature of the infrastructure project and the ethnicity of the intern who was killed both make this a potentially sensitive story for the local leadership.

Bandurski further reports that Sina Weibo users noticed when the Urumqi Evening Post deleted one post on the story and removed specific details from another. with some netizens speculating that local officials wanted to distance themselves and the project from the tragedy.

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Post tags: construction project, infrastructure projects, netizens, online public opinion, sina weibo, Urumqi, Xinjiang
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“For a ruling party which follows Marxism, we need to help people establish a correct world view and to scientifically deal with birth, ageing, sickness and death, as well as fortune and misfortune, via popularising scientific knowledge,” [Wang] said, in rare public comments on the government’s religious policy.

“But we must realise that this is a long process and we need to be patient and work hard to achieve it,” Wang added in the latest issue of the Study Times, which reached subscribers on Sunday.

“Religion has been around for a very long time, and if we rush to try to push for results and want to immediately ‘liberate’ people from the influence of religion, then it will have the opposite effect and push people in the opposite direction.”

[...]“Religion basically upholds peace, reconciliation and harmony … and can play its role in society,” Wang said.

“But due to various complex factors, religion can become a lure for unrest and antagonism. Looking at the state of religion in the world today, we must be very clear on this point.”

Wang’s statement did not specifically address CCP concerns regarding the regions of Xinjiang – predominately muslim; and Tibet – predominately Buddhist, where the suppression of distinct religious and cultural identities has long stimulated political unrest. For an overview of the play between religion, politics, and the state in western China, see the report “Uighurs and China’s Xinjiang Region,” or the podcast “China, Tibet, and Religious Oppression,” both via the Council on Foreign Relations.

Looking at the ongoing wave of protest by self-immolation on the Tibetan Plateau, Elliot Abrams and Azizah Al-Hibri of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom suggest that greater religious freedom, rather than the gradual disappearance of religious ideas as expressed by Wang Zuoan, would more effectively quell unrest and enhance security. From the Wall Street Journal:

Silence is inexcusable. We must consistently and persistently call for Beijing to uphold religious freedom for the sake of human rights and stability alike. President Xi must hear repeatedly from U.S. President Barack Obama and other leaders that China’s policies ignore mounting evidence that freedom, not repression, creates peaceful and prosperous societies. Such societies are secured by honoring the dignity and worth of people, empowering and encouraging their participation in civil society, protecting their liberties in law and practice, and allowing them the fundamental right to practice their faith and live their lives according to their conscience.

In a country as vast, diverse and globally engaged as China, lasting stability is impossible when people are denied religious freedom. If Beijing guarantees freedoms for all, from Tibetan Buddhists to Uighur Muslims, and from Christians to the Falun Gong, it will help, not hinder, China’s quest for security.

As constitutionally defined since the founding of the PRC, official policy guarantees religious freedom, but human rights groups have long documented the state’s exercise of strict control over religion.

© josh rudolph for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Falun Gong, religion, religious freedom, religious persecution, self-immolations, superstition, Tibet, Tibetans, traditional culture, Uyghurs, Xinjiang
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Given the incredible diversity of China, the strategy of rule sketched out above has never worked for everyone or applied equally to all parts of the country. Many Chinese in rural areas have been frustrated by how long it has taken for the rising tide that was supposed to lift all boats to reach them, and large numbers of members of ethnic groups, most famously Tibetan and Uighurs, have never accepted the mythic notion that in 1949 the Communist Party, whose leaders treated them much like colonized subjects, had gloriously “liberated” all citizens of the People’s Republic of China from foreign control. A third key grievance driving the protests of 1989—anger at corruption and nepotism—has never gone away.

Most recently, an additional challenge has emerged: discontent among many of those who once seemed most ready to accept the post-1989 consumerist bargain, as long as it meant that life kept improving materially. After a series of tainted-food scandals and an ongoing pollution crisis, epitomized by the wretched smog that blanketed many cities this past winter, many who have been doing relatively well materially in recent years are now questioning whether their quality of life really is improving. They hunger for a government they can trust.

How can we move beyond the tendency either to underestimate the resilience of the Chinese Communist Party or fail to understand the important challenges it faces? Helen Gao, Leta Hong Fincher, Alec Ash, and Ross Perlin show us a valuable way to proceed, charting out an alternative path of analysis that will also be explored in later contributions to Dissent, which is committed to publishing similar behind-the-headlines reportage and analysis on China in future issues. These four deeply informed writers pay attention to the attitudes of ordinary people; to individuals who are neither part of the government nor locked into a directly antagonistic relationship to the regime; to women as well as men; to the young as well as the old, keeping in mind that for two thirds of China’s 1.3 billion inhabitants, Chairman Mao has always been dead.

Specific articles include:

- Land of Many Nationalisms by Helen Gao
- Women’s Rights at Risk by Leta Hong Fincher
- China’s Youth: Do They Dare to Care about Politics? by Alec Ash
- Chinese Workers Foxconned by Ross Perlin

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Post tags: ethnic minority, migrant workers, quality of life, social unrest, Tibet, wealth gap, women's rights, Xinjiang
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The courts in Kashgar and Bayingol said the 20 – all ethnic Uighurs judging by their names – had had their “thoughts poisoned by religious extremism”, and used cell phones and DVDs “to spread Muslim religious propaganda”, the Xinjiang government said on its official news website (www.ts.cn).

Some of them bought weapons to kill policemen as part of their jihad and spread propaganda related to the banned East Turkestan Islamic Movement, the report said, a group which China says wages a violent campaign for a separate state.

…

Dilxat Raxit, spokesman for the exiled World Uyghur Congress, said the 20 were actually guilty of no more than listening to the U.S.-funded Radio Free Asia and using the internet to discuss the importance of religious and cultural freedom.

The news comes amid heightened tension in the province, as one or more Uyghurs allegedly carried out an attack on Han Chinese in Korla earlier this month. Chris Buckley of The New York Times has more on today’s rulings in Kashgar and Bayingol:

The Chinese-language report did not describe the ethnicity of the people convicted or their genders. But their distinctive names and the separatist accusations left little doubt that they are Uighur, a mainly Muslim ethnic group with a Turkic language and culture that sets them apart from China’s Han majority. And details in the report offered a picture of volatile resentment among Uighur men drawn to militancy spread over the Internet.

…

“It’s not clear what is being alleged against these people beyond being members of a clandestine organization,” said Nicholas Bequelin, a researcher based in Hong Kong for Human Rights Watch, an advocacy group with headquarters in New York.

“China has for a long time conflated religious activities taking place outside of state control with extremism,” said Mr. Bequelin, who closely follows developments in Xinjiang. “There’s been so many unsupported accusations by the Chinese government about extremist Islamic activities and terrorist activities in Xinjiang that it makes its difficult to have faith in these kinds of announcements.”

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Post tags: separatism, terrorism, Uyghurs, Xinjiang
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Police said a security clampdown had been imposed following clashes in Korla city in central Xinjiang, confirming an undetermined number of fatalities.

An officer who answered the phone at the municipal police incident room confirmed reports of the killings, which initially appeared on China’s Twitter-like social media platforms.

He indicated that one or more Uyghurs had attacked Han Chinese but declined to give details of casualties or the current police operation.

[...]

Asked to confirm reports of a security clampdown, the officer said, “That’s right,” adding that the measures were city-wide.

Charges of “endangering state security” are frequently used against ethnic Uyghurs who “assert their cultural identity through speech, association, and assembly,” according to the San Francisco-based Duihua Foundation. Duihua recently found that 50% of the country’s state security trials were held in Xinjiang, which is home to less than two percent of the total population:

With a level of transparency not afforded by other jurisdictions, the high court of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region discloses annually the number of endangering state security (ESS) trials in the region. In 2012, 314 ESS trials of first and second instance were concluded, down 24 percent year-on-year. The decline is no cause for celebration, however, since, according to Xinjiang Party Secretary Zhang Chunxian, “the struggle between splittist and anti-splittist forces in Xinjiang [is] long-term, complicated, and intense.”

[...]

Underscoring the government’s hardline approach, Dui Hua’s analysis of official data reveals a disturbing trend: between 2008 and 2010, Xinjiang, which accounts for less than 2 percent of China’s population, accounted for 50 percent of the nation’s first-instance ESS trials. Given that splittism is the focus of stability maintenance in the region, the great majority of defendants in these trials is almost certain to be Uyghur.

In Beijing, at the National People’s Congress session, Xinjiang’s Party chief, spoke about the tensions and periodic violent flare-ups in the region and linked the situation to uprisings in Arab countries and Eastern Europe. From People’s Daily:

Zhang Chunxian, who is attending an annual session of the country’s top legislature in Beijing, told reporters after a panel discussion, “Although the situation remains tough, the overall stability in Xinjiang is improving and under control.”

Zhang said Xinjiang should contain, resist and prevent the “three evil forces” of separatism, extremism and terrorism step by step in a historical way.

He said the “three evil forces” are closely linked with and affected by the international environment such as the 2004 “Orange Revolution” in Ukraine and the Jasmine Revolutions that swept some Arab countries.

In another article, a Xinjiang official blamed Internet rumors for flaming ethnic tensions, mentioning a dispute between a Han customer and a Uyghur nut cake peddler last year:

Some commercial disputes involving Xinjiang people are just ordinary incidents that have been dealt with according to regulations but were later exaggerated, said Nur Bekri, chairman of the region.

Last year, police in the city of Yueyang, Hunan province, reported a dispute between vendors from Xinjiang and a customer over the price of sliced cake that ended in a brawl. Many netizens were surprised about the sky-high price and said they have been cheated by Xinjiang vendors selling such cakes.

Nur said some incidents involving Xinjiang people have faced vicious speculation on the Internet, and the hard-working, kind people of Xinjiang have been defamed by people who might have ulterior motives. The intention of such comments is to damage the relationship between people from different ethnic groups.

“It shows that some people lack an understanding of Xinjiang,” he said.

UPDATE (March 7, 2013 10:00 PM PST):

Radio Free Asia updated their story with more details about how the attack began:

According to accounts from people working near the scene and from netizens, several people including both Uyghurs and Han Chinese were killed and more injured after a fight broke out in a video game arcade in the city’s Golden Triangle commercial district.

And the South China Morning Post reports four people were killed:

At least four people were killed and eight others were injured in a knife attack in central Xinjiang yesterday, according to witnesses and a spokeswoman for the restive autonomous region.

Police in Korla arrested one suspect involved in the attack, Xinjiang’s publicity chief, Hou Hanmin , told the South China Morning Post, but she failed to confirm the identities of the suspect and victims.

She confirmed the casualty count and said the attack took place around 3pm when a man wielding a small knife “attacked people in downtown Korla”.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Korla, Uyghurs, Xinjiang, Xinjiang violence
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It is an extraordinary journey, and one which has left Qassim an exile, separated permanently from his family in China.

When he first left the Uighur homeland, Xinjiang, he was heading for Turkey, where he planned to get a job in a leather factory, and then send for his family.

Crossing first into Central Asia he made his way south to Pakistan, where he applied for a visa to travel through Iran. While waiting, he says, he went to stay in a “Uighur village” across the border in Afghanistan.

But the village happened to be near Tora Bora, and this was the autumn of 2001, not long after the 9/11 attacks. The US starting bombing suspected militant targets, one of which, it appears, was the “Uighur village”.

Qassim and his friends hid at first in caves, then crossed snow-covered mountain passes to Pakistan. Villagers greeted them as guests – then sold them for bounty to US forces.

PRI’s The World has more of Qassim’s story, telling of the contrast between his expectations and initial impressions of life in Albania, how pizza led him to his livelihood, and the stigma that he carries around after having been a terrorist suspect:

[...]Qassim actually knew something about Albania, growing up in western China. Chairman Mao and Albania’s communist dictator, Enver Hoxha, forged close ties in the 1970s.

The result was that people in China heard a lot of Albania and its culture, especially through Albanian movies that were dubbed into Chinese.

“I had this idea that Albania would be a huge country because when I was young, I would see many [Albanian] movies on Chinese TV because of the strong relationship at the time,” Qassim says.

But when he arrived, Qassim says he had trouble believing he was in Albania, in part, because Tirana seemed too small to be the capital of a country.

“I looked at a map to find Albania. And I couldn’t find it. I asked people, “Can you point at Albania on the map?” and what they showed me was a tiny dot.”

The Albania that Qassim encountered had a changed a lot since the 1970s. The country had become a democracy, and it was also no longer an officially atheist state. In fact, the majority of Albanians are Muslim.

Another thing Qassim didn’t know was that Tirana is teeming with pizza parlors. He’d never even heard of pizza before he arrived, but he wandered into a pizzeria and somehow managed to order a pie — without speaking Albanian.

“It was delicious, and the owner didn’t charge me for it as a sign of respect,” Qassim says.

That first taste eventually inspired Qassim to become a pizza-maker. He now works part-time at a Halal pizzeria in Tirana.

“This isn’t a hard job, but it gives you pleasure when people enjoy the pizza you make, when they give you a tip,” Qassim says as he makes his speciality, the Mix Pizza, which is basically the works with a few regional touches: Albanian smoked beef and Bosnian sausage.

His newfound culinary craft also helped him adjust to life in Albania. For the first two years, he struggled with the notoriously difficult language despite taking classes. Once he started working at the pizzeria, Qassim says his Albanian improved considerably.

[...]Qassim, though, might be wise to avoid sounding critical of the US in Albania — an overwhelmingly pro-American country that’s hosting the Uighurs at the request of the US.

Qassim also can’t leave Albania because he’s not a citizen and doesn’t have a passport. And if he were to return to China, he would almost certainly be arrested.

Click through to hear audio of the original broadcast.

While Qassim is stuck in Tirana, Human Rights Watch has accused Malaysia of refusing to grant six Uyghurs political asylum, and deporting them back to China. The Guardian reports:

An international rights group has criticised Malaysia for deporting six ethnic Uighur Chinese who were seeking asylum, saying it has put the men’s lives in danger.

New York-based Human Rights Watch said the forced return of the men toChina on 31 December was a grave violation of international laws.

Muslim minority Uighurs repatriated to China from elsewhere in the past have expressed fear of long jail terms or the death penalty.

Citing credible sources, Human Rights Watch said the six men were held earlier last year for allegedly attempting to leave Malaysia using false passports. It said the men registered with the UN refugee agency in Kuala Lumpur while in detention and were to have their claims reviewed when they were deported. [...]

Also see “In Xinjiang, Uyghur Identity Under Siege,” via CDT.

© josh rudolph for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: asylum, ethnic minority, guantanamo bay, Uyghurs, Xinjiang
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On January 12, 2013, two family members of the imprisoned rights defense lawyer Gao Zhisheng (高智晟) were permitted to visit Gao at Shaya Prison in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, according to Gao’s wife Geng He (耿和). This was the first family visit since March 24, 2012, and the only confirmation since that date that Gao is still alive. Gao’s younger brother and Geng He’s father were allowed to see Gao and speak with him by phone through a glass window.

[…] Before being allowed to see Gao, his younger brother was subjected to a body search and told that, during the visit, he was not allowed to discuss Gao’s case, Gao’s prison situation, or Geng He and their two children, who are in the United States, or to accept press interviews after the visit.

Gao’s mind seemed clear and he spoke normally. His younger brother was not able to find out when Gao is scheduled to be released, or whether he received the letters from his wife and children.

When Gao’s brother asked when Gao is permitted to see his family next, he was told that the family has to “follow old ways.” Geng He said, “Last time, it took nine months for the authorities to allow the family to see Gao in prison. How long will it take next time?”

See more on Gao’s case at Human Rights in China and at CDT.

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Post tags: Gao Zhisheng, human rights in china, prison, prisoners, rights lawyers, torture, Xinjiang
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[…] The complex in question is conveniently being built just to the northeast of the very modern Kashgar airport, very close to a reservoir which I drove by on an excursion to nearby ruins (also marked on the map). The railway from Urumuqi to Kashgar veers into Kashgar just south of the reservoir, and would be perfectly positioned for an offshoot into the industrial zone. This complex is not at the far edge of some small desert town; it is located on prime real estate near transportation hubs in a rapidly expanding trading and manufacturing center that was once a major waypoint on the Silk Road. It would be the absolutely worst place to build a secret base.

[…] This story thus reveals more about us than about China. It is above all a story about technology racing ahead of our ability to put it into context. We are overawed by the notion that we can observe any place on Earth in high resolution, but we lack the tools to understand this power and the limits of this power. Into this cognitive vacuum we pile on conspiracy theories. Any absence of information suddenly requires a cover-up. Comments to the original Danger Room article betray an amazing appetite for conspiratorial beliefs that are incompatible with even a passing knowledge of how satellite imagery is collected.

And the story also reveals how many in the West continue to see China as an oriental mystery opaque to westerners, fair game for wild conjecture. But it’s not. Those days are long gone. Here be no more dragons. China is knowable. Just not from Google Earth alone.

Industrial parks have been built around Xinjiang as Beijing tries to soothe the region’s ethnic tensions and social problems with accelerated economic development. The path has been rocky, however. In 2011, The Financial Times’ Kathrin Hille reported that one such park in Hotan, sponsored by Zhejiang’s provincial government, was occupied mainly by jade prospectors scouring the former riverbed. See more on Xinjiang and its economic development via CDT.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: google earth, Hotan, kashgar, Urumqi, western china development, Xinjiang, Xinjiang development
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Wreckage of the Ferrari crash which killed Ling Gu.

As of December 10, the following search terms are blocked on Sina Weibo (not including the “search for user” function):

Ling Jihua Rumors: Before the Party Congress, Hu Jintao was accused by party elders of helping Ling Jihua cover up the death of Ling’s son in a Ferrari crash this March. The scandal had a profound effect on this year’s leadership transition, according to the New York Times. Ling himself was demoted from director of the Central Committee General Office to head of the United Front Work Department.

- Ling Jihua (令计划): Retested. First noted as blocked by CDT on April 16, 2011, and again on November 16, 2011. See our Google spreadsheet of sensitive Sina Weibo search terms.
- LingJH (令JH)
- department head (部长): This could imply either Ling Jihua or Liu Qibao, the newly appointed head of the Central Propaganda Department. Liu went missing last week, only to resurface as mysteriously as he disappeared yesterday. An essay about his new position entitled “Border Province Governor Liu Qibao” was ordered suppressed by censors.
- Gu Liping (谷丽萍): Ling’s wife. Rumors that she was being subjected to shuanggui have been refuted by the authorities.
- Gu Yuanxu (谷源旭): Gu Liping’s younger brother.
- Zhou Benshun (周本顺): Secretary of the Central Politics and Law Commission. Zhou was implicated in the rumors surrounding the crash.
- Liu Qibao (刘奇葆)
- Central Committee Organization Department (中组部)
- power struggle (权斗): retested

Selling qiegao.

Xinjiang Nut Cake Fiasco: A dispute between a customer and a Uyghur peddler in Yueyang, Hunan over the sale of qiegao (Xinjiang nut cake) went viral on Weibo last week. Netizens were shocked by the damages incurred–qiegao ruined in the spat were valued at 160,000 RMB. Anti-Uyghur comments, particular portraying the ethnic group as violent and criminal, have since proliferated.

- Yueyang + qiegao (岳阳+切糕)
- Xinjiang + qiegao (新疆+切糕)
- qiegao + 160,000 (切糕+16万)

Other:

- satellite dish (卫星锅盖)

Note: All Chinese-language words are tested using simplified characters. The same terms in traditional characters occasionally return different results.

CDT Chinese runs a project that crowd-sources filtered keywords on Sina Weibo search.  CDT independently tests the keywords before posting them, but some searches later become accessible again. We welcome readers to contribute to this project so that we can include the most up-to-date information. To add words, check out the form at the bottom of CDT Chinese’s latest sensitive words post.

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: censorship, Gu Liping, Gu Yuanxu, Hunan, Internet censorship, Ling Jihua, Liu Qibao, Ministry of Truth, netizens, Sensitive Words Series, Shuanggui, sina weibo, Uyghurs, weibo, Xinjiang, Zhou Benshun
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The Intermediate People’s Court in Hotan Prefecture ruled at the first instance that the men were guilty of organizing, leading or participating in a terrorist group, hijacking the aircraft and attempting to detonate explosives on the aircraft.

Musa Yvsup and Arxidikali Yimin, the leaders of the group who plotted the hijacking, and Eyumer Yimin, a major participant in the planning, were sentenced to death, according to a statement from the court.

Alem Musa, who played a minor role in the plane hijacking and willingly pleaded guilty after being arrested, received a life sentence, said the statement.

All the defendants confessed the above crimes at the court.

Tensions in Xinjiang Autonomous Region have been mounting since 2009. According to AFP, the attempted hijacking also resulted in an ‘economic loss’:

© Melissa M. Chan for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: hijack, terrorism, World Uyghur Congress, Xinjiang
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