China's confrontation with the Uighur people of Xinjiang province poses many challenges to the authorities in Beijing. The government's attempt to homogenize this remote northwestern province comes after years of seeking to persuade the largely Muslim population to subscribe unquestioningly to its values and views. The patience of the locals finally snapped four years ago when at least 200 people perished in rioting and ever since there has been considerable tension throughout the province. As with Tibet, the local identity proved too strong and the loyalty of the locals to their own ways too enduring to allow a full-scale cultural takeover. Once again, as with the higher profile Tibetans, the Han Chinese have sought to make themselves a significant minority, if not an actual majority, in this difficult province. This has involved bringing in large numbers of “colonists”, whose attitude to the locals all too often borders on contempt. Fully aware of what is happening and powerless to resist the erosion of their society and indeed their way of life, the only form of protest open to them has been demonstrations which, for whatever reason, have turned ugly. In the last few weeks, at least 40 people have died in violence, the majority of them Uighur Chinese. The most serious recent protest and its suppression by the authorities took place in the days before Ramadan. Now that the holy month is upon us, party bosses and officials in Xinjiang have chosen to use the issue of the observance of the fast as a way of identifying “troublemakers”. Gatherings in mosques or family homes for iftar are being targeted by police and security forces in what they claim is a “crackdown on terrorists and extremist organizations”. This behavior is totally unacceptable and deserves the deepest censure. Whatever the sympathies of most Muslim Uighurs for the protest movement demanding their culture and heritage be respected and protected, it can be certain that the vast majority of the population has chosen to stay away from demonstrations. Yet they are subject to this monstrous collective punishment that forbids them performing their religious duties and observations during the holy month. If Beijing imagines that this is going crush a proud and resourceful people, then it is mistaken. As with attempts in the old Soviet Union to crush the Muslim identities of subject peoples, the outcome has always been the opposite. And China is in a different position now than when it began its thus-far unsuccessful attempt to erase the culture of rebellious Tibet. With Beijing's growing international power comes growing international responsibilities. Five years ago, China was being celebrated for its cultural diversity, not least its Muslim minorities of which the Uighur are only one. The state media were happy to promote the freedom of worship and show films of loyal Uighur Muslims going about their lives as part of the greater China. Such propaganda is now a thing of the past. Beijing has chosen to cast Uighur culture and by extension Islam as a source of rebellion and sedition. These claims will not be lost on other Muslim minorities nor indeed on the wider Muslim world. China will have to pay a price for its anti-Islamic repression.
