Eggs Laid by Tigers

Sunday, July 19, 2009

The future looks grim for Uighurs

An editorial in the New York Times this morning notes hat Turkey's president has called China's treatment of the Uighurs [pronounced WEE•gurs] genocide, and China's Turkic neighbor, Kazakhstan, is also unhappy. China not only has Turkic neighbors, but also Muslim ones, though Afghanistan's Muslims are the only really "devout" and hurtful ones.

The editorial is not sanguine about the effectiveness of Turkic and Muslim pressures on China. The Uighurs are more like "a pebble in China's shoe," the editorial concludes.

More's the pity.

Here's a map that shows the relationship between the Uighur territory and neighboring Muslim countries.

These lands used to be called East Kazakhstan, and it was governed by Uighurs. The "Great Powers" -- in this instance, Britain, Russian, and China -- who have caused so much disruption in Eastern and Central Asia, decided that East Kazakhstan would no longer exist and that the Uighurs would thenceforth be Chinese.

Mao Zedong, author of the Little Red Book, whom many of us, in our youthful exuberant enthusiasm once thought of as enlightened, moved millions of Han Chinese into Uighur territory, where they took over the best jobs and land.

Still, the Uighurs persist in holding on to their identity as moderate Turkic Muslims, with their own heritage, language, and alphabet.

From the map you can see that the Uighurs are neighbors with the Chitrali, and snuggles up next to other Muslim people such as the Afghans.

"Han Chinese" are the ethnic group that makes up 90% of the Chinese population.

I've fallen love with the Uighur alphabet.

Here are some pics of Uighurs. The pics are taken from google's image thing, and I can't claim that they are typical. I sought a range that might average out as typical.