More than two weeks after the Urumqi Riot, many Western media outlets are still perpetuating misinformation and manufacturing myth about this horrible but important event. Just on Monday, 24 Hours, a local newspaper here in Vancouver, carried the following piece from Reuters:
Uighurs rally against China in Kazakh capital
Thousands of ethnic Uighurs rallied in the Kazakhstan city of Almaty yesterday to protest a crackdown on Uighurs in the neighbouring Chinese region of Xinjiang.
Around 5,000 Uighurs gathered in a Soviet-era congress hall in Kazakhstan's biggest city to express their anger at China's crackdown in its northwestern Muslim region.
"Freedom to Uighurstan!" shouted the crowd after a minute's silence, shaking fists and waving flags.
In Xinjiang's worst ethnic unrest in decades, Uighurs staged protests in the regional capital Urumqi on July 5 after a clash at a factory in south China in June left two Uighurs dead.
The following violence left 197 people dead and more than 1,600 wounded.
(Reuters)
What's wrong with this report? There are at least two as far as I can see.
(1) What were these Kazakh Uighurs protesting? According to the report, they were protesting China's "crackdown on Uighurs" in Xinjiang. This characterization of a "crackdown on Uighurs" was used so often by Western media in reporting the event of July 5 that it had become a myth. What it implied was that the Chinese government used heavy-handed tactics, or worse, violence, against unarmed and peaceful Uighur protesters in Urumqi, as is often portrayed in much of Western media.
(2) What do these protesting Uighurs in Kazakhstan want? "Freedom to Uighurstan!" according to the report. Uighurstan? Could anyone point it out on a map? This is an even phonier country than East Turkestan, which "existed" -- for a few months -- back in 1930s, but thanks to the media, has been on the news a lot since the July 5 riot. It is clear that those Kazakh Uighurs wanted part of China's territory. Ridicules demand? You bet. But apparently, Reuters was astute enough not to over-emphasize this point.
(3) What Reuters put emphasis on was the myth itself. The last two paragraphs of the report came right back to it. Readers learned, perhaps for a thousandth time, that Uighur protests in Urumqi on July 5 was followed by violence, which "left 197 people dead and more than 1,600 wounded". Because the report already said that the so-called crackdown was targeted on protesting Uighurs, readers were undoubtedly left with the false impression that most, if not all, of the victims were Uighurs.
Reuters is a respected news outlet with an international reputation. And I have nothing in particular against it. I happened to see the report on Monday and felt it was fairly representative of many other reports I saw by the media here. Since China had provided unprecedented access to foreign media to cover the event from the very start this time, I challenge Reuters -- and any other media outlets, for that matter -- to produce concrete evidence to justify the characterization of a "crackdown on Uighurs" and its associated implications.
In actuality, there was no crackdown of peaceful protesters. As Peter Foster of Daily Telegraph observed first-hand:
A note on the performance of the Chinese police during this crisis: from what I've seen they have been highly disciplined and professional under extremely challenging circumstances and deserve real praise for this.
On the one hand, it could be argued that the police failed in the first instance. Certainly that is the view of many Han people we've spoken too who are deeply angry that Sunday's killing was allowed to take place at all.
It seems that the police were taken completely by surprise. Having broken up the original demonstration around the People's Square and the South Gate on Sunday night between 6pm and 8pm, they failed to anticipate the extreme violence that was unfolded along the side-streets after about 10.30pm.
I will provide an answer later to Mr. Foster's question as to why the police appeared to have been caught off guard by the extreme violence taking place after the original demonstration had been broken up. My answer will speak volume to the sophisticated organization of the Urumqi Riot. For now, let's just concentrate on the myth that's been perpetuated in much of Western media.
From my observation, the myth of a "crackdown on Uighurs" was sold to the public through a cooperating media by World Uighur Congress, an organization of mostly exiled Uighurs, yet shamelessly claiming to "represent the collective interest of the Uighur people" both inside and outside of China.
As an example of WUC's efforts to create this myth, I shall focus on the casualty numbers provided by WUC. In a statement released on July 7, WUC claimed that "as many as 800 Uyghur peaceful protesters were killed and thousands were injured by the armed Chinese police and security forces." The next day, however, its president, Rebiya Nadeer, wrote on the Wall Street Journal that "400 Uighurs in Urumqi have died as a result of police shooting and beating." I don't know how a paper like the Journal could publish such garbage without at least checking out the apparent inconsistency first.
These were lies perpetuated by WUC, plain and simple. And the lies were made up for the purpose of further inflaming violence on Urumqi streets. Indeed, if you take a quick look at the WUC website, you will find many more sensational languages such as "crackdown of a peaceful protest", "ethnic massacre", "mass slaughter of the Uyghurs", etc.
These people have no concern for innocent lives being taken away by such brutal means as burning, mutilating, and throat-cutting. Why? Because their ultimate objective is the separation of Xinjiang from China. Just like Monday's Reuters report showed, much of the Western media, I believe, knew this objective of WUC but did not tell the public the whole story.
Indeed, the same WUC website devoted extensive space on the so-called East Turkistan. The mere fact that these exiled Uighurs did not call their homeland Xinjiang already revealed the true nature of their organization. But on the surface, WUC always presented itself as an organization for "human rights" and "democracy".
Indeed, these people were so adept at their hypocrisy that even experienced hand like Judy Woodruff of PBS's News Hour was taken in, as could be seen in her interview with Alim Seytoff, a spokesperson for the WUC, on July 7. Note that Ms. Woodruff was very surprised towards the end of the interview when Mr. Seytoff, having dodged an earlier question on separatism, finally uttered the words "an independent country". Indeed, not only did Mr. Seytoff want an independent country for Xinjiang, he also inflamed additional discontents among Tibetans and Mongols in China during the interview.
Politics
WUC's hypocrisy - to put it mildly - is a reflection of the same hypocrisy on the part of U.S. administration. In my previous blogs, I often cited my own experience as proof that the United States did not really care about democracy in other countries. What they really care about was their own self-interest. Of course, their leaders often talked about it -- loudly -- because it sounded good. (Another example that came to my mind was back in September or October 2007. I believe the street unrest then in Burma was the work of the U.S. government to create instability at China's border as China was preparing to take Taiwan by force, as I had already disclosed.)
To see the connection between WUC and U.S. government, one needs only to ask where the funding for WUC comes from. A little research will reveal that WUC's funding comes from an organization with a nice-sounding name, National Endowment for Democracy, which is in turn funded by U.S. Congress.
As for NED, all you need to know is what Allen Weinstein, former Archivist of the United States, who helped draft the legislation establishing it, said to Washington Post in 1991: "A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago." In other words, NED is a quasi-CIA organization. That just makes WUC a quasi-CIA operative. Human rights and democracy are just a nice cover.
In essence, what WUC was doing in the past few weeks -- often in concert with other CIA-linked organizations such as Radio Free Asia -- was to conduct a massive disinformation campaign to instigate and perpetuate violence on the streets of Urumqi. Some Western media outlets certainly must have recognized WUC's goal as such but decided to be a willing partner nevertheless.
Turning to the bigger political picture, the first thing that caught my attention was actually the timing of the riot. July 5 was the day when President Hu Jintao started his European visit. Indeed, I had hoped that maybe during this trip of his, I could finally be set free "with minimal disruption" to China's stability. Obviously, the timing was not a coincident. The riot was in fact organized to take place on that particular day to create maximum instability during a potential transfer of power in Beijing.
At first, President Obama was quite tight-lipped about the "China situation". After President Hu abruptly cut short of his European trip and came back to Beijing on July 8, Mr. Obama sensed a power struggle was imminent in Beijing. He could not help but pouring more fuel to the flame in China. On July 11, he said that Africa did not need strongmen but strong institutions, which was an apparent reference to what I said about myself, i.e., I am not a strongman and my strength is in my ideas on China's democratization and on international relations. In effect, Mr. Obama was attempting to divide Chinese public over the issue of leadership succession in Beijing. (New York Times immediately picked up the message. It produced an article on the Xinjiang situation on the same day, acutely titled A Strongman Is China's Rock in Ethnic Strife. Of course, this was not the first time New York Times has been a voluntary political aide to Mr. Obama. So much for journalistic independence. -- After Mr. Obama brought out his wife to a high-visibility date, New York Times produced an article titled Mr. Obama Proves that He Can, or something like that. I should note that that date was not the only time when Mr. Obama used his family members as political props.)
Looking at Urumqi Riot in the context of my story made even more sense. After my previous blog, Mr. Obama knew that his open call to break up China had failed. What he could not do openly, he chose to do it in the dark. Using CIA and covert action to create instability inside China, consequently, was a logical choice for him. That's why Mr. Seytoff and the like not only attempted to stir up unrest in Xinjiang, but other minority regions in China as well.
With this political background in mind, we can now cast some light on Peter Foster's puzzlement: Why the police appeared to be caught off-guard by the riot that killed so many people and injured so many more? I believe the initial demonstration was conceived to be largely a smoke screen, although it was not peaceful either, as Ms. Nadeer had to acknowledge in her WSJ article. Other facts pointing to sophisticated planning and organization included: (1) many of the rioters came from outside of Urumqi, some came from as far as 1,500 kilometres away; (2) similar violent acts were committed at around 50 different places at the same time; (3) rioters appeared to be working in groups; (4) such a high casualty number in such a short period of time indicated that at least some of the rioters had prior training in violence; (5) a certain degree of media savvy could be spotted in some protests.
Given that US military is in the neighbouring Afghanistan, it is not far-fetched to conclude that CIA, as the ultimate instigator and organizer of Urumqi Riot, had a double-barrel approach. On one hand, WUC and other quasi-CIA operatives were tasked to conduct a massive disinformation campaign to instigate and perpetuate violence on the ground. On the other hand, CIA had agents physically on the ground in or near Urumqi to organize and direct the demonstration and/or the riot.
Me
When the news of Urumqi Riot came, I did not pay much attention to it initially because (1) I was really tired of immersing myself in politics everyday and I had not followed politics closely since I published my last blog; and (2) I thought it was just another unrest in China. It was until I saw the bloody pictures on TV that I realized this event was quite different. Indeed, when I started gathering information on this incident, I couldn't bear to look at those pictures of extreme violence. I could not believe it actually happened in China.
Because of the timing of the riot, it did not take me long to conclude that the U.S. government was behind it. My realization saddened me greatly. What have China and its people done to deserve this?
After I published my last blog, the buzz words coming out of Washington were "consequences" and "think it through". I knew that I had foiled Mr. Obama's plan to turn the whole world on China. These and other appealing words by Mr. Obama aside, my gut feeling told me not to read too much into them. (Nowadays whenever I see Mr. Obama give a speech, I simply turn off my TV or change the channel. His words just can not be trusted. More to the point, I simply do not want to be bothered.) Low and behold, then came the CIA.
Before Mr. Obama started his trip to Russia, he famously said that Vladimir Putin had one foot in the past. As usual, those were just his words only. When it came to achieve his goal - which is to maintain U.S.'s sole superpower status - Mr. Obama proved that his words did not mean anything and both of his feet could be placed in the past.
From swine flu to Urumqi Riot, Mr. Obama's actions show that his biggest fear is the rise of China. However, China's rise is mostly a result of its focus on economic development and improving people's lives for the past 30 years. With this focus, China's economic growth is simply unstoppable. When will Mr. Obama learn to discard the outdated idea of hegemony and peacefully cooperate with China and other countries?
Politically, Urumqi Riot certainly had strengthened President Hu's hand in Beijing, as any external pressure would, because Chinese government always attached utmost importance in maintaining social stability, and rightly so. (Think back Chen Liangyu case.) My feeling, as confirmed by Mr. Obama's "strongman man/strong institution" comment in Africa last week, is that I have lost so much support that I can not even easily become the 5th generation of Chinese leadership now, let along the 4th or 3rd generation.
However, this may not be a bad thing because I am so desperately wanting to be out of this business. From the swine flu, to North Korea nuclear test, to Urumqi Riot, every time something happened that is connected to my situation, it would affect my sleep, which in turn exasperated my depression, which just made my life so much more miserable. If I could shut myself out of politics for a while, my sleep would improve and I would feel better.
Like Warren Buffett counsels, people should find careers that they actually enjoy. Politics certainly is not my cup of tea. That's why, I think, my father asked me to stay away from it before he passed away.
That's what I am going to do now. So please leave me alone, would you all? Please?
