15 years ago on July 5, 2009 Uyghurs defiantly, yet peacefully took to the streets in the city of Ürümchi, the administrative capital of East Turkistan, to protest against the Chinese government’s handling of the recent deaths of and brutal attacks on Uyghurs working at the Xuri toy factory (旭 日玩具厂 xùrì wánjùchǎng) in the city of Shaoguan in southern province of Guangdong.
On the night of June 25, a Han mob (i.e. Han workers at Xuri toy factory) stormed the Uyghur dormitories armed with metal rods, clubs, and machetes and carried out a violent attack on the Uyghur workers, in response to what seemed to be the fallacious/rumorous accounts17 of sexual assaults on Han women. According to official numbers, two Uyghurs were killed, and 120 people were injured, most of whom were Uyghurs. According to another eyewitness account reported by The Guardian (ibid.), the real death toll was more than 30, as he himself helped to kill seven or eight Uyghurs. The news of this horrible inter-ethnic violence that transpired in Shaoguan hit the Uyghurs hard back in East Turkistan, and countless many witnessed and were enraged by the mercilessly savage attacks on their fellow Uyghurs through videos circulated online posted by bystanders on sohu.com, including an appalling sight of a Han Chinese dragging what appeared to be a dead Uyghur body by his hair.
On July 5, 2009 at around 5pm local time (7pm Beijing time) Uyghurs started to amass for the protest, marching towards the People’s Square in Ürümchi. One protest organizer emphasized in an interview to Radio Free Asia (RFA 2009b) that the protest should not be violent. The collective demand was simple: investigate the Shaoguan killings and restore justice. Some protesters even had PRC flags and waved them as they marched on (Millward 2009b, 351), used in a way to both show their loyalty to the Chinese state and as a “protective shield”, as protest of any sort could land you behind bars in East Turkistan. They also shouted slogans in both Uyghur and Mandarin, strongly condemning ethnic discrimination (Ramzy 2009).
What started out as a peaceful demonstration only turned violent after police intervention. As protesters were approaching the People’s Square in Ürümchi, the armed police were already in position and intercepted protesters’ further advance. The armed police started beating, detaining, and chasing after the protesters in a vicious manner, according to an eyewitness (RFA 2009b). Chinese official sources reported that 70 protesters were arrested right then and there (HRW 2009). There was no effort made on the part of the authorities in having a dialogue with the protesters about the Shaoguan killings. Instead the armed police detained the protest leaders, and thereafter the crowds acted aimlessly; if the government had taken the initiative to have a meaning dialogue with the protesters, the subsequent rioting could have been averted in Ürümchi, according to a businessman in an interview (RFA 2009b).
Chinese officials confirmed that the armed security forces used tear gas, stun grenades, and high pressure water guns to disperse the crowds, though some Uyghur activists accused them of opening fire on the protesters (Foster & Moore 2009a).
Angered by the riots, in addition to what they saw/thought as a weak/inadequate response21 to the riots on the part of the authorities, Han Chinese in their thousands took to the streets on and after July 7 to seek revenge on Uyghurs, armed with iron bars, clubs, machetes, and other makeshift weapons (Buckley 2009c). Authorities were initially slow to react to the large assemblies of Han Chinese around the People’s Square (Branigan 2009). The riot police simply looked on as the angry Han crowds entered a Uyghur district, smashing restaurants and shops, and did not carry out any meaningful attempt to restrain the angry crowd (Buckley 2009c).
The interethnic clashes gave full vent to years of accrued repression, which in turn followed by intense crackdown on the suspected Uyghurs accused of involvement in the riots. The series of events played out after July 5 marked a turning point in Uyghur-Han settler relations and amplified the repression of Uyghurs as follows:
- 1) the Chinese state started questioning the loyalty of the whole Uyghur people, not just some suspected of endangering “state security”;
- 2) the already repressive policies toward Uyghurs intensified, so did the state efforts at destroying the Uyghur identity, whose point of departure chauvinistically anchored in settler colonialism;
- 3) the Chinese regime accelerated its measures to incorporate East Turkistan into China proper, where the end game is to make the Uyghur region a generic part of China;
- 4) ultimately led to the ongoing persecution of the Uyghurs in their millions extrajudicially interned in “reeducation camps”, the criminalization of some expressions of Uyghur culture, e.g. activities deemed religious in nature, the forced labor in factories, and the women’s sterilization program that is the genocidal policy of the Chinese regime.
