Shaoguan Massacre was the direct cause of Urumqi massacre
Abdurehim Gheni Uyghur
Every time, when we remember Shaoguan Massacre, our resentment towards China worsens for not only the numbers of victims but also for their painful death. Dozens of Uyghur slave laborers who were transferred from Konisheher County, Kashgar prefecture to Shaoguan City, Guangdong province had never thought about they would be beaten to die painfully on 26 May, 2009. On the day, hundreds of thousands of Han Chinese workers broke into their dormitory and pulled them down from their beds and beat them with wooden and iron sticks to die, they accused them of flirting Han Chinese female workers. The video clips of chasing the running Uyghur workers and beaten them viciously were widespread online. Though I was living in Netherlands, I paid close attention to the news of East Turkistan. As the video clips of chasing anf beating Uyghur workers are rather ruthless, there were widespread online debates over the massacre on some web sites originated from East Turkistan. According statistics, the casualty on that day reached 17 Uyghur workers.
To response for the brutal massacre, thousands of students, most of them were youngsters, organized a peaceful demonstration in front of government building of so called Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region Urumqi Government. They demanded the government to give an explanation about Shaoguan Massacre, stop forcible transferring of Uyghur laborers to Han provinces, and allow them solving their own unemployment within East Turkistan. However, the police and army forces shoot on the protesters and caused casualties. The videos of police shooting towards protesters and police violence of beating protesters were widespread online at times.
During the protest, police forces and soldiers used newly developed sulfur guns which attach the protesters cloths and never can be washed away after shooting and arrest them during the night by checking imprints left on the cloths. The residential areas where Uyghurs had been densely residing were cut electricity and the soldiers broke into houses and arrested and killed people arbitrary.
The video clips of beating and killing Uyghur slave workers in Shaohuan city were rather violent and disturbing and they circulated on internet for weeks. These infuriated many Uyghurs and had never been banned by “super” Chinese net police, even though it was a clear sings of the riots. Many evidences clearly indicate that it was a political plot deliberately planned by Chinese government. It is stated by many witnesses that the communist party secretary Wang Lequan and other officials were having fun at the tourist attraction called South Mountain of Urumqi at the time while police were using sulfur guns to mark protesters and arresting and killing them under the cover of darkness. In the night of 5th July, thousands of Youngers who were resided in Dong Kowruck (Erdaoqiao), At Beige Meidani (horse racing road), Dawan Road (Hill road) were killed and bodies were shifted by army vehicles, bloodstains were washed throughout all night under the cover of darkness.
Wang Lequan, then, incited Han Chinese people to kill Uyghurs by using advantages of population, many of them were soldiers and police who were disguised general population, and described this massacre on TV as “strong strike back against radicals takes place in everywhere”. Inspired by Wang Lequan’s guarantee of no punishment for killing Uyghurs, thousands of Han Chinese intruded Uyghurs densely resided areas and killed or injured any Uyghurs they saw by using wooden and iron sticks without any interference of police forces. A witness stated that when 20-30 policemen who disguised with plain cloths intruded and started to kill children on the playground and elderly people having rest outside their houses in a residential area where Uyghurs are densely resided, Uyghur young people left resisted them and tried to stop those killers killing children and other elderly Uyghurs. From then on, every men were always ready for resisting any Han intruders and killers.
When the July 5th massacre took place, Hu Jin tao, President of PRC, abruptly returned to Beijing from Italy where we were attending to G8 meeting and ordered a heavy crackdown. That was an internationally known massacre where the Chinese government started the ethnic genocide and created war between Han Chinese and Uyghurs and yet balmed the Uyghurs and kill them in mass numbers.
Memetjan Abdulla, the reporter of China Radio International ( CRI), sentenced to life imprisonment in April 2010 for “instigating ethnic rioting” for posting the World Uyghur Congress’s Stamenet WUC called Uyghurs around the world to protest about the Shaoguan incident on the Uighur-language website Salkin.
Gulmire Imin, web administrator for the Uighur-language website and a government employee in Urumqi, sentenced to life in April 2010 for posting calls for a demonstration asking justice on the Selkin website.
Geyret Niyaz, former Chairman of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region Nur Bekri’ classmate, a former journalist at the Xinjiang Economic Dail, was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment for providing suggestions to the government about solving the problems between peopel and government and for accepting interviews from foreign journalists.
Ilham Tohti, Economist at Central Nonationalist University, host at Uyghur Online website and an internationally known researcher for aksing Uyghur human rights, was sentenced to life imprisonment on September 23rd of 2014 “inciting separatism” charges. He had criticized the Chinese government on the July 5th Massacre by saying, ” this is not an incident but a result of harsh politics of Chinese government towards Uyghur people.”
Sophie Richardson, the China director at Human Rights Watch, had mentioned how China accelerated the militarization of the Uyghur region. She also showed admiration for the Uyghur people courage and bravery in facing oppression.
Throughout the history of Chinese occupation, Chinese government ruthlessly oppressed Uyghur people with baseless charges, suppressed the growth of population, controlled the ethnic and economic development, and continuously tightened the assimilation policies. Regardless of the motives of Chinese government on the occurrence of “July 5th Massacre”, their long time goal is still to exterminate the Uyghur people, completely destroy the short term development of Uyghur society under relatively loosened environment after big massacres , repeated in every 10 to 20 years.
The world should realize that the Chinese Communist Party is the largest State Run Terrorist Organization, it has no right to claim the Uyghurs, who fought in July 5, as “terrorists”. The evil Chinese government has always been targeting Uyghurs and planning to exterminate them since the occupation, yet in the past 20 years they hijacked the term “terrorism” after 9/11 to exterminate them in an unprecedented level and used the term in any chance they could to quash the Uyghurs. “July 5th” provided Chinese government such an opportunity that they started strike hard campaign on Uyghurs following the massacre, and in the last 5 years, they have been systematically committing Genocide on Uyghurs, the promise “Never Again” lost its meaning when its happening over again on Uyghurs. If we take “July 5th Massacre” as the largest massacre that Chinese planned to pave a broad way to exterminate Uyghurs and vastly succeeded in their evil endeavours, we can understand the reason behind the endless and widespread fascist extermination policies of Chinese government and why it is still ongoing till this day.
Translator from Uyghur to English: Bilton