OH MY GOSH, THOSE COMMENTS WERE MADE BY THE CHINESE WERE DOLTS... I AM ABSOLUTELY SHOCKED BY THEIR KNOW-NOTHING COMMENTS. WHOMEVER ARE READING THEIR COMMENTS PLEASE DO NOT GET MAD AT THEM, BECAUSE THEY ARE DEEPLY POISONED BY THE COMMUNIST EDUCATION, SO THAT'S WHY THEY HAVE NOT SENSE OF RESPECT OR SENSE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS WITHIN THEIR COMMENTS.
CHINESE ARE KIND ENOUGHT TO LET THEM IN? WHY DON'T YOU ASK YOURSELF WHY THE PLACE IS CALLED XIN JIANG? IT MEANS THE NEW LAND. IF IT WAS ORIGINALLY BELONGED TO CHINA, THEN WHY WOULD IT BE THE NEW LAND? IF YOU THINK THERE IS NO ETHNIC, THEN WHY WOULD YOU EVEN CALL YOURSELF HAN PEOPLE THEN? OR EVEN CHINESE? YOU SHOULD JUST CALL YOURSELF A PERSON FROM EARTH!
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Bad Press
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Like Tibet, the presence of foreign reporters triggered a brave protest staged for their cameras. A group of about 200 women surged out of a market demanding the release of detained male relatives. For a moment, violence looked inevitable, but security forces stepped back. It was reminiscent of events in the Jorkang Temple in Lhasa when weeping monks burst in on the foreign press. Whatever the cost to the demonstrators, an unscripted moment was still a major embarrassment for the government.
Beijing has also used the Lhasa experience as a template to shape the message to its main audience, which is domestic. Official media depicts the rioters as thugs rather than people with political grievances. The approach is first to accuse a foreign-based exile group (in this case, the World Uighur Council) of inciting unrest and second to highlight the brutal violence between the region's two main ethnic groups—Uighurs, who make up half of Xinjiang's population and speak a Turkic language, and China's national majority, the Han. At the same time, state media ignores the role of the security forces in the body count.
Journalists on hospital visits have been shown Han Chinese with serious head wounds from beatings, and also Uighurs with bullet wounds. Yet the official Xinhua news agency's coverage has given most of its coverage to beatings of Han Chinese by Uighur rioters, such as taxi driver Zhao, who says he was assaulted by a baton-waving crowd of 20 who "beat me badly." The president of the People's Hospital said 233 of the 291 victims taken there were Han Chinese, while 39 were Uighur and some were from other minorities, according to Xinhua. The presence of Hui Muslims, another ethnic minority, among the victims highlights Muslim-on-Muslim violence, a tactic that could limit sympathy for Uighur separatists and undermine the claims of rights groups in the Arab world.
Another tried-and-true technique follows the script used in Tibet: Beijing has blamed exiled businesswoman Rebiya Kadeer for the violence. Kadeer, who heads a Washington-based confederation of exile organizations scattered through the U.S., Germany, Britain, and Australia, denies involvement. The provincial government has said "violence … was instigated and directed from abroad, and carried out by outlaws in the country." Similar florid language was applied to the Dalai Lama after the Lhasa riots; he was described as a "jackal in monk's robes." The official media "is very unified," says Xiao. "They all point to Rebiya Kadeer, they all have the same narrative, there's no independent reporting—it's a very highly controlled version of the story."
A final piece of spin targets the Uighur population directly and hints that the CCP feels it needs to address Uighur grievances. The Urumqi riot began when Uighur factory workers thousands of miles away in Guangdong province were falsely accused of raping Han women by a disgruntled former workmate. A fight broke out, killing two Uighurs and injuring more than 100. Since Urumqi's protest erupted, the government's Uighur-language TV channel has carried a statement from Xinjiang provincial government chairman Nur Bekri promising "strenuous efforts" to investigate the killings in Guangdong. On Tuesday, Xinhua also reported 13 arrests over the false allegations. This attempt at redress segments the message. Awareness of local grievances is aired on regional TV in the Uighur language, while the wider message of Uighur thuggery plays to a receptive national audience. Prejudice against Uighurs often portrays them as violent criminals. "There's this stereotype of Uighurs, that they're thieves or … involved in the drug trade," says Prof. Barry Sautman, a specialist on China's ethnic policies at Hong Kong's Science and Technology University.
To be sure, the CCP can't answer every uncomfortable development. Whereas the Dalai Lama has raised Tibet's profile over many years, the Xinjiang riots threaten to highlight a previously obscure ethnic issue. Critics of China's treatment of the Uighur Muslim minority had already made headway in the U.S., which is still searching for a country willing to accept 14 Uighurs released from Guantánamo Bay. (U.S. judges agreed with the detainees' lawyers that they risked execution if sent back to China, where the courts deal harshly with anyone suspected of opposing Beijing's rule over Xinjiang, whose 10 million Uighurs make up half the region's population and speak a language close to Turkish.) With 1,434 fresh Uighur detainees, China puts itself back in the cross hairs of international human-rights groups. Beijing may have learned spin doctoring, but it's unlikely to buy the adage that there's no such thing as bad press.
© 2009
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