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Striking similarities in Tibetan and Xinjiang unrest

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Ethnic Uygur women grab a riot policemen as they protest in Urumqi in China’s far west Xinjiang province on 7 July 2009. The deadly unrest in China’s remote Xinjiang region is strikingly similar to that seen in neighbouring Tibet last year, and so are many of the reasons behind it.File photo/AFP/Getty Images/Peter Parks/China

The deadly unrest in China’s remote Xinjiang region is strikingly similar to that seen in neighbouring Tibet last year, and so are many of the reasons behind it, experts say.

Those at the centre of recent violence in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, and the unrest in the Tibetan capital Lhasa 16 months earlier are ethnic minorities Muslim Uighurs and Buddhist Tibetans.

Both lashed out at members of the majority Han Chinese population, who in their eyes represented a much-hated government policy of sinicisation in China’s two most western regions.

“These events have brought to light a context of hate and fear (in the two regions), said Claude Levenson, an author and specialist in Tibetan issues.

Analysts said that in Xinjiang, as in Tibet, rioters felt deep resentment at the government’s efforts to transfer millions of Han Chinese to these far-flung areas.

This policy has changed the regional demographics Han Chinese now make up 75 percent of Urumqi’s population and 17 percent of Lhasa’s.

And while China has pumped billions of dollars into the two autonomous regions to lift their people out of poverty, some Uighurs and Tibetans complain they have been relegated to second-class status in their own lands.

Copyright © 2009 Zee News Limited

Published in Zee News.com