Impunity fuels tensions in northwestern China

Uighurs in Germany and in many other countries will mark tomorrow's anniversary of the massacre of Gulja on Saturday, with vigils and demonstrations. "Even now, 14 years after the bloodbath of 5 February 1997 in which hundreds of Uighurs were killed by Chinese security forces, there is no justice for the victims and their families," criticized the head of the Asia section of the Society for Threatened Peoples (STP), Ulrich Delius. "This continuing impunity fuels tensions and violence in East Turkestan, as the indigenous Uighurs call the Xinjiang province in the remote northwest part of China. The bloodbath in Gulja has a similar meaning for the Uighurs to that of Tiananmen Square for the Han Chinese."

Prior to the massacre in Gulja, Chinese police officers arrested young Uighurs who celebrated their religious festivals in the privacy of their own homes, due to state restrictions on religious practices. When several thousand mothers, fathers and friends demonstrated peacefully for the release of these detainees, Chinese police opened fire on the crowd and killed at least 30 Uighurs. More than 4000 indigenous people were arrested and many held in a sports arena when the prisons had been filled to overflowing. In spite of freezing weather, water cannon were used to disperse the demonstrators, many of whom suffered frostbite as a result and had to have limbs amputated. The exact number of deaths remains unknown to this day, because independent investigations of the massacre have been prevented.

Even the well-known Uighur and former representative to the of the National People's Congress in China, Rebiya Kadeer, was intimidated and threatened when she arrived in the city two days after the bloodbath, when she visited family members of the arrested youth. Kadeer was repeatedly detained by authorities and pressured to leave the city. When she refused to go, the chief of police in Gulja showed her videos of the security forces exercising brutality, in an attempt to intimidate the Uighur member of parliament.

In the subsequent seven years, some 400 Uighurs were condemned to death and executed for their participation in the protests. The massacre led to an unprecedented wave of purges in East Turkestan. Thousands fled the country. "Since the cultural revolution, there have never been so many members of an ethnic group executed for political reasons in China," stated Delius. "For the Uighurs, Gulja remains a nightmare."