Uighurs

I'd never heard about Uighurs before the recent trouble in western China. I received a shorthand understanding of the situation through Friday's edition of The Week, which is pretty much a summary of the news aimed at lazy people (they say 'busy', but I can tell you it's really 'lazy').

For those after an overview, the Uighurs are a Muslim ethnic minority that live in the far west of China. Earlier this year ethnic tensions exploded between the Uighurs and the Han Chinese (more than 90% of Chinese are of Han ethnicity). The riot was largely based on a false rumour that some Uighur men had raped some Han women.

The first part of the article basically profiled the Uighurs as a group, where they came from, and their history. I got to the part decribing where they live, Xinjiang: "the region's rugged, arid terrain is so inhospitable that it was one of the last areas on earth to be settled". I thought 'huh, why would the Chinese want to annex that?'.

Then it became clear: "Beijing wants the Han to control the political and economic levers of Xinjiang, which boasts rich mineral, gas, and oil deposits."

Why didn't you say so? This conflict is less about a clash of religion and culture than a political takeover for resources/economic gain. Am I right?

The idea of fair trade strikes me here. Instead of the Han persecuting the Uighurs (there are reportedly huge differences in the living standards of the two groups with Han Chinese receiving government perks) why work out a way in which to extract the resources while providing Uighurs with incentives to govern the area to Beijing's liking? At this point, the Uighurs get shunted from their homeland and have nothing to show for it. Yes, I'm oversimplifying the situation, but it really is 'why can't everybody just get along?!'

Forget the ethnicity of each group for a moment and think of it this way: a powerful group wants the land and resources of another, less powerful group. It doesn't matter that they're Muslim or Buddhist (think Tibet), just that they are different and therefore able to be labelled as the Other and easier to target.

In similar circumstances, the rest of the world can see that this is unfair and tend to react accordingly (again, think 'Free Tibet'). Unfortunately there's no sympathy for the Uighurs because unlike peace-loving Tibetan separatists, Uighurs proved to be aggressive separatists. And the non-Muslim world is stil divided about whether Muslims, en masse religious community, are peaceful or terrorists.

It just brings me to think that religion and greed have no place in this world if we are to think of peace as more than just a concept.