Uyghurs address the Arab World

Last week Al Jazeera hosted several Uyghur-American activists to discuss the recent ethnic violence in Eastern Turkestan / the Xinjiang province. Both Alim Seytoff and Nury Turkel of the Uyghur American Association and the World Uyghur Congress (WUC) stopped by the studio to counter the official Chinese line (swallowed by certain American politicians in a War on Terror-fervor) that all Uyghurs are essentially violent, separatist terrorists aimed at establishing an Islamic state in Eastern Turkestan.

Mr. Turkel told me off-camera that there are three main reasons behind Beijing's repression: an international geopolitical border with eight countries; natural gas reserves in the province that rival those in Kuwait (not to mention strategic pipelines and access to the Caspian: "Xinjiang unrest: The oil and gas connection," Financial Times); and the Uyghur's assertion of their identity seen as interference in state-directed national assimilation, economic growth, and social cohesion ("The Uighurs’ revolt undermines China’s idea that its people will always happily trade freedom for prosperity," The Economist). As he says elsewhere, "Uyghurs are the Tibetans you haven't heard about" (why not?). A Muslim Turkic minority, Uyghurs have found almost no support from Muslim-majority countries other than Turkey. Mr. Turkel believes that one phone call from Riyadh would end the whole thing. Instead, Uyghur mosques, religious leaders, and even Qur'ans are controlled by the Chinese government in efforts to manipulate and undermine this symbol of ethno-religious other-ness (see this page at the Uyghur Human Rights Project). Women, anyone under the age of 18, state employees, workers and retirees, and communist party members are barred from entering the mosques, as this picture (provided by Mr. Turkel) of a sign outside a Xinjiang province mosque reads.

On Thursday, Rebiya Kadeer, president of the WUC and essentially the Dalai Lama of the Uyghurs, was interviewed via live shot from Washington during the main newshour on Al Jazeera. The complicated translation process of Arabic-English-Uyghur and back posed a technical nightmare. We almost missed the shot -- if you watched it, Doha wasn't able to take her in Washington until the end of the program rather than at the top, as was scheduled -- and simultaneous translation (ducking out the source audio, in this case, Uyghur, and hearing Arabic instead) was just impossible. What this did mean was that she spoke uninterrupted, in her own tounge, allowing the forcefulness of her delivery to speak louder than the actual content. Mr. Seytoff interpretted, and thanked us kindly for allowing Ms. Kadeer the platform of addressing an audience largely unaware of the Uyghur cause.

And, of course, the intern got a photo out of the deal.