Posted on 11/13/2004 8:56:59 PM PST by Pikamax
Muslim conflict now hits China as 148 die in ethnic violence By Damien McElroy in Zhengzhou (Filed: 14/11/2004)
A convoy of military lorries roared along the dirt track leading to a fertile valley of rice paddies and ridges of garlic shoots in central China. Green-uniformed soldiers equipped with razor-wire and cannons stared out blankly at Chinese police, who stood to attention as they passed through a checkpoint.
They were heading for two neighbouring villages, Nanren and Weitang, which have co-existed peacefully for centuries - but where, earlier this month, martial law was abruptly declared after a row over a traffic accident escalated into pitched battles that left 148 people dead.
The soldiers' mission was to prop up the facade of ethnic harmony, constructed by the country's Communist dictatorship over the past 55 years but dramatically undermined by the eruption of conflict between Hui Muslims and their Han Chinese neighbours. The troops sealed off the villages to prevent other militants coming to the aid of their fellow Muslims and stop the fighting spreading across China.
At a checkpoint near the villages, a policeman boasted of his efforts to keep out "foreign" agitators and admitted that the situation was tense. "Our leaders are still holding talks between the two sides but there has been no resolution yet," he said. "Relations are very bitter. Too many people have died in a bad way."
Just 10 days since China's worst outbreak of inter-communal violence in more than a decade, Communist Party officials fear that the unrest in Henan province - the birthplace of China's 4,000-year-old civilisation - is a worrying sign of trouble to come.
The country's politburo security chief has made the rough 400-mile journey from Beijing, an unusual foray by a senior Communist official to such a poor outpost - a collection of ramshackle brick buildings, where dogs hunt for food in piles of rubbish strewn around the pot-holed streets.
In the nearby provincial capital, Zhengzhou, a city of skyscrapers and more than two million advertising hoardings, officials are perplexed by the sudden detonation of violence in the hinterland. As he plucked at a designer-label cashmere sweater, a Hui Communist Party official said: "There were hundreds of people stopped on planes and buses, attempting to travel to Nanren before the army was deployed."
The violence is a setback for the Chinese government's policy of permitting a modest Islamic revival among the Hui, one of the country's most moderate Muslim minorities. It was also a sign that underlying ethnic tensions across China's teeming territory are a continuing challenge to Beijing's rule. At stake is the imperative set out in the official government slogan, "The 56 ethnic groups are one family."
The fighting broke out after a Han youth crashed his motorcycle into a Hui builder's tractor, tipping it over. The confrontation soon escalated into pitched battles between mobs armed with shovels and hammers. Molotov cocktails were launched across the river between Nanren and Weitang - the former predominantly Hui, the latter Han - and Huis from around the country flocked to assist their beleaguered brothers.
A local imam said that one of his followers was found beheaded in rice paddy ditches, a Hui official told The Sunday Telegraph. "They share the same market, but the Hui people are insulted by the Han's behaviour," he said. "The Han stallholders try to sell them pork, pushing it in front of their faces all the time. Now the imam says the Han in Weitang are savages who mock our traditions by cutting our throats."
By appearance there is nothing to distinguish the 10 million Hui from other Chinese: only their faith sets them apart. They are descendants of Muslims who traded along the Silk Road between Europe and Asia, and married local women. In Henan province they number 900,000 among a population of 95 million.
Unlike China's other sizeable Muslim minority, the Uighurs of western Xinjiang, the Hui have never been involved in separatist violence. Now, however, they are becoming increasingly militant in asserting their Islamic identity - partly to prevent their assimilation into the rest of the population, 93 per cent of whom are Han.
Yet many Han are critical of the Hui claim to a separate identity. "They are not a real minority," said Liu Yue, a portrait artist in Zhengzhou. "They don't have their own language, they don't have their own customs, all they do is refuse to eat pork.
"Our government gives them too much favourable treatment. If a Hui is caught speeding, he'll just show his skull cap and the officer will let him off."
At an Islamic centre in Zhengzhou, where writing on the wall is in both Arabic and Chinese script, passions were clearly aroused by the trouble between Nanren and Weitang.
Perhaps ominously, the mosque leaders appear sympathetic to the insurgents in Iraq. The mosque's Ramadan letter declares: "In our Muslim world, our brothers are suffering a great disaster.
"Their actions in self-defence have been judged to be extremist terrorism, but they are struggling in an imperialist war that is killing people and rotting modern civilisation."
The defiant mood in Iraq is apparently shared by mosque elders, a foretaste of further problems ahead for the Chinese authorities. "If our brothers are being attacked," said one elder, Lao Mai, "it is a duty in our religion to join them in the fight."
Yikes, Commies versus Muzzies!
This is not new, Chinese have been battling jihadis for along time.
Call the UN....
bump
They feel a 'renaissance' comning. The only local mosque in my small county, which went unnoticed for the past 40 years of my life, now decorates their property flamboyabntly for Ramadan. They never did before. Newspaper articles about Eid. Unheard of even 4 years ago. I'm tellin' ya, they are coming for us and I'm not kidding.
The Chineses will know how to deal with this.
I'm conflicted about this. Do I have to favor one side or the other? I was in favor of the Iran-Iraq war.
You got muslims, you got trouble. Simple as that.
Yeah, I've read the Amnesty International criticisms of the Chinese protecting the border and rooting out terrorists. They have been on the terrorists' side for years...
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The Chinese government? Maybe..but just wait till the people get involved with the head cutters. Auh..Oh.
Folks, let's start to face reality. The world is too small for the civilised world AND Muslims. One of us will have to go.
That's as far as I got.
How dare the Han mock the Islamofacists by using one of their religious rituals!
It seems a continuous theme is emerging on a worldwide basis: Islamic Extremism vs. everything else. I'm seeing it worldwide and it is very bothersome. The Islamic terrorists only want to slaughter any resistants. I am sorry but there will never be peace among any nations sharing this conflict as long as the groups of people who raise their children to murder those who they ahve been told want to murder them.
This situation can not be resolved. It never has been and it never will.The Only possible resoution: fight it out and see who wins. Sorryy to say this, but it is true.
So the Marines are fightin "PC" eh?
" Now the imam says the Han in Weitang are savages who mock our traditions by cutting our throats."
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Hey, what goes around comes around. Can't think of any better Idea than sic-ing the communist Chinees on the Religion of Peace.
Two birds....
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