Time is almost up for the old city of Kashgar
China's plan to transform the heart of Uyghur culture, learning and urban settlement - Kashgar old city - is well underway. The Uyghurs themselves have no voice in this process..
For the last three years, and over the silence of the international community, the din of bulldozers has reverberated across this ancient Silk Road hub. The demolition of the heart of Kashgar, a process accompanied by countless individual stories of loss, heralds the end of a distinct Uyghur culture. In the People's Republic of China, development planning equates to a no-choice acceptance of whatever blueprint for the future of communities the party-state chooses.
Kashgar old city has long held a central place in Uyghur culture and history. A distinguished line of Uyghur scholars, such as the renowned 11th-century Turkic-language lexicographer Mahmud Kashgari, made Kashgar a focal point of learning. Throughout its many-layered existence - as a major Silk Road trading axis, "great game" listening-post and birthplace of the first East Turkestan republic - the Turkic people of this urban oasis have formed the core of its ingenuity and progress. It can be said without exaggeration that Kashgar old city is the physical embodiment of Uyghur history; but it is also, amid the current desecration, the source of Uyghur thinking on the Uyghurs' own preferred course of development.
The Uyghurs' record of long-term settlement & self-management means little to the current Chinese administration. A plan it laid out in 2009, funded both from regional and central coffers, ordained the demolition and reconstruction of most of the eight square kilometers that encompass the old city. By the end of the project, 65,000 Uyghur households will have been relocated to uniform apartment-blocks on the city's fringes. So far, it is estimated that two-thirds of the old city has been torn down. There are few genuine preservation efforts, although - reflecting the characteristic style and mindset of the Chinese authorities - small areas of the old city are set aside for tourists to pick over.
The urgency of the demolition project took on new life after the convening of the "Xinjiang work forum" in Beijing in May 2010. This initiative, following the outbreak of unrest in 2009 in the regional capital of Urumchi, was an attempt to breathe new life into state-development initiatives in the Uyghur region. The Chinese government had blamed the tensions on "overseas forces", though the work forum was a tacit admission that inequity between Uyghurs and Han Chinese (in education, income, employment, and life-chances) was a contributing factor.
The meeting was held without any Uyghur input whatever, which made its conclusion - let's do more of the same, only faster - unsurprising. The pace of demolitions of Uyghur neighbourhoods accelerated, as did the imposition of Mandarin-only education...
http://www.opendemocracy.net/henryk-szadziewski/kashgars-old-city-endgame
For the last three years, and over the silence of the international community, the din of bulldozers has reverberated across this ancient Silk Road hub. The demolition of the heart of Kashgar, a process accompanied by countless individual stories of loss, heralds the end of a distinct Uyghur culture. In the People's Republic of China, development planning equates to a no-choice acceptance of whatever blueprint for the future of communities the party-state chooses.
Kashgar old city has long held a central place in Uyghur culture and history. A distinguished line of Uyghur scholars, such as the renowned 11th-century Turkic-language lexicographer Mahmud Kashgari, made Kashgar a focal point of learning. Throughout its many-layered existence - as a major Silk Road trading axis, "great game" listening-post and birthplace of the first East Turkestan republic - the Turkic people of this urban oasis have formed the core of its ingenuity and progress. It can be said without exaggeration that Kashgar old city is the physical embodiment of Uyghur history; but it is also, amid the current desecration, the source of Uyghur thinking on the Uyghurs' own preferred course of development.
The Uyghurs' record of long-term settlement & self-management means little to the current Chinese administration. A plan it laid out in 2009, funded both from regional and central coffers, ordained the demolition and reconstruction of most of the eight square kilometers that encompass the old city. By the end of the project, 65,000 Uyghur households will have been relocated to uniform apartment-blocks on the city's fringes. So far, it is estimated that two-thirds of the old city has been torn down. There are few genuine preservation efforts, although - reflecting the characteristic style and mindset of the Chinese authorities - small areas of the old city are set aside for tourists to pick over.
The urgency of the demolition project took on new life after the convening of the "Xinjiang work forum" in Beijing in May 2010. This initiative, following the outbreak of unrest in 2009 in the regional capital of Urumchi, was an attempt to breathe new life into state-development initiatives in the Uyghur region. The Chinese government had blamed the tensions on "overseas forces", though the work forum was a tacit admission that inequity between Uyghurs and Han Chinese (in education, income, employment, and life-chances) was a contributing factor.
The meeting was held without any Uyghur input whatever, which made its conclusion - let's do more of the same, only faster - unsurprising. The pace of demolitions of Uyghur neighbourhoods accelerated, as did the imposition of Mandarin-only education...
http://www.opendemocracy.net/henryk-szadziewski/kashgars-old-city-endgame
