Word: hans
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...July 5 police cracked down on a demonstration by minority Muslim Uighurs in the city of Urumqi, capital of China's western Xinjiang region. Hundreds of Uighur young men rioted, attacking majority Han Chinese civilians with knives, clubs and bricks. In the end authorities say 137 Hans, 46 Uighurs and one member of the Chinese Muslim Hui ethnic group were killed. But, says Diaa Rashwan, a political analyst at the government-backed Ahram Center for Strategic Studies in Cairo, "there is not a lot of interest or attention paid to these events in the Arab and Muslim world." (See pictures...
...opinion writers - who were especially prolific in defense of the headscarf martyr - had very little to say about the Muslims in China. An article over the weekend in Saudi Arabia's Arab Times likened the struggle of their Uighur "co-religionists" to that of the Palestinians and compared the Han Chinese to the Jews; and an editorial in Egypt's state-run Al-Ahram newspaper last week urged the international community to pay more attention to the crackdown. But calls for Muslim and Arab leaders to condemn the violence in China remain conspicuously absent from the regional press...
...Indeed, the Uighurs and the popular Islamist Muslim Brotherhood have much to commiserate over. The Uighurs complain of religious and cultural persecution and economic marginalization by China's Han-dominated government. Not unlike Egypt's heavy-handed treatment of the Brotherhood - which is banned from participating in politics, and whose members are frequently subject to arrests and interrogations - China also limits the Uighurs' international travel and maintains a degree of control over the sermons they provide at local mosques...
...sixth of Xinjiang's economic output in 2008. But while Uighurs and other minority groups make up about 60% of Xinjiang's population, they comprise just 12% of the bingtuan's ranks. While per capita income figures based on race aren't available, counties in northern Xinjiang with larger Han populations are wealthier than in the largely Uighur south of the region. Witnesses said the rioters last week were young Uighur men, and some observers have suggested they were poorer migrant workers from the south of the region rather than long-term residents...
...over issues like job discrimination isn't included in the official version of events. The dilemma for Chinese policymakers is that the country's rapid economic growth has helped legitimize the government to the majority of citizens. But for Uighurs who feel left out, the growing prosperity of the Han leaves them more alienated. As China continues to get rich, it is pushing them further toward the fringe...