As Sabit was deciding to move to Canada, in 2014, a dark future was being mapped out for Xinjiang in secret meetings in Beijing. Xi Jinping had become President the year before, and he was consolidating power. As he cleared away the obstacles to lifelong rule, he eventually subjected more than a million government officials to punishments that ranged from censure to execution. With China’s ethnic minorities, he was no less fixated on control.
Xinjiang’s turbulent history made it a particular object of concern. The region had never seemed fully within the Party’s grasp: it was a target for external meddling—the Russian tsar had once seized part of it—and a locus of nationalist sentiment, held over from its short-lived independence. Communist theoreticians long debated the role that nationalities should play in the march toward utopia—especially in peripheral societies that were not fully industrialized. The early Soviets took an accommodating approach and worked to build autonomous republics for ethnic groups. The Chinese pursued a more assimilationist policy.
2014年萨比特决定移居加拿大的同时,北京的秘密会议正在为新疆规划一个黑暗的未来。习近平一年前刚刚成为国家主席,正在巩固权力。在他扫除终身连任障碍(译者注:修改宪法确保自己永远当主席)的同时,他也使得100多万名政府官员遭受从批评到死刑的惩罚(译者注:反腐运动)。对于中国的少数民族,他也从不放弃高压控制。
新疆的动荡历史使其成为受到特别关注的对象。这个地区似乎从来没有完全在党的掌控之中:它是外部干涉的目标--俄国沙皇曾经夺取了它的一部分--同时也是民族主义情绪的发源地,在短暂的独立后被重新占领。共产主义理论家们长期以来一直在争论各民族在向乌托邦迈进的过程中应该扮演的角色--尤其是在尚未完全工业化的边缘社会。早期的苏联人采取了一种包容的方式,努力为各民族建立自治共和国。中国人的政策则更偏向于同化。
In the fifties, Mao, recognizing that the Party’s hold on Xinjiang was weak, mobilized the bingtuan to set up its farms in the region’s north—a buffer against potential Soviet incursions. Revolutionaries flooded in, and within decades the population was forty per cent Han. Party officials, hoping to assimilate the indigenous residents, sought to strip away their traditions—their Muslim faith, their schools, even their native languages. The authorities came to regard Uyghur identity as “mistaken”: Uyghurs were Chinese.
In the late seventies, Deng Xiaoping took power, and rolled back the excesses of the Cultural Revolution. In Xinjiang, mosques were reopened and local languages were permitted, giving way to a cultural flourishing. But amid the new openness people began to express discontent with what remained a colonial relationship. Adhering to regional traditions, or even maintaining “Xinjiang time”—two hours behind Beijing—became a subtle act of dissent. Some locals staged protests, bearing placards that read “Chinese Out of Xinjiang.” A few radicals discussed an insurgency.
五十年代,毛泽东认识到党对新疆的控制力很弱,动员兵团在新疆北部建立农场--以缓冲苏联的潜在入侵。革命军涌入,数十年内汉族人口占了40%。党的官员希望同化土著居民,试图剥夺他们的传统--他们的穆斯林信仰,他们的学校,甚至他们的母语。当局认为维吾尔人的民族身份是"错误的":维吾尔人是中国人。
七十年代末,邓小平上台,推翻了文革的过激行为。在新疆,清真寺重新开放,允许使用当地语言,给文化的繁荣让路。但是,在新的开放中,人们开始对延续已久的殖民关系表示不满。恪守当地传统,甚至按照"新疆时间"作息--比北京晚两小时--成为一种微妙的异议行为。一些当地人举行了抗议活动,举着写着"中国人滚出新疆"的标语牌。一些激进分子研究如何发起一场叛乱。
In April, 1990, near the city of Kashgar, a conflagration broke out between locals and the authorities—apparently started by an amateurish group of militants and then joined by demonstrators who did not fully grasp what was happening. Police and members of the bingtuan quickly quashed the violence. It had been only a year since the Tiananmen Square protests, and the country’s ruling élite had little tolerance for disunity. A year later, when the Soviet Union fell, the Chinese Communist Party—convinced that ethnic nationalism had helped tear the former superpower to pieces—became even more alarmed.
With near-paranoid intensity, the government pursued any perceived sign of “splitism.” The Party secretary of Kashgar, Zhu Hailun, was among the most aggressive. Abduweli Ayup, who worked for Zhu as a translator and an aide, recalled that, in March, 1998, cotton farmers protested a ruling that barred them from planting vegetable patches. Zhu railed at them for being separatists, adding, “You’re using your mosques as forts!” On another occasion, he derided the Quran, telling an Uyghur audience, “Your God is shit.” Zhu ordered Ayup to lead a door-to-door hunt for families harboring nationalist or religious books—telling him that he was not to go home until he succeeded. Ayup worked until dawn, rousing people. But, he said, “I couldn’t find any books at all.”
1990年4月,在喀什噶尔市附近,在当地人和政府之间爆发了一场冲突——据称是由一群业余的激进分子挑起的,随后有不明真相的示威者加入。警察和兵团成员迅速平息了暴力事件。当时距离天安门广场的抗议活动(译者注:六四事件)才过去一年,国家的统治精英们对不团结行为没有任何容忍。一年后苏联垮台,中国共产党从此变得更加警惕——他们相信是民族主义将这个前超级大国撕成碎片的。
政府以近乎偏执的强度追捕任何被视作"分裂主义"的迹象。喀什噶尔的党委书记朱海仑是最积极的人之一。阿不都韦力-阿尤普曾经是朱海仑的翻译和助手,他回忆说,1998年3月,棉农对一项禁止他们种植菜地的政府规定发起了抗议。朱海伦抨击他们是分裂分子,而且还说:"清真寺就是你们的堡垒!" 在另一个场合,他嘲笑《古兰经》,对一位维吾尔族听众说:"你们的上帝是垃圾。" 朱海伦命令阿尤普带人挨家挨户地搜查藏有民族主义或宗教书籍的家庭——完不成任务就别想回家。阿尤普一直工作到天亮,挨家挨户把人吵醒。但是,阿尤普说,"我一本书也没看到。"
Xinjiang’s insurgents had proved unable to gather many adherents; locals favored the Sufi tradition of Islam, which emphasizes mysticism, not politics. At the time of the September 11th attacks, there was no terrorist violence to speak of in the region. But Osama bin Laden’s operation, planned across the border in Afghanistan, put a new and urgent frame around the old anxieties. Chinese authorities drew up a long list of incidents that they claimed were examples of jihad, and made their case to the U.S. State Department. Many of the incidents were impossible to verify, or to distinguish from nonpolitical violence. In China, mass attacks—with knives, axes, or even improvised explosives—are startlingly common, and often have nothing to do with ethnic unrest. Not long ago, a man walked into a school in Yunnan Province and sprayed fifty-four people with sodium hydroxide, to enact “revenge on society,” officials said. Similarly, a paraplegic assailant from eastern China detonated a bomb at one of Beijing’s international airports—apparently an act of retaliation for a police beating. The bombing was treated as a one-off incident. An Uyghur, frustrated that this would never be the case in Xinjiang, asked on Twitter, “Why is everything we do terrorism?”
历史早已证明新疆的叛乱分子不善于聚集信徒;当地人尊崇伊斯兰教的苏菲传统,它更强调神秘主义,而不是政治(的诉求)。当年"9-11"袭击发生时,该地区没有任何被记载的恐怖暴力事件。但本拉登在阿富汗边境策划的这场行动,使旧有的忧虑套上了新的、紧迫的框架。中国当局列出了一长串他们声称是圣战事件的清单,并以此应付美国国务院的质疑。许多事件无法核实,也无法与非政治性的暴力事件区分开来。在中国,大规模袭击——用刀、斧头甚至简易爆炸物——非常普遍,而且大部分与民族问题没有关系。不久前,一名男子走进云南省的一所学校,对五十四人喷洒氢氧化钠,按照官方的说法,目的是"报复社会"。同样地,一名来自中国东部坐着轮椅的残疾人在北京的一个国际机场引爆了一枚炸弹,据称是对被警察殴打的报复。这起爆炸事件被当局视为偶然性事件。一名维吾尔族人对新疆受到的“特殊照顾”感到不解,他在Twitter上发问:"为什么维族人做(这些事情)就成了恐怖主义?"