Terra Incognita 91 Uighers and Global Peace Index

Terra Incognita
Issue 91

“Written to enlighten, guaranteed to offend”

A Publication of Seth J. Frantzman
Jerusalem, Israel

Website: http://journalterraincognita.blogspot.com/

July 8, 2009

1) What’s happening in Uigerstan?: Stories out of China in the media portray China as brutally cracking down on protestors in Xinjiang. These are described as “ethnic Uighurs” or “indigenous” people. They are neither. Death tolls show that it was Uighur Muslim rioters who massacred 137 Han Chinese, 35 of whome were women. The truth is that the Uighurs are the people who did the killing and China was defending itself. There is even more to the story, in fact China has been appeasing them for years.


2) The Moral Bankruptcy of the Global Peace Index or how to fake peacefulness: The Global Peace Index, another ridiculous “index” that supposedly tells us something but in reality is a fabrication, has declared Israel to be as unpeaceful as the Sudan. Only liberalistic Westerners could declare the a genocide of 300,000 people, the entire extermination of whole nations, is equal to what goes on in Israel where there is almost no violence.

What’s happening in Uigerstan?
July 10, 2009
Seth J. Frantzman

When, in early July, rioting broke out in China and 156 people were reported killed the world immediately condemned China. On July 10th Turkey even accused China of committing a “genocide” against the Uighers who live in its Xinjiang province. But for those aware of who were causing the rioting and what was really going on the truth was immediately clear. The Uighurs are a Turkish speaking people who live in Western China and are Muslim. There are roughly 11 million of them, although their nationalists claim there are closer to 25 million. They are part of a pan-Turkic belt of peoples that stretch from the borderlands of Mongolia all the way to Istanbul and are the result of age old migrations of these people across the Steppes.

Uighurs have appeared as a separate group since the 3rd century B.C and by their own name since the4th century. But it is only in the 709th centuries that they truly emerge from the shadows as a series of tribal groups which ruled a ‘Uighur Empire’ from 740-844. The decline of their empire led to the emergence of three states. An Eastern Uighur state called Yugor existed until its destruction in 1036 by the Tangut kingdom of Western China. This Kingdom was subsequently destroyed by Genghis Khan. The Karakhoja or central Uighur state, whose members were known as Udiquts, became a Buddhist state and existed until their destruction by Genghis in 1335. Next to them, the western most Uighur state of Kara-Khanids became adherents of Islam in 934 after conquest by a Turkish sultan. Like other converts they became zealous Muslims, building mosques and claiming to be “Defenders of Islam against the Buddhist Idiqut.” Like all defenders of Islam this ‘defense’ took the form of an offense and destruction of Buddhist monasteries and extermination and enslavement of neighbors.
Genghis Khan conquered all these peoples but because his loose Mongolian tribal religion quickly yielded to Islam the entire Uighur people became Islamic by the 16th century (when the various Hordes established by the Mongols had long since vanished).

At this time, known as the time of the Chagatai Khanate, the last Buddhists were exterminated. The situation remained until 1884 when Manchu China invaded the area, supported by Great Britain in its ‘Great Game’ with Russia. From this period the land of the Uighers became known as Xinjiang. Beginning in 1921 Soviet Communists began to establish communist cells in what it called the “Singkiang Provincial Government” and its “Revolutionary Uyghur Union.” During this time a nationalist-socialist-Islamist movement formed among the Uighurs, partially influenced by a Muslim reform movement known as the “Jadids”(new) and infused with Communism. As in other places Communism paved the way for Islamism by encouraging nationalism. But it was a short lived independence (much as was the case in Tibet, the Caucuses and the Baltic states). The Uighurs were overrun by Chiang Kai Chek’s nationalist Koumintang army in the 1930s and in 1949 were taken over by the Communist Chinese. Those who wanted independence fled and formed various ‘East Turkistan” liberation movements which used a blue flag with the crescent and star of Islam as its symbol.

But China mismanaged the Uighers and like all governments, appeased the Islamists among them. Although the rest of the Chinese were forbidden from having more than one child the Uighers were allowed to have as many children as they wanted because as Muslims forbidding them from procreating might be “offensive.” No other religion received such treatment in Communist China. Although the Communists destroyed Churches and Buddhist monasteries zealously they built giant mosques throughout Xinjiang, much as the Soviets had done for Muslims in Russia, encouraging an “official Islam”. Although Chinese Communism banned the traditional Buddhist long braided hair of most rural Chinese (they were cut off in public view by commissars), the Muslim headscarf was never banned or discouraged among the Uighurs, so whereas all Chinese became secular, lost their religion and had one child, Uighur Muslims were encouraged to keep their traditions and have more children, just as in the West secularism begets Islamism.

But it all backfired. Those granted educations, children, mosques, religious Muslim education and freedom by China became increasingly radical and became terrorists. Those like Rabiye Kadeer, a radical Uigher woman, became ‘human rights’ activists and received awards abroad for opposing China. They travelled to Afghanistan in the 1990s to train with other Muslims from throughout the world and several of them were rounded up by the U.S after 2001. But these were released over the years as not posing a threat to the U.S. In ignoring the global dimensions of the war on terror the U.S released Muslim terrorists who returned to Xinjiang to fight the Chinese.

In early July Uighurs used the supposed killing of two workers to begin riots and begin murdering Han Chinese in Urumqi and other cities in Xinjiang. 137 non-Muslims were murdered, including more than 30 women. It took China days to clampdown on the rioting. But the world ignored the true nature of the Islamist-hate rioting, blaming the government for a heavy hand. In fact not enough of the rioters were killed and most were let off free. When Han Chinese tried to exact revenge they were beaten back by the police. Although Mosques were closed, apparently because the minarets had been used to encourage the rioters and spread the word, worshippers managed to get back in and use them. The truth is that the riots in Xinjiang were yet another Muslim massacre of non-Muslims. Calls for Muslims now to “defend themselves” there is merely another of the typical Muslim-Islamist playbook “Islamists murder non-Muslims and then claim they must defend themselves because of the fact that people hate them for murdering others.”


The Moral Bankruptcy of the Global Peace Index or how to fake peacefulness
Seth J. Frantzman
June 3, 2009

By the logic and methodology employed by the Global Peace Index Stalin’s Russia and Hitler’s Germany would have scored well. The Index was in the news recently with headlines that declared “Israel ranked lower than Iran”, “Israel hits rock bottom” and “Israel is one of the most violent countries.” This became apparent when the Australia-based Institute for Economics and Peace published its latest findings showing Israel to be less peaceful than Sudan. The message of studies such of this dovetails with the false legitimacy of conferences such as the UN’s Durban II which claim to be about racism but are in themselves racist. Together they are part of the moral bankruptcy and thoughtlessness that is behind so much of the rhetoric about peace, racism, war-crimes and justice that dominate the headlines.

The IEP describes itself as a “vision of humanity” that is bringing “a strategic approach to raising the world’s attention and awareness around the importance of peacefulness to humanity’s survival in the 21st century.” It claims to be dedicated to educating people about the “relationship between economic development, business and peace.”

Like other ‘indexes’ such as the Freedom Index and Property Rights Index the institute sifts through mountains of data on the world’s countries and then must reduce each data set into a set “indicators”. The indicators are then divided into three categories; “measures of ongoing domestic and international conflict, measures of safety and security in society and measures of militarization.” 144 were measured. Israel scored 141st and Sudan scored 140th. To arrive at this such variables as “relations with neighbouring countires” must all be made into numbers. This system, which is popular in the social sciences, means quantifying such abstract concepts as people’s “perception of criminality in society.” This is open to a form of fraud. Israelis may think their society is violent just like South Africans but the murder rate in Israel is 2.65 for every 100,000 whereas in South Africa it is 38.

Sudan which has caused the deaths of 300,000 of its own African citizens and displaced millions of them to Chad scores exactly the same as Israel under the category “number of displaced people as a percentage of population.” Perhaps the score for Sudan is the same as Israel because Sudan has achieved a complete genocide of its black Muslim Darfur population and there thus aren’t any displaced left? The creators of the Index seem to have punished Israel twice for the Gaza war while giving Sudan a pass since Sudan isn’t at war with her neighbours, she is just slaughtering most of the people within her borders.

This jerry-rigged statistical nonsense gives birth to a morally bankrupt result. The insinuation of the survey is clear: Israel is one of the most violent places in the world. This jives with the typical surveys in Europe where people place Israel on the top of the list of countries “threatening world peace.” By contrast countries currently involved in mass human rights violations, genocides and even slavery can be considered “peaceful.” Countries that resemble one large prison, such as North Korea are positively wonderful to live in. Lebanon, Pakistan, Zimbabwe and the Congo, all of which have central governments that barely function, are doing better than Israel. Egypt, where tourists are forbidden from visiting much of the country, where tourist attractions are like armed police camps and where tourists must travel on special trains for safety is considered 54th out of 144 country, a prime place to live. It is absent of violence apparently because neither the media nor foreigners can visit much of it. The fact that it guns down dozens of African refugees every year for the ‘crime’ of crossing its border doesn’t register on the Index. Neither do riots against Coptic Christians or terrorist acts.

Sudan shouldn’t be merely last on the list, for committing a genocide, it should have such a negative number associated with it as to indicate that it has murdered 300,000 people. Anything less points to the complete moral bankruptcy and irrelevance of “indexs” such as these. It is tempting to want to boil every country down to a neat number but when bias and thoughtlessness is built into the system of doing so the results are no different than Durban II.