The Tibetans you’ve never heard of

Who hasn’t heard of Tibet? And who outside of Asia can even pronounce “Uyghur”?

Millions of Uyghurs (pronounced “WEE-ger”) live in China’s northwesternmost province, Xinjiang. They, like the Tibetans, are a religious as well as an ethnic minority; they have chafed under Beijing’s heavy-handed rule for the last six decades; and Chinese authorities have faced persistent accusations of repression and abuse against them. But the latest news is that Chinese authorities have closed a Web site aimed at promoting understanding between Han Chinese and ethnic Uyghurs following allegations that the site was linked to foreign “extremists,” the site’s owner said.In a surprising twist, Ilham Tohti, a Uyghur economics professor at the Central Nationalities University in Beijing, said it was fellow Uyghurs who told authorities his two-year-old Chinese-language Web site, Uyghur Online, had links to Uyghur “extremists” abroad.

“The Public Security Bureau (PSB) shut us down and investigated. They cleared us, but they didn’t say anything about reopening the site,” he said.“They told us, ‘Don’t worry. Don’t be concerned. Under current laws and conditions we can’t accept some discussion topics—these are sensitive but not illegal.’ But they didn’t say when the site could reopen.”

No comment was available from the Beijing PSB, and why ethnic Uyghurs would complain about the Uyghur Online Web site was unclear.

Tohti said his site—which employs 67 people of 12 nationalities, although they are not paid—sometimes scores 1 million page views daily. Content is published in Chinese and written by Uyghur, Han, Korean, Tibetan, and other contributors.

“My main agenda is to promote understanding between Uyghurs and Han Chinese,” he said, adding that he believed it has been somewhat successful. “Uyghurs are a peaceful people, and we have to tell this to the Han Chinese because they don’t understand Uyghurs.”

“Many of our readers, viewers, are Han Chinese intellectuals. They want to understand other nationalities—they are trying. They aren’t a large number but they are increasing.”

China has waged a campaign over the last decade against what it says are violent separatists and Islamic extremists who aim to establish an independent state in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, which shares a border with Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Mongolia.

After the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, Beijing took the position that Uyghur groups were connected with al-Qaeda and that one group, the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), was a “major component of the terrorist network headed by Osama bin Laden.” The ETIM has denied that charge.