Tarek Cherkaoui: Between Xinjiang and Tibet

The regrettable events in the Xinjiang province in China, following severe riots between the native Muslim Uyghurs and the migrant Chinese Hans, is another proof that minorities continue to suffer under the yoke of the Beijing regime. As matter of fact, the Uyghurs have endured for decades Beijing’s discriminatory policies, which have not only infringed their basic political, economic and human rights, but have also transformed them into refugees in their own land as the result of internal migration programs that aim to perpetuate a demographic ethnic cleansing.

Since the mid-1990s, a series of human rights reports have emphasized the gravity of the situation in the province. They described a long list of human rights violations against the Uyghurs, which include prolonged arbitrary and incommunicado detention, severe torture of detainees, unfair political trials, and summary executions of political prisoners. The situation has worsened since 2001, when the Chinese government used the pretext of the “war on terror” to impose additional restrictions, some of which consider performing religious duties outside governmental control as “terrorism.” [1]

The Chinese state-sponsored narratives on terrorism succeeded in galvanizing the spirits of the majority inside China against the Uyghur minority. More importantly, the Chinese authorities obtained the tacit support of the Bush administration and its allies, and so Chinese exactions against the Uyghurs were often ignored by international mainstream media. By comparison, the Tibetan issue has been transformed onto cause célèbre, thanks to the Dalai Lama receiving the Nobel Prize in 1989. Since then, the Tibetan cause continues to receive the acclaims of world leaders and international media. Such difference in media coverage between Tibet and Xinjiang is perplexing because at the end of the day both regions suffer from the same root problem, namely their illegal annexation by China. But while media interest in Tibetan affairs triggered a huge mobilization of human rights organizations, the events in Xinjiang received only minimal coverage, and even then the tone was far less critical.

Media framing is the magic word here, for it is all about selecting certain facts at the expense of others with the purpose of constructing a certain worldview. This process involves problem definition, diagnosis, moral judgment, and suggesting the remedy. In the case of Tibet, the media script was faultless: the annexation of Tibet by China has brought sufferance and misery to Tibetans, who face numerous grievances. The moral judgment was that China is illegally annexing Tibet, and therefore the prescribed solution is independence for Tibet.

But for Xinjiang, things are very different. International mainstream media prefers to deploy an episodic frame which offers– in the words of Professor Shanto Iyengar - only a passing parade of events, a “context of no context.” Subsequently, it is very difficult to find out the source of the Uyghur problem because of this framing, and so instead of allocating responsibility – as in the case of Tibet – to the Chinese illegal annexation of Xinjiang, mainstream media deploy the “violence frame”, which simplifies the situation into mere problems between Ethnic groups. The blame is put on the “mob”, whatever that means, and the solution prescribed is that violence should stop and the situation brought back to normal, without any reference to the root causes. Evidently, such framing undermines the aspirations of the Uyghur people for equal rights and freedom, and transforms its cause into a mere security and social predicament.

It is a matter of fact that the media set news agendas and establish the salience of any given conflict. But to wait for international mainstream media to avoid informational biases and to offer consistent coverage on important issues, such as Xinjiang, may be just wishful thinking. Instead, the tremendous opportunities offered by new media ought to be used by the informed and concerned citizenry of the world to spread and share information about the deteriorating situation in Xinjiang. The plight of people there should not escape the radar anymore. The Uyghurs have suffered enough and for a long time…they deserve not only to be heard, but also and especially supported.

[1] See Amnesty International Report: AI Index ASA 17/032/2001.

Tarek Cherkaoui is a doctoral candidate in communication studies at the Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand.

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