We arrived at one of Urumqi’s biggest mosques with about 80 journalists in a convoy of about six or seven mini-vans.
Almost every journalist still left in Urumqi was there, because there was almost no violence on the streets. There’s very little else left to cover.
NO, NO, NO! There’s a huge amount left to cover. Here’s one crucial thing that we still know almost nothing about and we will never know if journalists don’t start doing some serious digging. What exactly happened on Sunday evening? How did an initially peaceful protest by Uygur students turn into the mass murder of more than a hundred innocent Han civilians? So far, we have almost no information on this at all. Two of the most detailed accounts are by Yazhou Zhoukan and The Economist. But they don’t even come close to being enough.
ESWN’s translation (scroll down 3/4 of the page) of Yazhou Zhoukan’s account of the earlier events:
The locals recalled that the young Uighur women of Urumqi began to wear scarves on the afternoon of July 5. According to local custom, this means that something big was about to happen. At around 6:20pm that evening, more than 200 persons gathered at People’s Plaza. They were persuaded to leave. This group included many Uighur students. Eyewitnesses said that the proceedings was controlled by certain Uighurs persons who clashed frequently with the Hans. The police was only interested in clearing the streets and they did not interfere with the march.
More than seventy troublemakers were taken away by the police and the rest dispersed. Those Uighurs who were chased away re-grouped in Erdaoqiao at Liberation Road South and Shanxi Lane. They chanted slogans and caused chaos at the scene. At the university with the most number of Uighurs — Xinjiang University — the Uighur students chanted slogans, assembled in the canteen and charged into the streets. Amidst the chaos, the rioters set two cars on fire in front of the Xinjiang University entrance. By 7:30pm, more than one thousand Uighurs gathered in front of the Women and Children Health Care Hospital on Shanxi Lane; at 7:40pm, more than 300 people blocked the road at People Road and South Gate.
The Uighur side of the story has been slower to emerge. Many Uighurs dismissed the government’s account that the July 5th riot was part of a separatist plot. But very few—such was the terror of police or Han recrimination—were willing to say much. One Uighur owner of a clothes shop, who claimed to have witnessed the riot from the beginning, said it started as a demonstration calling on Xinjiang’s governor to come out and talk about what had happened in Guangdong. In the fracas there on June 25th, Han Chinese workers had accused Uighurs of rape. At least two Uighurs were killed in the fight.
After about 90 minutes the police told Urumqi’s protesters to leave, said the man from the clothes shop. The police then began shoving and pulling demonstrators who refused to go. When some Uighurs responded by smashing windows, the police used greater force, beating people and firing their weapons. Violence by Uighurs then began to flare across the city.
Is this all we are able to learn? We need way more information than this if we are to make any kind of rational, informed assessment of that day.
Yazhou Zhoukan’s statement: “At around 6:20pm that evening, more than 200 persons gathered at People’s Plaza. They were persuaded to leave.” What does this mean? How were they “persuaded”?
“More than seventy troublemakers were taken away by the police and the rest dispersed.” What were the “troublemakers” doing and how were the rest “dispersed”?
I know it is not easy to get good information, but we need far more direct eyewitness accounts - and not hearsay and rumors. Eyewitnesses are not always reliable. When Jean Charles de Menezes was shot dead by British police on the London Underground, every single detail reported in the media from eyewitnesses was false. But that was a sudden event that was over within minutes, taking everyone completely by surprise. The conflict in Urumqi evolved over a number of hours. Maybe too many people are afraid to talk about it. Maybe too many people who could say more have been arrested as suspects. And maybe many of them have now left the city. But some greater attempt needs to be made to build up a bigger picture and the chronology of events deserves to be the main focus of articles, not just a snippet.
We cannot get the full story from the Chinese media, because they will not report anything that might possibly contradict the government’s story. And we cannot get anything reliable from exile organizations who repeat grossly exaggerated and distorted rumors.
Investigating the events of July 5 will take time and a great deal of effort. But it would be better to take that time and risk having no report at all than simply repeating the same sketchy details that everyone else is writing.
12 Comments
Hear Hear. I’ve been troubled by the lack of depth in covering this issue too. Not sure who’s going to do the digging, but someone must.
@Jamlichus, I was thinking of adding a postscript, but I’ll put it here in the comments instead. We have to remember that getting detailed, reliable information on that time isn’t easy and there are limitations on space for any single report. Also, the situation in Urumqi has been developing fast with many things to cover. But now that a week has passed and some level of order has been restored in the city, journalists cannot simply say there’s nothing left to report and leave. If the media want to be able to say they have really done this story justice, they have to keep reporters there to fill in the huge, gaping holes in our understanding of that evening.
This is a good post, I’ve also been really troubled by the reams of misinformation that has been coursing through and around this event. But I personally am not too optimistic about uncovering the truth. After all, the Ghulja Incident is 12 years old and remains as amorphous as ever…
You are making the mistake of thinking that reporters are interested in finding out the truth rather than selling papers.
Keeping reporters in Urumqi is expensive, and writing a detailed useful explanation of what happened when is not something that is going to sell papers as much as leaving and going to the next spot in the world where there are lots of people dying, and there is no shortage of these places. News organizations have neither the time, the money, or the interest to cover these sorts of stories in depth. That’s just the nature of journalism today. Besides, what they are likely to find is a complex story, and newspapers hate that. If it isn’t good versus evil, then it’s not going to sell papers.
I’m pretty sure that a factual, objective report will be written about the Urumqi incident will be written for internal circulation by the Communist Party. It will be marked a state secret so that none of us will ever see it, but hopefully someone that can act on it, will.
@Porfiriy and Twofish, unfortunately I think you are both right.
Why some people simply believe that there was a ‘peaceful’ protest before the massacre conducted by a few out-lawers, mainly uyghurs?
I see many protests turned into violences around world, but none of those protesters carried knives and cut passers-bys’ heads off after the so-called protest.
Obviously, they, some of the uyghurs, planned the massacre. They don’t care about humanity and violated the most fundamental human rights of us all, rights of living. Those who committed such serious crime should be prosecuted according to law.
May those who died in the horrible massacre rest in peace…
You are asking the right questions:
Why did the protest happen? What was the grievance of those people?
What turn it into an angry, murderous mob?
The answer to the first question might be easy. The answer to the second might be explosive.
You are absolutely right, of course. I have been so damn frustrated reading articles that are essentially articles on other articles….
Great questions but given the racial tension between the hans and the uighurs I don’t think you will ever get a clear, unbiased view of exactly what had happened.
Then there is the press. For the Chinese press, there would be no incentive whatsoever to write a story which would remotely stray from the official story. From the Western press point of view, to write anything too close to the official story, even if true, would bring the accusations that the press is caving to the Chinese government.
One can only hope that the Western media can highlight related issues which info can be readily found, such as hiring practices and affirmative action programs in China. After all, the issue of discrimination seem to be the catalyst which started this all. I have yet to see any concrete reporting on 1)how han chinese are discriminating against its minorities 2)what is the government doing to help out the minorities 3)whether the policies are effective 4)what more can/should the government do?
i believe that someone like ai weiwei, who dug the story of student-death-toll of the 5.12 earthquake out, might come up with a story with more details.
that someone(s) may or may not be a journalist in profession….
http://www.deluxzilla.com/DeluxZilla/Writers_Block/Entries/2009/7/7_Uyghurs_Lost_in_Newsfeed.html
I work for RFA’s English Web site, and we are often called by listeners with all manner of stories during big events (tibet, earthquake, urumqi). it is impossible to verify what they tell us. some of it is hearsay, but even when it’s not, there is the problem of unreliability. It has to do with the way the brain edits and organises what it sees unconsciously. All we can do is create an archive of their comments. It might be interesting to create an online repository of witness statements so people can make up their own minds. I was thinking of a Wiki page, but that’s probably too volatile. You might get people deleting each other’s comments all the time. Any thoughts I can take to my editors? I just think such an archive might be at least a useful resource for people trying to research urumqi after the event.
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