dogu-turkistan-sempozyumu

FREEEAST TURKISTAN SYMPOSIUMThe Chinese have taken control of most political and economic platforms. Asa result, there is very little unemployment among the Chinese, but unemploymentamong the Uyghurs is growing at an alarming rate. Despite East Turkistan’s naturalwealth, the Uyghur people live more or less at subsistence level, with almost 80% living below the poverty level. Employment opportunities and options havediminished for the Uyghurs, due to reasons of ethnicity and religion. There arestories of Uyghurs who are denied jobs because the Han managers prefer Hanemployees, and they repeat the charge that practicing Muslims cannot find workin the state or state-sponsored sectors of the Xinjiang economy, because of thestrictures of the official atheism.Cheap forced labour vs. searching for a jobAs discussed earlier, the Uyghurs find it difficult to get jobs in their own citiesand are not benefitting from the so-called “Western Development Plan”; they areready to accept any job anywhere just to survive. The opportunist Chinese factoryowners have taken advantage of this and have offered jobs to many young Uyghursin places in China that are thousands of miles from their homes. They end up ina situation far from their home where they can be mistreated by the employers;this situation has eventually led to much unrest. The recent Shawguan Factoryincident in the Guangdong province, which later led to the unrest in Urumqi, isa recent example. Dru Gladney, an expert on Islam in China and president of thePacific Basin Institute at Pomona College has put it nicely: “They can’t get workin their own province, so they go to the far corners of the country to seek jobs.They are recruited by the government, and then they feel like the governmentdoesn’t defend or protect them. They feel discriminated against. They can’t win athome and they can’t win far afield.”Enslaving young Muslim Uyghur girlsAnother cunning objective of the Chinese government to destroy Uyghuridentity through assimilation was the establishment of a new technique; theycreated jobs for young girls aged between 16 and 24 from rural areas of EastTurkistan. Parents were given false promises by the factory owners and localauthorities. In 2006 and 2007 hundreds and thousands of young girls were takenfrom rural areas of East Turkistan. According to a report released by rfa.org, girls428