dogu-turkistan-sempozyumu

The Role of the International Community in East Turkestan / Prof Dru C. GladneyAlthough the United Nations and the United States government have agreedwith China that at least one international organization, ETIM, is a Uighursponsoredterrorist organization, the vast majority of the Eastern Turkestanindependence and information organizations disclaim violence. Supportedlargely by Uighur émigrés who left China prior to the Communist takeover in1949, these organizations maintain a plethora of websites and activities that takea primarily negative view of Chinese policies in the region. Although not allorganizations advocate independence or separatism, the vast majority of them dopress for radical change in the region, reporting not only human rights violations,but environmental degradation, economic imbalances and alternative histories ofthe region. In general, these websites can be divided roughly into those that aremainly information-based and others that are politically active advocacy sites.Nevertheless, whether informational or advocacy, nearly all of them are critical ofChinese policies in Xinjiang.Key informational websites that mainly provide Uighur and Xinjiang relatednews and analyses, include the Turkestan Newsletter (Turkistan-N) maintainedby Mehmet Tutuncu of SOTA, www.euronet.nl/users/sota/Turkestan.html, theOpen Society Institute’s www.erasianet.org, The Uighur Information Agency’swww.uighurinfo.com, and the virtual library of the Australian National Universitybased “Eastern Turkestan WWW VL” www.ccs.uky.edu/~rakhim/et.html. Anincreasing number of scholars are building websites that feature their own workon Xinjiang and provide links to other sites and organizations that are engagedin research and educational activities related to the region. One of the best sitesin this genre is that by Dr. Nathan Light of the University of Toledo, which notonly includes most of his dissertation and useful articles on Uighur history, musicand culture, but also directs readers to other links to the region: http://www.utoledo.edu/~nlight. While there are a plethora of internet sites and web-linksto Xinjiang and Uighur human rights issues, there is as yet no central site thatis regularly updated. Information on Uighur organizations and internet sites canbe found at www.uighuramerican.org. An interactive question-and-answer sitewith a “Special Report: Uighur Muslim Separatists” can be found at the VirtualInformation Center, an open-source organization funded by USCINCPAC,www.vic-info.org.481