dogu-turkistan-sempozyumu

The Role of the International Community in East Turkestan / Prof Dru C. Gladneyit has been reported that wealthy Uighur patrons in Saudi Arabia and Turkeywho became successful running businesses after migrating to these countries inthe 1940s have given great support to these organizations financially in the past,there is no publicly available information on these sources. Many Uighurs whomigrated to Saudi Arabia and Turkey in the 1930s and 1940s, became successfulin construction and as restaurateurs, and were thus in a much better positionto support Uighur causes than the more recent Uighur émigrés. 43 Uighurs inCentral Asia and in the West who have been able to migrate from Xinjiang inincreasing numbers in the last 20 years or so have generally been much worse offthan the earlier émigrés in the Middle East. This is starting to change, however,as they and their children become more well-established in the U.S., Canada,Europe and Australia.Although most of these websites have limited funding and circulation, theyshould not be dismissed as forming only a “virtual” community without anysubstantial impact on events within Xinjiang. Not only have these websites servedas an important source of information not available in the official Chinese media,but some scholars have begun to argue that internet sites often help to sway publicopinion by virtue of their widespread availability and alternative reporting ofimportant events. 44 While analysts are divided about the potency of the internetfor swaying public opinion or influencing domestic events, there is an emergingconsensus that it has clearly altered the way information is circulated and opinionsare formed. Perhaps more importantly, scholars have concluded that the “virtualcommunities” formed by internet websites establish links and connections that canlead to broad social interactions and coalitions which have impacted political andsocio-economic events. For example, it has been shown that social movements inEast Timor, Aceh, Chechnya and Bosnia have been given strong support throughthese internet communities, providing not only increased information but largefinancial transfers as well. 45 While “cyber-separatism” would never be able onits own to unseat a local government, it is clear that it does link like-mindedindividuals and raise consciousness about issues that were often inaccessible to thegeneral public. For an isolated region such as Xinjiang, and the widely dispersedUighur Diaspora, the internet has dramatically altered the way the world sees theregion and the Chinese state must respond to issues within it.487