DPR urges UN to immediately handle the uprising in China

Jakarta, NU Online
In view of the uprising in the restive western province of Xinjiang in China which had killed 156 people and injured hundreds others, the Indonesian parliament urged the United Nations to immediately help overcome the conflict in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang.

Chairman of the Indonesian House`s Commission III Patrialis Akbar made the remark during an interview here over the week-end, saying that the United Nations should immediately help solve the conflict raging in Urumqi, which eventually prompted the Chinese government to forbid moslems in that conflict area to perform Friday prayers at the mosques.<>

The violence, which may have been the deadliest in China since that in the Tiannanmen Square in 1989, broke out in the regional capital Urumqi on Sunday night when tension between Uighurs and Han Chinese boiled over.

The Chinese authorities who blamed exiled Muslim Uighur separatists for the trouble were in turn accused of heavy-handed repression which, according to the claim of one Uighur representative, may have left up to 400 people dead.

Both the Chinese (Han) and Uyghur populations eventually wished for control of the exploration and exploitation of the oil reserves in Xinjiang. Most of the oil workers are Han migrants from surrounding areas. At the Lunnan oil station, where the energy pipeline to eastern China begins, none of the hundreds of workers is Uighur.

"The Chinese government has blatantly violated human rights and committed such crime against the community by repressing the Uighur ethnic most of whom are moslems. Therefore the UN should overcome the human tragedy and blame the Chinese government for the repressive action," he said.

According to him, Chinese repressive measure through violence by killing and banning the religious action of the Uighur Muslims had actually undermine the dignity of human beings. "This should no longer exist at the present time."

"All people should actually give the right and freedom to perform their respective religious activity. It is for that purpose that we ask the Chinese government to stop killing and discriminating the Uighur ethnic people," said Akbar of the National Mandate Party (PAN) faction in the House.

Akbar also called on the Indonesian president to send a letter to China through the UN in the hope of preventing human tragedy like the violation of human rights.

"As a matter of fact, this issue does not only concern Islam, but the religious community worldwide as well. Because no religion allows their believers to resort to violence. Practically as religious community, many will disagree with the Chinese oppression against a certain minority group in that country," he said.

Another legislator, Irman Gusman, vice chairman of the Regional Representives Council, also deplored the human violence against the minority Uighur moslems in Urumqi.

"Discriminative measures against a certain ethnic group, violent repression and banning the people from conducting their religious activities are categorized as a violation of human rights. Hence we should blame the brutal action by the Chinese security authorities, as humanity is universal in natural," Gusman said over the week-end.

Apart from the religion of Uighur residents, the most important thing to note is that the way how the Chinese government had banned the people in the conflicting area was against human rights, he said.

Gusman stressed that the violent action had to be immediately stopped, as it had to do with the internal affairs of Chinese government itself.

The Chinese government was responsible for preventing the spread of inter-ethnic clashes and as a friendly country, Indonesia had no intention to intervene in the internal affairs of that country.

"Considering that the violation had to do with belief and human crimes, this is no longer only the internal affairs of China, but also of the international community," he said.

In the meantime, the Secretary General of the Indonesian Council of Ulemas (MUI), Ichwan Sam deeply deplored the policy of the Chinese government in banning Uighur moslems from performing their Friday prayers at the mosques in Urumqi, Xianjiang, as the freedom of conducting religious activities is the human right of each citizen.

Performing religious activities like prayers and a get-together in learning the belief were the right of each citizen. Accordingly, the Chinese government should protect the religious activity, he said when contacted by phone.

However, if the policy was taken under an emergency condition in a bid to prevent the clashes from spreading to a large scale, it was still understandable, he said, adding that the ban should not last longer.

Ichwan admitted that three days ago he had contacted some agents to China to know the real condition in Xianjiang. But most travel agencies said the situation was relatively safe.

A number of Uighur Muslims had been instructed to perform their prayers at their houses at the time security personnel were deployed to the streets of the city, five days after the outbreak of a clash which had caused the death of 156 people.

In response to the Chinse policy, Islamic Law Research Institute Director Fauzan Al Anshari stressed that the instruction to forbid Uighur Muslims to perform Friday prayers at the mosques in Urumqi was a serious violation of human rights.

"This is the biggest human right violation, blatantly against the Geneve Convention on freedom to perform their beliefs," he said by phone.

With regard to the violation, Fauzan appealed to the UN to strongly blame the Chinese government for its failure to give a good example as a member of the UN Security Council.

Fauzan said that with the incident, China dominated by the Communist regime had actually disriminated the muslim community from the others. On the one side, Uighur muslims had allowed the Chinese people from conducting their religious activity, the Chinese government was intolerant to the muslims.

In fact, muslims in Urumqi had long been the subject of discriminative practices, he said.

China has mounted its security operations in the restive city of Urumqi, flooding the streets with paramilitary police personnel and armoured vehicles in a major show of force designed to quell the ethnic conflict.

Chinese President Hu Jintao took an unprecedented step of breaking off from the G8 Summit in Italy to take control of the situation which has threatened to destabilise the strategically vital province of Xinjiang in China`s far west ever since the riots on Sunday in which 156 people were killed and more than 1,000 injured. (ant/dar)