From: TEX5HAD@CMS1.LEEDS.AC.UK (Haluk DEMIRBAG)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.turkish
Subject: TREMORS IN THE CHINESE EMPIRE
Date: 29 Sep 1992 20:09:43 -0500
Organization: UTexas Mail-to-News Gateway
Reply-To: Turkish Cultural Program List <TRKNWS-L%USCVM.BitNet@pucc.PRINCETON.EDU>
NNTP-Posting-Host: cs.utexas.edu

TREMORS IN THE CHINESE EMPIRE

!Andrew  Higgins meets  the  Uighurs, a  nation battling to gain!
!statehood                                                      !

They  call  themselves  the  Uighuristan  Liberation  Front.  The
reality  is rather  less  menacing than  the name  -  a group  of
doddery  old  men far  more  interested  in history  than  waging
guerilla warfare.

They  meet around  a heavy  wooden table  in the  house of  their
70-year-old leader, Ashir Vakhidov, to discuss what happened more
than 40 years  ago. Their memories, though, could  prove the most
powerful weapon of all.

Al of them  are Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking  Muslim people forever
caught  between the  competing imperial  ambitions of  Moscow and
Peking.  And all  share one  obsession: to  find out  what really
happened on 27 August 1949, the day their country's leaders - and
so their country - died in a plane crash en route to Peking.

At least that was the official  story. But did the east Turkestan
Republic  die, or  was  it murdered?  After  decades of  silence,
witnesses  to  one of  the  murkiest  episodes of  Central  Asian
skulduggery are slowly beginning to talk.

Suspicion  has  long surrounded  the  whole  saga. If  the  plane
crashed, why did  it take weeks to announce the  news, and months
to return the bodies? Why was  a second delegation sent to Peking
in absolute  secrecy, and  why did  it agree  so readily  to cede
control of East Turkestan to Mao Tse-tung?

Only now  has the  fear that  kept people  quiet so  long finally
gone, banished  with the rest  of the communist apparatus  of the
former Soviet Union. In few places is the desire to talk quite so
strong as in  Central Asia, where silence has been  replaced by a
torrent of rumour, half remembered fact and possibly solid truth.

Mr Vakhidov  and his colleagues  insist they have found  at least
part of  the answer to what  happened on he way  to Peking: there
was no  plane crash; there was  not even a plane.  Leaders of the
East Turkestan Republic,  they say, died in  Moscow, their bodies
dumped in a disused imperial stable. They base the account on the
tape-recorded  testimony of  Akim  Jarulabekov, one  of the  last
people  to see  the  East Turkestan  leadership  alive. A  former
doctor  and Soviet  agent in  East  Turkestan, he  never saw  the
bodies himself but claims to  have been told of their whereabouts
by the NKVD, forerunner of the KGB.

The East Turkestan  Republic may be dead but  its post-mortem has
only just begun. The result promises  far more than the answer to
a historian's riddle.  It could help decide  whether Peking hangs
on to  what is rapidly becoming  the most restive outpost  of the
world's last great empire.

"Our patience is running out," says  Mr Vakhidov, who was born in
China but has lived in exile in Kazakhstan for 30 years. "Uighurs
see what  has happened  in Soviet Central  Asia. Our  country was
stolen.  Young people  are ready  to act."  Before they  can act,
though, they must be thought their history.

The  country Mr  Vakhidov  and  his followers  dream  of one  day
recovering  was  first   established  in  1944  in   a  spasm  of
anti-Chinese Muslim militancy along the ancient Silk Road. In its
heyday, it  controlled vast tracts  of what is today  the Chinese
region  of Xinjiang.  It  had  its own  army  and civil  service.
Stalin,  while  no friend  of  Islam,  encouraged the  republic's
conquests, hoping to extend Moscow's  interests at the expense of
the crumbling  Chinese regime  of Chiang  Kai-shek. But  then, in
1949,  the sands  shifted. With  communism triumphant  in Peking,
Stalin changed direction. The East, as Mao Tse-tung declared, was
Red. East Turkestan was finished.

But there was a problem: its leaders refused to surrender. To try
and negotiate a settlement, Mao invited them to Peking. They left
their  capital of  Kulja (now  the  Chinese town  of Yining)  and
travelled to  Alma Ata,  the capital  of the  neighbouring Soviet
Republic  of Kazakhstan.  It was  the  last time  they were  seen
alive.

"Stalin betrayed us,"says Mr Vakhidov,  a robust man with a mouth
full of  metal teeth and  a head full  of bitter memories  of the
short-lived nation he had served in  his youth. No less bitter is
Yusupek Muhlisi,  another East  Turkestan veteran also  exiled to
Kazakhstan. "Stalin sold us out to China. Now is the time to take
back what is ours."

The proof  of Stalin's  treachery, they say,  is the  plane crash
they believe never  happened. So far there  is little independent
evidence  to confirm  their  belief that  Stalin  had his  former
allies in East Turkestan killed.  That both Stalin and Mao wanted
them out of the way, however seems certain.

When the East Turkestan leaders arrived  in Alma Ata for what was
supposed to  be the start of  their journey to Peking,  they were
met by  Soviet officials and  a delegation sent by  Chairman Mao.
According to Akim  Jarulabekov, who claims to  have witnessed the
meeting, discussions quickly broke  down. The principal leader of
East Turkestan,  a Uighur  called Ahmet  Jan Kassimi,  refused to
cede control  to China.  It was then,  many Uighurs  now believe,
that the NKVD decided to take delegation to Moscow and to recruit
more pliable members for the mission to Peking.

Whether they died in a crash  or were murdered in a Moscow stable
does little to alter the end result - the arrival six weeks later
of  the  People's Liberation  Army  into  Xinjiang. But  it  does
challenge the legitimacy  of Peking's conquest. "Now  is the time
for  us to  be independent,"  says Mr  Vakhidov. "Our  aim is  to
liberate our historic motherland from China."

THE INDEPENDENT, 19 April 1992
            _
|-| /-\ |_ |_| |< ["Leave the Turks in peace, so long as they leave you
                                                ,  ,   _
                    in peace." (Utruku't-Turka ma tarakutum)]
Newsgroups: soc.culture.turkish