China Steps Up Scrutiny of a Minority in Beijing

Every morning at 9 a.m., they are at his door. The police come to the small room the young Uighur cook shares with several other Uighurs to check their papers — and to see if there are new arrivals from his homeland of Xinjiang. He has lived here for six years, peaceably and happily. But in the days preceding the Olympics, things changed. The police had been watching him even before recent violent attacks in Xinjiang but when the Chinese authorities began to warn that a Uighur separatist group was trying to disrupt the Games, the scrutiny intensified. The Olympic opening ceremony contained traditional Uighur song and dance. But most of the several thousand Uighurs who work here have left. The Uighurs are an ethnic group of Turkic-speaking Muslims who live in China’s far west. Most who are in Beijing come to make money for a time and then ride a two-day train back to Xinjiang. Many longtime Uighur residents here own halal kebab restaurants. Seasonal workers sell sweet melons grown in the oasis towns along the western deserts, or peddle fruitcakes from rickshaws. In recent weeks, Uighur assailants have been involved in three separate attacks, with targets including border police officers, government buildings and a Xinjiang checkpoint. Because of the increasing tension, some Uighurs interviewed in recent weeks requested anonymity and others gave only a first name. In a neighborhood of warehouses and foreign textile traders, Muslims come to a small mosque to pray. “The Uighurs all went home,” said Ma Yiqing, 55, a Chinese Muslim from the northwestern province of Gansu, standing in the mosque’s courtyard after evening prayers. “During the Olympics, they are getting squeezed tighter.” A young Uighur from central Xinjiang also works in the neighborhood. He has spent most of his life in Beijing, and, unlike some Uighurs, he has grown accustomed to life among Han Chinese. He has Han Chinese friends. His Mandarin is colloquial. He wants to learn Russian, too, so he can do business with traders in the neighborhood. Beijing is his town. Now he has become a target of surveillance, it appears, because of his ethnic background. “There must be some misunderstanding,” he said. Officers often check his identification. Recently he was detained for several hours because he was not carrying his identification, he said. Because he has a steady job he has been allowed to stay, while Uighur traders have disappeared. “It’s not fair,” he said. “They were here to do business — not to attack the Olympics.” Many Han Chinese support the security measures that have included encouraging migrants to leave town. They say it is China’s duty to protect foreign dignitaries during their stay. China has labeled Uighur separatist groups as the top threat to the Games...NYT