新疆骚乱源于强制性的劳务输出计划
《华盛顿邮报》7.15.2009报道 中文摘要 英文原文
7月5日在乌鲁木齐发生的流血事件，造成了大量的伤亡，是中国近年来最大的种族冲突事件。
始于2002年的新疆劳工输出计划，与新疆7.5事件脱不了关系。汉族占了中国总人口数的90%，也主导中国的政治与经济。维吾尔人是少数民族，说土耳其语，主要居住于中国遥远的西部地区，经济地位不高，薪资水准落后于全国平均水平，在私人企业或政府找工作都被歧视；在某些情况下，维族不能蓄胡、戴头巾或遵照伊斯兰传统进行斋戒；维族语言在学校慢慢消失。维族人的愤怒在数十年来一点一滴地累积。在政府始于2002年的新疆劳工输出计划之下，数以万计的维族人从贫困的乡下，被送到较富裕的都市工作。政府官员说，透过这种方式，可以将维族的经济地位提升，汉维两族可以藉由接触互动，更加了解彼此。但是，突然的强制性融合，埋下了今日新疆事件的火种。
强制维族离乡打工 否则罚款
有一些维族劳工被高于家乡采收棉花2至3倍的薪水及其他福利如制作设备的操作训练、汉语课以及免费医疗检查等所吸引，但许多维族人对此计划感到不安，Safyden 21岁的妹妹就是其中的一个。由于离家非常远，又要生活在汉人的环境中，文化与信仰和维族所习惯的一切都是那么不同，因此直到当地官员威胁要罚款2000 元人民币（300美元），她才不情愿地打包行李，远赴2000公里外的广东韶关工厂。住在喀什葛尔市附近村落的居民说，每家都被迫送出一个孩子做劳工，否则就要缴交罚款。刚从高中毕业，20岁的Merzada说：“我家乡的人都很穷，没钱缴罚款，只好把小孩送出去。” 维族男子Yasn说，他们没有选择的余地，去年只好把刚从中学毕业的妹妹送到东部的青岛市，在袜子工厂工作。他说：“妹妹每天哭，哭到离家那一天。”“根据我们的传统，女孩不会去那么远的地方。如果我们有法子的话，我们会让她嫁人，或是到其他地方读书，躲避这个计划。”
公安紧盯防逃跑
河北省一家汉人纺织工厂自2007年起参与维族劳工输出计划，第一年雇用了143名维族女性。厂长Liu Guolin表示，看到她们被会说双语的新疆公安跟着，监视日常生活的一举一动，他感到很惊讶。之后从当从地官员口中，Liu才得知大部分的女孩都不是自愿来的，其中最年轻的只有14岁，当地政府伪造了她们的身分证件，公安也不让她们在工厂祈祷或戴头巾。他说：“如果没有公安跟着，我想她们一开始就会逃跑了。” 负责劳工输出计划的当地官员则否认有强迫及罚款之说，并表示维族劳工在工厂有祈祷自由，虽然不鼓励他们这么做。
新疆事件导火线——韶关事件始末
韶关的玩具工厂曾是新疆劳工输出计划的楷模。今年5月，818名维族人加入了该工厂1万8千名劳工的行列，虽然汉语水平有限，相处还算和谐。上个月，两族间的关系开始紧张，起因是一起网路匿名谣言，6名维族人攻击2名汉族女性，但没人知道受害者是谁，官方事后也证实是离职员工挟怨编造，但双方之间的猜忌已蔓延开来。 6月25日晚间，一名19岁的汉人女子不小心走错了宿舍，她遇到两名维族男子并发出尖叫，其他劳工听到喧闹声后赶来相助，随即引发汉族与维族间的冲突斗殴事件，最后导致120人受伤，2名维族男子死亡。维汉两族斗殴的消息透过网路与手机传回新疆，7月5日，维吾尔人游行到市区，要求彻底调查韶关事件，不知情况为何突然失控，演变成近年来最血腥的暴力事件，造成184人死亡，1680多人受伤。
韶关斗殴事件过后，汉族和维族劳工都表示非常害怕。20岁的维族青年Tursun来自喀什葛尔，他说斗殴事件发生当天，他正躺在床上，突然有一群汉族男人侵入宿舍，开始打他。 23岁的汉人男子Liu Yanhong表示，在事件过后，不知道是否还可以和维族一起工作。如果维族真的回到工厂，他会辞掉工作回家去。 7.5新疆事件发生后2天，韶关玩具工厂为化解种族间的紧张情势宣布了解决方案：种族隔离政策。他们在原厂房数公里外的一个工业区为维族开设新工厂，有自己的作业厂、餐厅及宿舍。 24岁的维族员工Amyna说，新工厂的工作环境不是非常好，居住条件也不是很好。但至少维吾尔人可以一起生活，不必和汉人混在一起。
China Unrest Tied To Labor Program
Uighurs Sent to Work in Other Regions
By Ariana Eunjung Cha
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
URUMQI, China -- When the local government began recruiting young Muslim Uighurs in this far western region for jobs at the Xuri Toy Factory in the country's booming coastal region, the response was mixed.
Some, lured by the eye-popping salaries and benefits, eagerly signed up.
But others, like Safyden's 21-year-old sister, were wary. She was uneasy, relatives said, about being so far from her family and living in a Han Chinese-dominated environment so culturally, religiously and physically different from what she was accustomed to. It wasn't until a local official threatened to fine her family 2,000 yuan, or about $300, if she didn't go that she reluctantly packed her bags this spring for a job at the factory in Shaoguan, 2,000 miles away in the heart of China's southern manufacturing belt.
The origins of last week's ethnically charged riots in Urumqi, the capital of China's Xinjiang region, can be traced to a labor export program that led to the sudden integration of the Xuri Toy Factory and other companies in cities throughout China.
Uighur protesters who marched into Urumqi's main bazaar on July 5 were demanding a full investigation into a brawl at the toy factory between Han and Uighur workers that left two Uighurs dead. The protest, for reasons that still aren't clear, spun out of control. Through the night, Uighur demonstrators clashed with police and Han Chinese bystanders, leaving 184 people dead and more than 1,680 injured in one of the bloodiest clashes in the country's modern history. Two Uighurs were shot dead by police Monday, and tensions remain palpable.
"I really worry about her very much," Safyden, 29, said of his sister, whom he did not want named because he fears for her safety. "The government should send them back. What if new conflicts happen between Uighurs and Han? The Uighurs will be beaten to death."
Both Han Chinese, who make up more than 90 percent of the country's population and dominate China's politics and economy, and Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking minority living primarily in China's far west, say anger has been simmering for decades.
By moving Uighur workers to factories outside Xinjiang and placing Han-run factories in Xinjiang, Chinese officials say, authorities are trying to elevate the economic status of Uighurs, whose wages have lagged behind the national average. But some Han Chinese have come to resent these policies, which they call favoritism, and some Uighurs complain that the assimilation efforts go too far. Uighurs say that their language is being phased out of schools, that in some circumstances they cannot sport beards, wear head scarves or fast as dictated by Islamic tradition, and that they are discriminated against for private and government jobs.
Xinjiang's labor export program, which began in 2002 and has since sent tens of thousands of Uighurs from poor villages to wealthier cities, was supposed to bring the two groups together so they could better interact with and understand each other. The Uighur workers are lured with salaries two or three times what they could earn in their home towns picking cotton, as well as benefits such as training on manufacturing equipment, Mandarin language classes and free medical checkups.
Several Uighur workers said that they have prospered under the program and that they were treated well by their Han bosses and co-workers. Others, however, alleged that the program had become coercive.
In the villages around the city of Kashgar, where many of the workers from the Xuri factory originated, residents said each family was forced to send at least one child to the program -- or pay a hefty fine.
"Since people are poor in my home town, they cannot afford such big money. So they have to send their children out," said Merzada, a 20-year-old who just graduated from high school and who, like all the Uighurs interviewed, spoke on the condition that a surname not be used.
A Uighur man named Yasn said his family had no choice but to send his sister, who had just graduated from middle school, to the eastern city of Qingdao to work in a sock factory last year because they could not afford the fine: "She cried at home every day until she left. She is a girl -- according to our religion and culture, girls don't go to such distant places. If we had it our way, we would like to marry her to someone or let her go to school somewhere to escape it," he said.
The Han Chinese owner of a textile factory in Hebei province that has been hiring Uighur workers from the program since 2007 said that in the first year the company participated, 143 female workers came to the company. Liu Guolin said he was surprised to see that they were accompanied by a bilingual police official from their home town who oversaw the details of their daily life.
"Without the policeman, I assume they would have run away from the very beginning. I did not realize that until the local officials revealed to me later. Only by then did I learn most of those girls did not come voluntarily," Liu said.
He said the security officer did not allow them to pray or wear head scarves in the factory workshops. He later learned that some of the girls were as young as 14 and that their ID cards had been forged by the local government.
Bi Wenqing, deputy head of the Shufu county office that oversees the Xinjiang labor export program, denied that any participants had been coerced or threatened with fines. However, he said that although the Uighur workers at the factories have the freedom to worship, the practice is not encouraged.
"We have been trying hard to educate them into disbelieving religion. The more they are addicted to religion, the more backwards they will be. And those separatists try to leverage religion to guide these innocent young Uighurs into evil ways," Bi said.
The Xuri Toy Factory -- which makes electronic toys and travel bags -- once seemed a model for the export program.
In May, 818 Uighurs from Xinjiang joined the 18,000-person workforce. Although the newcomers had limited Mandarin skills, the Uighurs and Han Chinese workers bonded over nightly dances that seemed to transcend lingual, cultural and religious barriers.
But the atmosphere started to become tense last month when a rumor spread about a rape at the toy factory. An anonymous message, posted on the Internet in June, stated that six Uighurs assaulted two Han female co-workers. No one seemed to know exactly who the alleged victims were, employees said, and police later said the story was made up by a disgruntled former worker. But suspicions festered.
When Huang Cuilian, a 19-year-old trainee who is Han, walked into the wrong dormitory and ran into two Uighur men on the night of June 25, she screamed, and a melee ensued. When other workers heard the commotion, a brawl broke out between the Han and Uighur workers. In the end, 120 were injured, and two Uighurs later died.
Information about the fight spread via the Internet and cellphones to the Uighurs' home towns in Xinjiang, and there were calls for other Uighurs to take action.
In the aftermath of the fighting, both Han Chinese and Uighur workers at the factory say they are afraid of each other.
Tursun, a 20-year-old Uighur man from Kashgar, said he had been lying in bed in the dormitory when "suddenly a bunch of Han Chinese broke into my dorm and beat me."
Liu Yanhong, a 23-year-old Han Chinese who works in the assembly department, said: "I still don't know if I can work together with them, after that thing happened. If they really come back, I will quit my job and go home."
Two days after the deadly riots in Urumqi, officials at the Xuri Toy Factory announced that they had come up with a solution to the ethnic tensions: segregation.
The company opened a factory exclusively for Uighur workers in an industrial park miles from its main campus. They have separate workshops, cafeterias and dorms.
A Uighur employee named Amyna, 24, said the working conditions at the new factory are "not very good" and the living conditions also are "not very good." But at least, she said, "the Uighurs are living together and don't mingle with Han Chinese."
Researchers Wang Juan and Liu Liu contributed to this report.
