Uighur Muslims: Commentary and Opinion

Plenty of coverage of this - I have tried to focus on web related issues:

Khalid Amayreh, Islam Online, Uighur Muslims Crushed in East Turkistan: The Muslim World's Absence of Reaction "Some reports spoke of a real pogrom, including acts of lynching as the number of victims continued to rise, prompting the Chinese authorities to try to block twitters and slow down mobile phone and internet services, apparently in an effort to prevent the dissemination of news of the violence to the rest of the world ...

" ... Muslims around the world have an absolute religious, moral, and human duty to identify with their oppressed brothers and sisters in East Turkistan. These suffering people whose plight can be compared with the plight of the Palestinians, are only demanding basic human rights, including the right to religious freedom."

Susan Yasin, Islam Online, Internet, Blogs Solace Oppressed Uighurs, 7 Jul 09

Stephanie Ho, VOA, Chinese Authorities Blame Internet for Fanning Uighur Anger, 8 Jul 09 "Chinese authorities blame foreign activists for inciting violent protests this week in Xinjiang, and say the Internet enabled them to do it. Uighur groups have used the Internet to rapidly get out images from what they say was a provocative government crackdown on a peaceful demonstration ...

" ... In Beijing, the Twitter messaging system, which protesters in Iran recently used to report on police crackdowns there, has been disabled. And while cell phone connections in the Xinjiang capital, Urumqi, still operate, getting a call to the city, or making an international call from there, is proving difficult."

AFP, China extends hand to foreign media, but tightens grip elsewhere, 9 Jul 09 "The openness after the riots may also indicate Beijing is realising it has become increasingly hard to keep information hidden, said David Zweig, a China expert at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

""They know they didn't do very well in Tibet ... rather than journalists not have access and get stories from Uighurs overseas, this way they go in and see for themselves," he said."

Helena Zhu, Epoch Times, Reporters Fight With Web Police for Xinjiang Incident Photos and Videos, 9 Jul 09 "Amidst the violence in Urumqi, Xinjiang, Chinese bloggers penetrated the regime’s Internet blockades and uploaded photos and videos to Web sites including Twitter and YouTube. They also sent text messages overseas, saying “Reveal truth to the world.”"

Willy Lam, Jamestown Foundation, The Net Revolution: Chinese Netizens vs. Green Dam, China Brief Volume: 9 Issue: 14 "Given the sensitive nature of the post-election political drama in Iran, it is hardly suprising that there is little coverage of the protests—particularly Net-empowered ones—in the Chinese press. Official media stories have focused on Beijing’s support of “the choice of the Iranian people” as well as its opposition to interference by Western forces."

Imagetheif, Riots in Xinjiang and the price of omission, 7 Jul 09

Xinhua.net, People's Daily calls for social stability in Xinjiang, 9 Jul 09 "The People's Daily, the mouthpiece of the Communist Party of China (CPC), will publish an editorial Friday highlighting stability in Xinjiang as "the most important and pressing task currently."

BBC News, Some mosques defy order to shut, 10 Jul 09 incl. video

Evgeny Morozov, NPR, Foreign Policy: Why Twitter Failed The Uighurs, 8 Jul 09 " Given the current oversupply of Twitter experts, it's strange that nobody told the Uighurs that staging a protest in the week of Michael Jackson's funeral is not going to propel them into the top charts of Twitter's most discussed items. What a bummer – Michael Jackson is still topic number one on Twitter, the Uighurs are not even in top 10, and the Internet-savvy whizzes of the State Department are nowhere to be seen."

Shadow of the Hegemon, China, Iran, and The YouTube Effect, 8 Jul 09 "Nobody can be fully sure where this will end up. Many-to-many video distribution is a new thing, and arguably a bigger deal than many-to-many text distribution was. We're moving away from YouTube-as-harmless amusement to YouTube-as-vital service. But where it goes after that? It depends on people react."



Twitter feed: Xinjiang