By Matthew Russell Lee
www.innercitypress.com/un3xinjiang071709.html
UNITED NATIONS, July 17 -- In Jakarta the day before the hotel bombings, the Chinese embassy was blockades by protesters about the deaths in Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region. Chinese Charge d’Affaires Yang Lingzhu was quoted, "This is just a brawl between several groups of people. There is no ethnic violence in the province."
But as in Turkey, where Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said his country would bring the matter before the UN Security Council -- it hasn't happened -- in Jakarta, "the Indonesian parliament urged the United Nations to immediately help overcome the conflict in Urumqi, the capital of Xianjing, Indonesia's Antara news agency reported."
Inner City Press on July 17 asked Indonesia's Permanent Representative to the UN Marty Natalegawa, after a question about the bombings, about calls for UN action on Xinjiang by parliamentarians in his country. "I'm not aware of it," Ambassador Natalegawa replied. Video here, from Minute 4:41.
Ambassador Natalegawa continued, "We have been following developments, as others have, I'm sure. It is essentially a matter to be addressed by the authorities in China, the Chinese government. We are seeing such efforts by the Chinese authorities. So we don't see anything beyond that."
Given the rumors of Natalegawa continuing to rise in the Indonesian government, this can be taken as an official statement of the country's foreign policy, despite for example the article entitled "Indonesian Parliament Urges UN To Handle Uprising In China." No one, it seems, including the Western powers, has actually asked for any discussion in the UN Security Council.
Still, Chinese diplomat Yang Lingzhu's quote that "there is no ethnic violence in the province" appears ludicrous. With separate mobs of Han Chinese and Uighurs have been filmed in the streets armed with sharpened sticks, to deny the ethnic dimension is to be in denial.
One candid Chinese diplomat described it to Inner City Press as similar to the situation of African Americans in the ghettos of cities in the U.S., saying that they have a right to protest, but not to burn the buildings down. Or physically attack those they view as their oppressors, or replacements.
If this happened in another country, it would probably be raised in the Security Council, and might be put on the agenda. But for now you have Turkey's double game, and the split between at least some Indonesian parliamentarians and that country's executive branches. Watch this site.
