Posted by
EWRoss on Wednesday, June 17, 2009 8:00:00 AM
All I know about the Uighurs recently released from the Guantanamo detention facility is what I've learned about them from the media. I do, however, have lasting images of the Uighurs I met when I visited Xinjiang, Province, China in 1983.
While serving as the assistant US Army attaché in Beijing my wife and I flew to Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, where we rented a car and a tall, husky Uighur driver, whom we dubbed "John Wayne" because of the way he walked. We spent the better part of a week in that car with "John" and covered over 1,000 kilometers visiting the Turfan oasis, Buddhist caves, and ancient ruins. Of course, you can't learn all that much about a people from hanging around with one of them for a week, but we did our research before and after the trip and observed how Uighurs in Urumqi and in the countryside lived. We also observed how John behaved everytime we encountered one of the ever-present Chinese policemen or soldiers we encountered. He bristled.
Like Tibetans, Uighurs are an oppressed minority in China. They have become increasingly radicalized in recent years by their al-Qaeda and Taliban neighbors to their west. Indeed they have conducted terrorist attacks in China directed at the Chinese government in Beijing, and some of them have been found fighting in Afghanistan. But when I see video clips of released Uighurs swimming in the ocean off Bermuda, I think about John and wonder what ever happened to him. They also remind me that not everything is black and white. As the old cliché goes, one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.