Uighurs Must Fight for Rights within China

It may turn out to be seven days that shook the world, or at least seven days that shook Chinese politics, perhaps permanently.

The week-long visit to Australia by Rebiya Kadeer, president of the World Uighur Congress, a visit that ends as she flies out of Sydney today, could change the course of Chinese politics.

If Kadeer learns the right lessons from her remarkably successful visit she is poised to become one of the most influential figures in global politics. If the Chinese government learns the right lessons from her visit, it could start to improve the situation in Xinjiang.

Kadeer is the most popular leader from the Xinjiang province of western China. She was once the richest woman in China and a member of the Chinese People's Congress. Now she is the leader of the Uighur nationalist movement.

She needs to see her immensely successful visit to Australia as a template for how she should campaign throughout the West. The most important lesson she must learn from her time here is that she and the Uighur movement must definitively abandon any quest for a separate state.

I had a long conversation with Kadeer in Melbourne and the formulation she uses is that the Uighur movement is not asking for independence or for autonomy but for self-determination. She is utterly committed to non-violence, rejects terrorism in any of its guises and is plainly not guilty of almost everything of which the Chinese government accuses her.

The World Uighur Congress, she told me, will make up its mind whether to campaign for independence or merely autonomy depending on how Beijing responds to it and to the Uighur population generally during the next several months. This is an understandable formulation because it puts the onus on Beijing to improve the lamentable human rights situation for Uighurs. But in fact it is extremely dangerous. Self-determination always means independence. If Kadeer is to really help her people she must quickly reject a campaign for a separate state and concentrate instead on human rights, cultural autonomy and democracy within Xinjiang.

If Kadeer allows herself to become a separatist leader, someone who explicitly threatens the territorial integrity of China, then the range of people who will deal with her internationally will shrink.

With time no respectable government will have anything to do with her.

There are many minority groups across the world that would like to have their own state. Many have a measure of justice on their side. But the international system quite rightly has a great bias towards conservatism on such matters. Once you start on the process of ethnic separatism you never stop.

The logic is inexorable; why should I be a minority in your state when I can make you a minority in my state? That way lies ethnic cleansing and perhaps genocidal violence; witness partition between India and Pakistan.

Moreover, whatever the theoretical aspects of the situation the plain reality is that China, obsessed with energy security, will never give up resource-rich Xinjiang. So anyone campaigning for such an outcome is simply campaigning for conflict, death and misery. For any foreign government to give comfort to such a movement is in effect an act of hostility. Many Indonesians believe Australia harbours a secret desire to carve off chunks of Indonesia into separate states, especially, say, West Papua. As a result Australian political leaders of both parties constantly reiterate our support for Indonesia's territorial integrity. No Australian government would support a separatist campaign in Indonesia or in China, nor should it.

However, supporting a better human rights performance in China is another thing altogether. The Uighurs are subject to continual discrimination, and even persecution, in Xinjiang. When Kadeer calls attention to these human rights abuses she is on unassailable moral high ground. Tibet's Dalai Lama, whom Kadeer greatly admires, does not support an independent Tibetan nation. Rather, he wants Tibet to remain part of China but to enjoy cultural and regional autonomy. As a result many Western leaders, including Kevin Rudd and John Howard before him, have been able to meet the Dalai Lama as a spiritual leader and endorse better human rights for Tibetans.

In time, if Kadeer follows the same path, more and more Western leaders will meet her as a kind of cultural Uighur leader and endorse her call for better human rights for Uighurs. There would be no reason she could not campaign for self-government within China on a one-nation, two-systems basis or simply greater regional autonomy, internal democracy within Xinjiang, full respect for Uighur religious and cultural rights, an end to discrimination against Uighurs and the like. It is only in these areas that there is any realistic chance of improved behaviour by Beijing, and only by running this sort of campaign can Kadeer keep attention focused on China's performance rather than unrealistic Uighur demands.

Kadeer was herself astonished at the success of her tour in Australia. On Monday Labor MP Michael Danby hosted 15 federal MPs in Parliament House to meet her. The official Chinese reaction against her vastly increased the profile she enjoyed. The documentary about her life, The 10 Conditions of Love, is a good film. But it could not have got anything like the response it did -- a sell-out audience of 1700 at its premiere -- without the official Chinese effort to suppress it. This had substantial ripples overseas. The New Yorker published a piece titled "We are All Melbournian", which urged other international film festivals to show the documentary to demonstrate that they were entitled to show films critical of governments.

Australian institutions from the Melbourne International Film Festival and Melbourne Town Hall to the National Press Club, the federal parliament and the Rudd government all behaved as they should in accordance with their democratic identities. They refused to be bullied by Beijing, whose diplomatic representatives even got a dressing-down from Foreign Minister Stephen Smith over the aggressive manner in which they tried to stop Melbourne Town Hall showing the film. In all this Australia is a microcosm of the whole Western world. Kadeer and her supporters have the lessons in front of them.

One other thing Kadeer should do is learn enough English to make her basic speeches in English, even if she takes questions through a translator. It's a tall order for awoman of 63 but, given everything else she's accomplished, it's a snack.