RELATED ARTICLES - China's Crusade Against the Muslims of Xinjiang
Dwayne Carruthers
There were no protests on Jakarta's streets after Friday prayers, which might strike some as strange, given the ongoing crackdown against Muslim Uighurs in China's remote western province of Xinjiang.
In recent years, the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) and aligned radical Islamic groups, such as the Islamic Defenders Front and Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia, have played active roles in staging protests against Israel's military action in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon, and US operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"Organizing a protest costs money and sometimes it can be very expensive," said Zulkieflimanysah, PKS deputy chairman for political affairs. "We don't have enough money to participate in China's affairs right now because we need to focus on what's happening in our own country."
The mosques in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, were shut on the Muslim day of prayer as police patrolled the streets with high-powered machine guns. "Go home and pray," the signs at the entrances to the mosques read. But hundreds of Muslim men who had gathered at the White Mosque in Urumqi's Uighur neighborhood of Er Dao Qiao were allowed in after demanding entrance, The Associated Press reported on Friday.
The Uighurs, the majority of whom are Sunni Muslims, face constant persecution by the Chinese government. Students and government workers are controlled by strict regulations that infringe on two of Islam's five pillars: During the holy month of Ramadan, students and government workers are forced to eat and their passports are confiscated so they cannot participate in the hajj to Mecca. Imams are forbidden to teach the Koran in private and the Arabic language is only taught in designated government schools.
Uighurs were once the largest ethnic group in Xinjiang, but an influx of ethnic Han has made them the minority. Han Chinese are the ethnic majority in China, representing more than 90 percent of the country's population.
The recent riots in Urumqi began in response to the Chinese government's handling of a brawl between Uighur and Han factory workers in southern China, but tensions between the two ethnic groups go further back.
On Nov. 19, 2006, one day before former US President George W. Bush visited Indonesia, the PKS staged a demonstration with thousands of supporters at a mosque in Jakarta to protest against US military actions in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"America presents itself as the champion of democracy, so when President Bush decided to invade Iraq, that move contradicted everything it claimed to stand for," Zulkieflimanysah said on Friday. "We had to protest as a symbol of our dissent."
However, he said, Indonesians were unlikely to act on the situation in China because its political system was not democratic.
On the other hand, when former Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Jakarta in 2007, the government and political circles welcomed him. The killing of tens of thousands of Muslims in Chechnya by the Russian Army seemed to have been forgiven and forgotten.
"Russia and Indonesia have been friends since the Cold War," said Azyumardi Azra, an Islamic scholar.
"It is sad to say, but apparently Russia-Indonesia relations have a stronger political significance than religious concerns."
He added, "I don't think many Indonesian Muslims are aware that there are other Muslims living in Xinjiang because it is different from places like Afghanistan and Iraq, where the media is always on the story and therefore they get more global attention."
Zulkieflimanysah said he did not know of any demonstrations being planned for the Uighurs.
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