Survival of major non-Han cultures in China is threatened, says India’s leading strategic thinker Friday, 10 July 2009, 11:11 a.m.

Brahma Chellaney/Photo:Wikipedia

Dharamshala: Attributing the cause of simmering ethnic clashes in East Turkestan (now Xinjiang) and the last year’s unprecedented peaceful uprisings in Tibet to China’s failed policies in the two regions, a noted Indian strategic thinker said the very survival of the major non-Han cultures in China is now threatened. (click here to read article: Chinese checkers)“The events since last year have come as a painful reminder to the Chinese leadership that its policies in Tibet and Xinjiang aren’t working,” said Brahma Chellaney, Professor of Strategic Studies at the New Delhi-based Centre for Policy Research, an independent, privately funded think-tank. “Economic development in those regions, largely geared at exploiting their resources, has only helped marginalise the natives. While the locals get menial jobs, the Han settlers hold the well-paying jobs, symbolising an equation between the colonised and the colonisers,” said Prof Chellany, who until recently was a member of the Policy Advisory Group headed by the External Affairs Minister of India.  “More importantly, the very survival of the major non-Han cultures in China is now threatened. From school-level indoctrination and forced political re-education to draconian curbs on native farmland and monastic life, Chinese policies have helped instil feelings of subjugation and resentment in Tibet and Xinjiang,” Prof Chellany said.“Demographically, what Beijing is pursuing there is not ethnic cleansing but ethnic drowning. This strategy to ethnically drown the natives through the “Go West” Han-migration campaign is akin to cultural annihilation,” he added.He said the Tibetan and Uighur languages already are disappearing from local schools, adding, rapid Sinicisation of their pristine environment, however, has only sharpened the Tibetan and Uighur sense of identity and yearning for freedom.Last year in March, the Tibetans living across the three traditional provinces of Tibet, led unprecedented peaceful protests against the Chinese government’s oppression, which was brutally crushed by the Chinese authorities killing more than 220 Tibetans. Over 1,294 were seriously injured, 5,600 arrested, 290 sentenced and more than 1,000 have simply disappeared.The Chinese government used similar heavy-handed tactics to suppress what appeared as a peaceful protests by ethnic Muslim Uighurs in Urumqi, which later turned into violent street protests since last Sunday. China’s state-media put the death toll to 156 in the ensuing clashes between Uighurs and China’s Han majority.