“…It is no injustice to conquer the lands of barbarians. It is not an inhuman act to kill barbarians. It is not dishonest to deceive barbarians…”
-Wang Fu Zhi, prominent Chinese philosopher of 17th century
In Chinese socio-cultural-political lexicon the term “barbarian” stands for every race on earth that is not Han. That explains the burden of being the “supreme” race or being “The Middle Kingdom” that generations of Hans have been carrying on their shoulders across the centuries. It also explains why Chinese dynasties had to build the “Great” Wall and why do they take pride in their art of “deception” and cheating.
When Comrade Mao Zedong was in the last leg of his successful communist revolution in China, his “Peoples Liberation Army” (PLA) faced stiff resistance from a host of Uyghur clans of “The Republic of East Turkestan” in the far West. Uyghurs, a fiery and self respecting Muslim race, dominated this mineral rich region which has been off and on under the control of various Chinese warlords. As Mao”s communists were taking control of one after other regions of China the Uyghurs had successfully broken off from the control of Nationalist Kuomintang rule in 1933, though for a short period. But they had regained their independence again since 1944. That is why they would not submit themselves to yet another era of slavery of the Hans.
It was this moment when Mao used his charm of communist sweet talk and offered to settle all those issues through a “friendly dialogue’ which were on the minds of Uyghur leaders. Along with his invitations to the Uyghur clan leaders in August 1949, Mao also sent an aeroplane to Novosibirsk in neighboring USSR to fetch the Uyghur leaders for this “friendly dialogue”. A large section among the influential leaders fell for Mao”s bait. But before the plane could reach Beijing, it exploded midair on 26th August and almost an entire generation of East Turkistani leadership was wiped out in a single go.
Professing loyalty to Mao”s Peoples” Republic of China, Saifuddin Azizi, one of the surviving leaders, joined the Chinese Communist Party. The rest of job of suppressing anti-invasion uprising of Uyghur and Kazakh populations was not difficult for PLA General Wang Zhen who soon took control of the Second “Republic of East Turkistan”. The “Republic” was renamed as “Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region” (XUAR) of China. And collaborator Saifuddin Azizi was appointed as the first Communist Party Governor of the “Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture” of the new PRC.
History repeated itself in Tibet two years later in 1951 when neighboring Tibet was occupied by China following a so called “17-point Agreement between China and Tibet” that was signed by a celebrated Tibetan collaborator Ngapo Ngawang Jigme. n
