纽约时报：中国永不放弃的维吾尔知识分子-伊力哈木·土赫提

作者：ANDREW JACOBS（纽约时报）译者：konchi(维吾尔在线志愿者)
2010年08月20日
在北京，穆斯林维吾尔人的拥护者伊力哈木·土赫提下课后同他的学生们聊天。

在这里，伊力哈木·土赫提很少担心他的个人安全，至少不在想要成为贼子人的手中。

这是因为土赫提先生-- 一位经济学教授，同时也是围困在中国的维吾尔人的非官方发言人-- 经常有警察陪同。

他们是否在寻找他的幸福，这是另一回事。

“有时候你可能看不到他们，尤其是我和朋友一起出去的时候，但他们一直都在，”41岁的土赫提先生说。他经常挂在脸上的笑容似乎在传递更多的悲伤，而不是喜悦。

就在这时他的手机响了。他看了一眼号码，把手指放在嘴边，小声地说：“国安”。迅速地与他们聊了几句后，土赫提先生挂断了电话，又点起一只香烟。“他们对我非常生气，”在他北京的家里说道，“他们很清楚地告诉，我的处境可能会很危险。”
这些是土赫提先生的危险时期。他直言不讳且“明目张胆”地为中国的突厥-维吾尔人辩护使他成为政府经常近距离监视的一员。

去年七月份在中国的西部--新疆发生的民族流血冲突中共有197人死亡，随后自治区主席在电视讲话中指控维吾尔流亡领袖热比娅·卡迪尔是暴乱的煽动者，此次暴乱中有维吾尔暴徒在该地区的首府--乌鲁木齐攻击汉族移民。主席在讲话中还提到，土赫提先生的网站uighurbiz.net也参加了此次造谣与煽动。事情发生之后，该网站也被封锁了。

第二天，北京的安全部门带他去了所谓的“三个星期的假期”。安全部门长时间审问他，并且警告他停止公开批评政府和其在新疆的政策。后来，安全部门的人去了他的住处，虽然土赫提先生担心他招致他们愤怒而拒绝谈他的这段经历，但是他还是表示：“他们有时候对我很好；其他的时候，他们说，‘我们压碎你就像压碎蚂蚁一样那么简单’”。

直到现在也还不清楚他们为什么没把他“压碎”。自去年夏天的骚乱之后，当局对扣留许多维吾尔人的做法几乎没有一丝的内疚，那些维吾尔人的下落仍是一个谜。最近几周，他们当中有些人被判了长期徒刑，其中包括三家网站站长和一位被定罪为“危害国家安全”的记者。最长的徒刑——15年——判给了一位51岁的维吾尔族记者海莱特·尼亚孜。他曾是土赫提先生的网站的作者。检察官说，尼亚孜先生最大的罪行是接受了香港一个杂志的采访。

他的命运沉重地压在土赫提先生身上，并且增加了他因“多嘴多舌”带来的危险程度。“他们说我炒作了海莱特·尼亚孜的案子，并要求我停止接受媒体采访，但我就是忍不住要说，”他说道，并将一根抽完了的烟放在一个已经烟蒂满溢的烟灰缸中。

作为少数几个居住在中国的著名维吾尔族知识分子中的一员，土赫提先生认为，除了公开反对燃起维吾尔人愤恨的种族歧视和经济上的不平等之外，他别无选择。其中有些针对的是数百万被鼓励而向西迁徙的汉族移民。根据2000年的人口普查，在新疆汉族人口占40%，而1949年共产党开始执政时汉族人口不到5%。

尽管中央政府最近承诺要在新疆投资数十亿美元，但是土赫提先生说即使再大数目的钱也不能平缓因该地区因为一千万维吾尔人的文化和语言越来越多地受到同化的威胁而带来的普遍情绪。这不能改变大部分政府职位以及新疆蓬勃发展的石油和天然气行业中的工作岗位仅授予汉人的局面。

他还对中国的领导人有很大的意见，他说关于法律上所规定的民族区域自治，中国的领导人嘴上说的很好听。“我担心很多维吾尔人可能会被迫走极端的道路，”他说。

这星期离土赫提先生家乡不远的城市阿克苏发生的造成7人死亡的爆炸事件背后也可能存在着那样的极端主义。

土赫提先生知道他坦率的话语已经在无意当中对他很亲近的人造成了很大的影响。被警笛和经常性的敲门所惊吓的妻子带他们的儿子返回新疆后，他的第一次婚姻最终以离婚而告终了。他第二任妻子也离开了北京，后来生了他们的第二个儿子。

他承认因为担心自己的安全，他母亲以前差点要了她的命的中风最近可能又发作了。“她说她要是知道儿子会成为今天这样的人的话，她绝不会允许儿子上学，”土赫提先生说。

他在新疆公安部门工作的亲戚超过十二个，其中也包括他的两位哥哥。他们多次来京企图说服土赫提先生能低调一些，这可能是为了减轻来自他们上级的压力。

不清楚是不是他的声望从他更差的命运中挽救了他。研究新疆的著名作者王力雄说：“名望很少能挽救知名度高的异议人士。”

“有个可能性，那就是政府内部的不同权力和利益集团在怎么处理他的问题上存在分歧，”王先生说，“但在某些方面，较高权威会决定怎么做。”

出生在阿图什--丝绸之路北支的一个古老前哨--的土赫提先生说自己是一个很勤奋的学生。他说这句话时注意力稍微有所分散。土赫提先生的父亲毕业于北京师范大学。父亲去世的时候，土赫提先生只有两岁。他对自己的父亲没有什么印象。“我非常害怕问我母亲，因为这对我们俩都是很痛苦的话题，”他说。

当他上六年级的时候，他清楚地意识到阿图什的汉人和维吾尔人过着不同的生活。那是1980年的夏天，一群维吾尔族小孩企图去为汉族人准备的电影院，在与汉族士兵的扭打混战中，一名维吾尔族男孩的受伤让人感到非常痛苦。在接下来的混乱中，土赫提先生也加入了“暴民”当中，并且打碎了能看得见的每一盏灯和每一扇窗户。

为什么砸的是灯和窗户呢？“因为这些东西都是汉人所拥有的，我们住在极其简陋的房屋中，”他回忆说。“我觉得就在那时候，维吾尔人打开了眼界，看到了周围发生的事情。”

现在，他仍然在中央民族大学教书。在学校里，他的课很受维吾尔学生的欢迎。毫不奇怪，他的讲座总是很火。他的讲座的录音偷偷地在全国各地相互传递着。

对他的讲话内容感兴趣的不仅仅是学生。不久前，他发现他讲课的教室的天花板上安装有监视摄像头。后来，他意识到他不管换到那个教室摄像头也跟到那个教室。“可能是一个巧合吧，”他笑着说。

土赫提先生完全可以离开这个国家成为流亡的维吾尔人，但是他拒绝了接受这种想法。只有在中国，他说，他才能帮助尼亚孜先生和其他被监禁的维吾尔人。他还感觉到他有义务帮助他的学生，他们当中的大部分毕业后好几年都没有找到工作。“作为一个老师，我觉得是我没有做好，”他说。

然后，他的情绪更加低落。

“如果这边的事情没有我想的那样迅速改变，我迟早会在劫难逃，”他说。“我可能会被送进监狱，但这对我来说无所谓，因为我已经在那里了。”

 英文原文：

Uighur Intellectual Who Won’t Back Down in China

Frederic J. Brown/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Muslim Uighur advocate Ilham Tohti chats with students following his lecture in a classroom in Beijing.

By ANDREW JACOBSPublished: August 20, 2010
ILHAM TOHTI rarely worries about his personal safety here — at least not at the hands of would-be thieves.

That is because Mr. Tohti, an economics professor and unofficial spokesman for this country’s embattled Uighur minority, frequently has a police escort.

Whether they are looking out for his well-being is another matter.

“You may not see them, especially if I’m out with friends, but they’re there,” said Mr. Tohti, 41, whose ever-present smile seems to convey more sadness than joy.

Just then his cellphone rang. He looked at the number, put his fingers to his lips and whispered “domestic security.”

 After a quick exchange with his minders, Mr. Tohti hung up and lit yet another cigarette. “They’re very angry with me,” he said sitting in his Beijing apartment. “They told me very clearly that I may be in grave danger.”

These are precarious times for Mr. Tohti, a brazenly outspoken spark plug of a man whose advocacy for China’s Turkic-speaking Muslim Uighurs has landed him on the government’s list of citizens who warrant near-constant surveillance.

Last July, after ethnic bloodletting in the far western region of Xinjiang killed 197 people, the governor appeared on television to accuse Rebiya Kadeer, the exiled Uighur leader, of inciting the violence, much of which involved Uighur mobs bludgeoning Han Chinese migrants in Urumqi, the regional capital. Then he parceled out some of the blame to Mr. Tohti’s Web site, Uighurbiz.net, a lively forum for debate — and a platform for rumormongering, according to the government — before it was blocked by the censors.

The next day, security agents from Beijing took him on what he said they called a “vacation” for three weeks, interrogating him for long periods and warning him to stop publicly criticizing the government’s policies and practices in Xinjiang. The agents later decamped to his living room, although Mr. Tohti declined to describe the experience for fear he might incur their wrath. “Sometimes they were nice to me, but other times they said, ‘We can crush you like an ant,’ ” he said.

It is not clear why they have not crushed him yet. Since the unrest of last summer, the authorities have had little compunction about detaining scores of Uighurs whose whereabouts remain a mystery. In recent weeks, several have been given long prison terms, including three Web masters and a journalist who were convicted for endangering the Chinese state. The longest sentence, 15 years, was handed down to Gheyret Niyaz, a 51-year-old writer who worked for Mr. Tohti’s Web site. Prosecutors say Mr. Niyaz’ greatest crime was speaking to a magazine in Hong Kong.

His fate has weighed heavily on Mr. Tohti and increased his already perilous levels of garrulousness. “They say I’m hyping up his case and that I have to stop talking to the media, but I just can’t help myself,” he said, adding another cigarette butt to an overflowing ashtray.

As one of the few prominent Uighur intellectuals living in China, Mr. Tohti said he felt he had no choice but to speak out against the discrimination and economic inequality he says fuel Uighur resentment, some of which ends up directed at the Han migrants who have been encouraged to move west by the millions. According to the most recent census in 2000, the Han make up 40 percent of Xinjiang’s population, up from less than 5 percent when the Communist Party took power in 1949.

Although the central government recently pledged to invest billions of dollars in Xinjiang, Mr. Tohti says no amount of money can assuage the widespread feeling that the culture and language of the region’s 10 million Uighurs are increasingly threatened by assimilation. It does not help that most government positions and jobs in Xinjiang’s booming oil and gas industries go to the Han.

HE also has harsh words for China’s leaders, who he says pay lip service to the autonomy promised by Chinese law. “I am worried that many of my people might be driven to extremism,” he said.

Such extremism may have been behind an explosion this week that killed seven people in Aksu, a predominantly Uighur city not far from Mr. Tohti’s hometown.

Mr. Tohti knows his frank words have had unintended consequences for those closest to him. His first marriage ended in divorce after his wife, spooked by sirens and jolted by every knock at the door, returned to Xinjiang with their young son. Last year his second wife also fled Beijing, and later she gave birth to their second child.

He admits that the stroke that nearly killed his mother recently may have been brought on by her anxiety over his safety. “She said she would have never allowed me to go to school if she knew I would turn out like this,” he said.

He has more than a dozen relatives in Xinjiang who work in public security, including two brothers who have made repeated trips to Beijing in an effort to persuade Mr. Tohti to tone down his rhetoric, and perhaps ease the pressure from their own superiors.

It is not entirely clear whether his prominence has so far saved him from a worse fate. Wang Lixiong, a well-known writer who studies Xinjiang, said that fame rarely saves high-profile dissidents.

“It could just be that different powers and interests within the government are divided over what to do about him,” Mr. Wang said. “But at some point, a higher authority might decide to step in and do something.”

BORN in Atush, an ancient outpost on the northern branch of the Silk Road, Mr. Tohti says he was a diligent, if slightly distracted, student. His father, educated at Beijing Normal University, died when Mr. Tohti was 2 under circumstances he still does not understand. “I’m afraid to ask my mother, because the subject is too painful for the both of us,” he said.

In the sixth grade, he became acutely aware that the Uighurs and the Han in Atush lived differently. It was the summer of 1980, when a crowd of Uighur children tried to force their way into a movie theater reserved for Han. During a scuffle with Chinese soldiers, a Uighur boy was grievously injured and in the melee that followed, Mr. Tohti joined a rampaging mob that smashed every light bulb and window in sight.

Why light bulbs and windows? “Because these are things the Han had; we lived in primitive dwellings,” he recalled. “I think that’s when many Uighurs opened their eyes and saw what was happening around them.”

For now, he still has his teaching job at Minzu University of China, where his classes are a popular draw among Uighur students. Not surprisingly, his lectures tend to be fiery. They have also become popular keepsakes, recorded and surreptitiously passed among Uighurs around the country.

Students are not the only ones interested in his talks. Not long ago he noticed a surveillance camera mounted in the ceiling of his classroom. Soon afterward, he realized that even when he changed rooms, the cameras followed him. “A coincidence perhaps,” he said with a grin.

Mr. Tohti could probably leave the country and become a Uighur exile, but he refuses to entertain the thought. Only by staying in China, he said, can he help Mr. Niyaz and other jailed Uighurs. He also feels an obligation to his students, many of whom are still unemployed years after graduation. “As a teacher, I feel like I have failed them,” he said.
Then his mood grew even darker.

“If things here don’t change as quickly as I’d like, sooner or later I will be doomed,” he said. “Perhaps I will be sent to hell, but I don’t care because in some ways I am already there.”

Source:http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/21/world/asia/21china.html?pagewanted=1&_r=3&ref=global-home