Sucker for "Blade Runner"...

A few years ago, I started building up a DVD library by buying films I'd liked when I saw them going cheap, but stopped at around a dozen DVDs when I realised I was never actually getting around to watching any of them. One big hole in this collection, however, was Blade Runner, and I took the opportunity a few months ago to fill it. What I got, though, for £5, was just the film, no extra features or anything.

And then, of course, Blade Runner: The Final Cut came out immediately afterward.

Which me, being me, I never got around to seeing in the cinema.

Now I see play.com is having an everything-for-£5 sale ending at midnight tonight—included in which is Blade Runner: The Final Cut (reduced from £16), with lots of extra features. I shouldn't buy it, as I already have the film on DVD... but I'm a sucker for Blade Runner, and I think it's unlikely I won't. (This sale also includes Fight Club, reduced from £18, and I suspect I'm going to plump for that too...)

Has everyone forgotten about East Turkestan?

During the last few weeks, the spotlight of the world's media has been on the suppression of the Tibetan struggle for autonomy by the People's Republic of China. Whist this is a worthy cause, I would like to draw attention to another issue that seems to have been forgotten altogether: that of East Turkestan, or Uyghurstan as it's also known, in the northwest of China. Like Tibet, this area was not part of traditional China, but has at times been under a Chinese protectorate, and like Tibet, the Chinese eventually invaded and annexed it. Also like Tibet, it suffers from a problem of Han Chinese imperialism. Indeed, you probably won't see the names East Turkestan or Uyghurstan on your atlas today; what you'll see is Xinjiang (新疆), Chinese for "New Territory"—how nakedly imperialist is that?

Wikipedia says:

The Manchus invaded East Turkistan in 1759 and dominated it until 1864. During this period the Uyghurs revolted 42 times against Manchu rule with the purpose of regaining their independence.

Following this, they threw off Chinese rule until the PRC invaded—possibly peacefully at the time—and annexed the region again in 1949.

The Uyghur struggle for self-determination goes on to this day; Wikipedia records:

A police roundup of suspected separatists during Ramadan resulted in large demonstrations that turned violent in February 1997 in an episode known as the Ghulja / Yining Incident that led to at least 9 deaths. The Urumqi bus bombs of February 25, 1997, perhaps a response to the crackdown that followed the Ghulja Incident, killed 9 and injured 68.

(Though it goes on to add: "Despite much talk of separatism and terrorism in Xinjiang, especially after the 9-11 attacks in the United States and the US invasion of Afghanistan, the situation in Xinjiang was quiet from the late nineties through mid-2006.")

Wikipedia also records:

The percentage of ethnic Han Chinese in Xinjiang has grown from 6 percent in 1949[13] to an official tally of over 40 percent at present. This figure does not include military personnel or their families, or the many unregistered migrant workers. Much of this transformation can be attributed to the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC), a semi-military organization of settlers that has built farms, towns, and cities over scattered parts of Xinjiang. The demographic transformation is held by Uyghur independence advocates as a threat to Uyghurs and other non-Han ethnicities in maintaining their culture, similar to the case of Tibet.

At the Seder table I mentioned the Uyghur struggle for self-determination, and asked why it has been forgotten, when that in Tibet has been thrust into the limelight. And the response I got (from family members who had largely not heard of it at all) was: because there's no Uyghur equivalent of the Dalai Lama. Which is pretty damning but probably right.

So I thought I would post about the issue here and do my little bit to raise its profile.

Postscript: In case it's not absolutely obvious, I do not condone terrorism; nor am I in possession of sufficient knowledge of the situation and its background to be able to judge the pro-Uyghur and pro-PRC arguments knowledgeably. However, it does seem clear to me there is some form of injustice being perpetrated here, and one whose profile could do with raising.