Ghulja incident
Despite, or perhaps in part due to, the extensive control measures called for by ‘ Document No 7,’ another major disturbance broke out in the region in February 1997 in the northern town of Ghulja near the Kazakhstan border. Although accounts of this event are contradictory, it appears to have begun with a protest by Uyghurs against limits on religious observation, and it spiraled out of control after security forces clashed with protestors, leading to multiple casualties.1 The PRC reaction was again very heavy-handed, and the town was put under curfew and its transport connections to the rest of the region cut off for two weeks.2
See Sean R. Roberts, ‘Locality, Islam, and National Culture in a Changing Borderlands: The Revival of the Mäshräp Ritual Among Young Uighur Men in the Ili Valley,’ Central Asian Survey, 17:4 (1998), pp. 673–700; J. Dautcher, Down a Narrow Road: Identity and Masculinity in a Uyghur Community in Xinjiang China (Boston, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2009). ↩︎
Millward, Eurasian Crossroads, p. 333. ↩︎