Five Fingers Crush The Land

Throughline

NPR

Society & Culture, History, Documentary

4.7 • 15K Ratings

🗓️ 13 May 2021

⏱️ 58 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Over one million Uyghur people have been detained in camps in China, according to estimates, subjected to torture, forced labor, religious restrictions, and even forced sterilization. The vast majority of this minority ethnic group is Muslim, living for centuries at a crossroads of culture and empire along what was once the Silk Road. This week, we explore who the Uyghur people are, their land, their customs, their music and why they've become the target of what many are calling a genocide.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is a song called Four Fathers by a musician named Habdur Rahim Hayat.
0:17.4	The song is based on a poem calling the Weager Youth to respect the sacrifices of their
0:22.9	ancestors.
0:24.7	In 2017, Habdur Rahim was arrested after performing this song, which includes lyrics
0:31.0	about martyrs of war.
0:33.4	In a video released by Chinese state media, Habdur Rahim said he was being investigated
0:38.6	for quote, violating national laws by singing this song.
0:44.4	Habdur Rahim is one of around 12 million people belonging to the ethnic group called Weagers.
0:51.0	The Weager people are a Turkic-speaking, mostly Muslim minority within the People's Republic
1:15.1	of China.
1:16.4	This is Sean Roberts.
1:18.1	He is a professor at George Washington University, an author of the book The War on the Weagers.
1:24.4	And they live in a region that they consider their homeland, that the Chinese state calls
1:28.8	the Xinjiang Weighore Autonomous Region.
1:33.1	The Xinjiang region is not only home to the Weagers, but also many other Muslim minorities.
1:39.6	Sean did field research there until 2000, when the government banned him from entering.
1:44.9	Sean even speaks Weager.
1:47.1	The one expression I'm thinking of is Besparmak Akshamayda, which means five fingers are not
1:54.3	the same.
1:56.0	And it's often used to acknowledge about any group that you can't characterize them all
2:03.2	in the same way, right?
2:04.7	And when we talked to Sean on Zoom, his icon was a photo of himself from 1990, wearing
	...

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