Ehmetjan Qasimi

Ehmetjan Qasimi (15 April 1914-27 August 1949) (Traditional Chinese: 阿合買提江•哈斯木, Simplified Chinese:阿合买提江•哈斯木, Uyghur:ئەخمەتجان قاسىمى) (also transliterated as Ehmetjan Qasimi, Exmetjan Qasimi, Ahmetjan Khasim, Ahmet Jan Kasimi or Ahmetcan Kasim) was a Uyghur political leader in Xinjiang province of the Republic of China.

Life and Political Career

Ehmetjan was born in Ghulja (Yining) in 1914. He studied at the Communist University of the Toilers of the East, Moscow in 1936 and was a member of Communist Party of Soviet Union.

He was a member of the governing council of the Second East Turkestan Republic, a Soviet-backed administration founded in three northwestern districts of Xinjiang during the Ili Rebellion in November 1944. Qasimi himself was not involved with the planning of the rebellion. The Second ETR was initially led by Elihan Tore, who favored forming a conservative Islamic government. Tore disappeared in the Soviet Union in 1946. Qasimi was a leader of the pro-Soviet Sinkiang Turkic People's National Liberation Committee (STPNLC).

In June 1946, Qasimi reached a political agreement with the Nationalist Chinese leader Zhang Zhizhong to form a coalition provincial government in Dihua (present day Urumqi) . The Second ETR was disbanded in name but the three districts retained autonomy. As a vice-chairman of the coalition government, Qasimi called for unity and support for the government. He explained that the people of Ili had risen in rebellion only to secure their rights under the Chinese constitution. He was a member of Xinjiang's delegation to the National Assembly in Nanjing.

In the summer of 1949, as Chinese Nationalists were losing the civil war to the Chinese Communists, the Soviet Union planned for ETR leaders to switch sides. On August 22, 1949, Vasiliy Borisov, the Soviet Vice-Consul at Ghulja, accompanied ETR leadership in auto trip to USSR for urgent talks with Soviet officials about future of ETR, where they were told to cooperate with Communist Party of China. They were invited by Chinese Communist leader, Mao Zedong to attend the First Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference in Beijing to prepare for the founding of the People's Republic of China. On August 24, 1949 Ehmetjan, Abdulkerim Abbas, Ishaq Beg Munonov, Dalelkhan Sugirbayev, Rakhimjan Sabirhajiev, Luo Zhi and other top ETR representatives (11 men in all) boarded a plane in Almaty, the capital of the Kazakh SSR, for Beijing. On September 3, the Soviet Union informed Saifuddin Azizi, another leader of the ETR, who was not on the flight that the plane had crashed near Lake Baikal on route to Beijing, killing all on board.

Saifuddin and two other ETR leaders then traveled to Beijing by train where they agreed to incorporate the Three Districts into the newly-founded People's Republic of China and accept important positions within the administration. News of plane crash and death of Ehmetjan was not publicly announced in Xinjiang until early December, after the People's Liberation Army had secured the region.

Legacy

In the People's Republic of China, Ehmetjan is remembered as a martyr and hero in the struggle against the Nationalist regime. His remains were returned to China in April 1950 and later reburied in a martyr’s memorial cemetery in Yining. The cemetery has a stele with calligraphy by Mao Zedong, praising Ehmetjan and his fellow martyrs for their contributions to the Chinese people’s revolution and mourning their death enroute to the Inaugural Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference in Beijing.

Bibiliography

• Abdurakhman Abay, Ahmetjan Qasimi Haqqida Hikayilar, Urumqi: Xinjiang Peoples Publishing (1984)
• Linda Benson: The Ili Rebellion: the Moslem challenge to Chinese authority in Xinjiang, 1944-1949. M.E. Sharpe, 1990, ISBN 0-87332-509-5 (google.com). 
• Zordun Sabir, Anayurt, Almaty: Nash Mir (2006)

External links

• Flags of Independence
• The Soviets in Xinjiang (1911-1949) by Mark Dickens
• Article from Meshrep Calendar