On May 15, Uighur Online, the main online forum serving to bridge the huge communication gap between China's Muslim population, other minority ethnic groups, and Han Chinese, was shut down.

All that remains now of Uighur Online, courtesy of archive.org

As is the norm in China, no reason is given for website closures, just an order. All that can now be found at the site or its sister site Uighur Biz are instructions on how to donate to Chinese Red Cross, and this message:

所有各民族的朋友：

大家好！我们带着非常沉重的心情通知大家，由于众所周知的原因，维吾尔在线被关闭。
感谢大家一直以来对维吾尔在线的支持、关注和帮助，更感谢所有维吾尔在线管理团队成员，论坛版主、编辑和专栏作家、专家、学者的辛勤付出。维吾尔在线建站短短两年以来，在一个多民族的管理团队的努力下，日均PV值达到百万左右，注册用户数万人。在这里我们认识和结交了许多不同民族的朋友，彼此之间的了解也更加全面和深入，维吾尔在线打通了民间的民族交流渠道，我们坚信，民间对话交流是很有意义的。

网站投稿信箱：uighurtor@126.com uighuronline@gmail.com

站务联系QQ：237505591 技术支持QQ：80870896

维吾尔在线
2008-5-15

The well-known Uighur Biz blogger on Sina.com adds that the “Harmonization Department” which “cares for” these things was responsible for the closure; one reader there speculates on the reasons for Uighur Online's closure writes:

政府出于对言论的管制而关闭维吾尔在线是非常不明智的,因为不管维吾尔在线有多少杂音,可他们毕竟代表着的,是主张开放,主张对话,主张沟通,主张学习西方的维吾尔人(哈萨克人….),维吾尔在线的关闭将是一个重大的分水岭,主张沟通对话的渠道被关闭,意味着将有更多的人选择自我封闭,拒绝对话,或者选择地下活动,内地人失去了一个直接了解维吾尔大众思想的窗口,将不得不通过那些在象牙塔里学者的研究报告了解民情.

From Baidu to Bullog to small local BBS forums, the response has been strong, but it too is being silenced. On May 19 this post already had six pages of comments; on May 20 it is somehow now down to just four pages.

What surprises many Uighur Online users is that the website was even properly licensed, the excuse most often used by authorities to shut blogs and BBS websites down. Indeed, the ‘Crowd of Spectators Out of Control’ blogger, who writes about Xinjiang culture, mentions in a post late last month a conversation s/he had with the Uighur Online webmasters, retelling the absurdities the staff there went through recently in trying to report one UO user for inflaming racial hatred within the forums, and being kicked around like a football from police department to police department in Beijing and then back to the local internet supervision office, with none of them willing to address the situation.

Not to be mistaken as a sign of authorities’ unwillingness to punish people for alleged hate speech. Uighur Online's attraction was in that it tolerated occasionally offensive and hateful opinions as valid parts of discussion; its closure, aside from being illegal, now only demonstrates the short-sightedness of those responsible. As with any influential blog or BBS forum in China, Uighur Online's administrators were already in theory forced to censor any language which might alarm authorities. Now, all talks are off.

Well-known novelist Yao Xinyong, who writes on ethnic themes, in an essay published last fall, reprinted now on Gsoms Dong‘s Sohu blog, describes Uighur Online as such:

在这个论坛参与发帖讨论的人，有来自全国各地的维吾尔族、汉族、藏族、哈萨克、回族、朝鲜族等等；所涉及的论题涵盖面相当广，文化、政治、习俗、经济、文学等一应俱全；其视野所向，既立足于新疆本土，又放眼中国乃至世界。文章或发言，大都坦诚、直率、甚至激烈，但又相当理性，大都具有增进了解，促进不同族群之间团结的用心，网站的氛围非常好。这与网站主持者所秉持的观点有直接的关系――“我们可以斥责政府的过失，批判国家的弊端，揭露民族的弱点，但在发表的言语里请尊重自己的民族和祖国，这是最起码的”。正是本着这样的方针，他们一方面充分尊重网络发言的自由性，另一方面，又不断地删除非理性、破坏民族团结的帖子，屏蔽一再发表这类言词者的帐户。