The Kumul Rebellion (Chinese: 哈密暴動; pinyin: Hāmì bàodòng; lit. 'Hami Uprising') was a rebellion from 1931 to 1934 of Kumulik Uyghurs who conspired with Hui Chinese Muslim General Ma Zhongying to overthrow Jin Shuren, the governor of Xinjiang Province. The Kumulik Uyghurs were loyal to the Kumul Khanate and wanted to restore the heir to the khanate and overthrow Jin. The Kuomintang wanted Jin removed because of his unapproved negotiations with the Soviet Union, so Chinese Premier Chiang Kai-shek secretly approved of the operation while ostensibly acknowledging Jin as governor. The rebellion eventually catapulted into large-scale fighting as Khotanlik Uyghur rebels in Southern Xinjiang started a separate rebellion for independence in collusion with Kyrgyz rebels. The various groups of rebels were not united and some even fought each other.
Background
Governor Jin Shuren (Chin Shu-jen) came to power shortly after the assassination of Xinjiang (Sinkiang) Governor Yang Zengxin (Yang Tseng-sin) in 1928. Jin was notoriously intolerant of the local Turkic peoples (i.e. the Uyghurs and Kyrgyz) and openly antagonised them. Such acts of discrimination included restrictions on travel, increased taxation, seizure of property without due process, and frequent executions for suspected espionage or disloyalty. Jin also had Hui Chinese Muslims (formerly Tungans) in his provincial army such as Ma Shaowu.
In 1930 Jin annexed the Kumul Khanate, a small semi-autonomous state lying within the borders of Xinjiang. The Kumul khans were Chagataids, and hence the last ruling descendants of Genghis Khan. According to British missionaries Mildred Cable and Francesca French, who knew the last khan Maqsud Shah, the existence of the Khanate of Kumul was important to the Uyghurs, who tolerated Chinese rule so long as their own government was established at Kumul under the proud title of "King of the Gobi". Jin, pressed for funding and swamped with Han Chinese refugees fleeing warlordism elsewhere in China, decided to annex the khanate to seize its revenues and use its lands to take in refugees. The newly subjected Kumuliks' land was expropriated by the provincial government and given to Han settlers. As a result, rebellion broke out on 20 February 1931, and many Han were massacred by the local population. The uprising threatened to spread throughout the entire province. Yulbars Khan, an advisor at the Kumul court, appealed for help to Ma Zhongying, a Hui warlord in Gansu (Kansu), to overthrow Jin and restore the khanate. Some scholars alternately describe a Han officer forcing a Uyghur woman to marry him as the event that triggered the rebellion.
Ma's troops marched to Kumul and laid siege to government forces there. Although he was victorious elsewhere in the area, Ma was unable to capture the city. After being wounded that October in a battle in which Jin's forces included 250 White Russian troops whom he had recruited from the Ili valley (where they had settled after the Bolshevik victory in the Russian Civil War), Ma withdrew his forces to Gansu (where he was nursed by Mildred Cable and the sisters Francesca and Eva French, whom he kept captive until he had recovered). This would temporarily leave the Turkic rebels to fight Jin alone.
The Kumulik Uyghur commanders Yulbars and Khoja Niyaz had also been receiving aid from the Mongolian People's Republic (Outer Mongolia), which itself had received assistance from the Soviet Union.
Ma meanwhile had a secret agreement with the Kuomintang, the party which governed China's central government: if he won Xinjiang, he would be recognised by the Kuomintang as the legitimate ruler of the province. Ma was officially appointed commanding officer of the New 36th Division of the National Revolutionary Army by the Kuomintang government in Nanjing. Asked to intervene against Jin on behalf of the Turkic population, Ma readily agreed.
Soviet aid to Jin Shuren
Jin bought two biplanes from the Soviet Union in September 1931 at 40,000 Mexican silver dollars each. They were equipped with machine guns and bombs and flown by Russian pilots. He signed a secret treaty with the Soviet Union in October 1931 that quickly led to suppression of the Kumul Rebellion and the deblockading of Kumul by provincial troops on 30 November 1931. Jin received large gold credits from the Soviet government for acquiring arms and weapons from the Soviet army and opening Soviet trade agencies in eight provincial towns: Ghulja, Chuguchak, Altai, Ürümqi, Karashahr, Kucha, Aksu, Kashgar, Yarkand, and Khotan. The Kuomintang wanted Jin removed since he had signed the treaty with the Soviets without central government approval.
Separate uprising in Southern Xinjiang
A separate Uyghur uprising emerged in Khotan, located in Southern Xinjiang. It has been suggested that the United Kingdom may have supported this rebellion as a means to counter Soviet influence. Unlike the Kumulik Uyghurs, whose primary goal was the restoration of the Kumul Khanate and the removal of Jin Shuren, the Khotanlik Uyghurs sought complete independence and harboured strong opposition toward both the Han and Hui populations. They were led by Muhammad Amin Bughra and his brothers Abdullah Bughra and Nur Ahmadjan Bughra. Their leader, Sabit Damulla Abdulbaki, called for the expulsion of the Hui (Tungans) in a proclamation:
The Tungans, more than Han, are the enemy of our people. Today our people are already free from the oppression of the Han, but still continue live under Tungan subjugation. We must still fear the Han, but cannot not fear the Tungans also. The reason, we must be careful to guard against the Tungans, we must intensively oppose them, cannot afford to be polite, since the Tungans have compelled us to follow this way. Yellow Han people have not the slightest thing to do with Eastern Turkestan. Black Tungans also do not have this connection. Eastern Turkestan belongs to the people of Eastern Turkestan. There is no need for foreigners to come be our fathers and mothers...From now on we do not need to use foreigner's language or their names, their customs, habits, attitudes, written languages, etc. We must also overthrow and drive foreigners from our boundaries forever. The colours yellow and black are foul...They have dirtied our Land for too long. So now it's absolutely necessary to clean out this filth. Take down the yellow and black barbarians! Live long Eastern Turkestan!
The Khotanlik Uyghurs and Kyrgyz formed an independent regime, the Turkic Islamic Republic of East Turkestan (TIRET), also known as the First East Turkestan Republic. On 20 February 1933, the Committee for National Revolution set up a provisional government in Khotan with Sabit as prime minister and Muhammad as head of the armed forces. It favoured the establishment of an Islamic theocracy. Foreign volunteers who arrived to help the rebels included Tevfik Pasha, a pan-Islamist and former minister of the Saudi king Ibn Saud. Tevfik formed cooperative ties with the Japanese ambassador to Afghanistan Kitada Masamoto, who was also closely monitoring the rebellion.
The rebellion in Khotan became entangled with the one in Kumul, when a Hui and Uyghur army under Ma Zhancang (Hui) and Timur Beg (Uyghur) marched on Kashgar against the Hui warlord Ma Shaowu and his garrison of Han troops. Ma Shaowu began to panic and started raising Kyrgyz levies under Osman Ali to defend the city. The Kyrgyz were not amused at how their rebellion was crushed the previous year by Ma Shaowu, but now he wanted them to defend the city; they defected en masse to the enemy. However, Ma Zhancang also entered into secret negotiations with Ma Shaowu; he and his troops soon defected to the Han garrison in the city.
During the Battle of Kashgar (1933) the city changed hands multiple times as the confused factions battled each other. The Kyrgyz began to murder any Han and Hui they could get their hands on, and fighting broke out in the streets. Timur Beg became sympathetic to the pro-independence rebels of Sabit and Muhammad, while Ma Zhancang proclaimed his allegiance to the Kuomintang government and notified everyone that all former Chinese officials would keep their posts. Ma Zhancang consequently arranged for Timur Beg to be killed and beheaded on 9 August 1933, displaying his head outside of Id Kah Mosque.
Afghan King Mohammad Zahir Shah provided weapons and support to the TIRET. The Soviets and their warlord Sheng Shicai, who had become the military governor of Xinjiang, accused Ma Zhongying, who was ardently anti-Soviet, of being used by the Japanese to set up a puppet regime in Xinjiang, as they had done in Manchuria with Manchukuo. Sheng claimed that he captured two Japanese officers on Ma's staff. However, not a single claim of Sheng's could be proven, and he did not provide any evidence for his allegations that Ma was colluding with the Japanese. Ma Zhongying publicly declared his allegiance to the Kuomintang at Nanjing. Ma himself was given permission by the Kuomintang to invade Xinjiang.
Christians and Hindus
The explicitly Islamic TIRET was openly hostile towards Christianity and espoused a pan-Islamist, pan-Turkic ideology. The Bughras implemented Sharia (Islamic law) on 16 March 1933 and ejected the Khotan-based Swedish missionaries. In the name of Islam, Uyghur emir Abdullah Bughra violently assaulted the Yarkand-based Swedish missionaries and sought to execute them. However, they were spared and instead banished due to the British who interceded in their favour. The TIRET, having banished the Swedish missionaries, tortured and jailed Christian converts, mainly Uyghurs and Kyrgyz. Many converts were executed, such as Uyghur Habil, who was executed in 1933 after refusing to give up his Christian religion. Others were beheaded by the emir's followers. The TIRET also subjected converts such as Joseph Johannes Khan to imprisonment, torture, and abuse after he refused to give up Christianity in favour of Islam. After the British interceded to free Joseph, he was instead banished from his homeland and arrived in Peshawar (in present-day Pakistan) in November 1933.
The Swedish Mission Society had previously run a printing operation. The Bughra-led government repurposed the Swedish Mission Press to print and distribute media from Life of East Turkestan, the state-run media of the rebels.
The forced removal of the Swedes was accompanied by the slaughter of Hindus in Khotan by the Turkic Muslim rebels. The emirs of Khotan killed the Hindus amid the expulsion of the Swedes and declaration of Sharia. Hostility towards Hindus predated the establishment of the TIRET. Han, Hindu, Armenian, Jewish, and Russian men married Uyghur women who could not find husbands. Uyghur merchants would harass Hindu money lenders by shouting at them when they ate beef or by hanging cow skins on their quarters. Hindu money lenders engaging in a religious procession were also attacked by Uyghur. In 1896 two Uyghurs attacked a Hindu merchant and the British consul in Kashgar George Macartney demanded the Uyghurs be punished by flogging.
Antagonism against the Hindus ran high among the Uyghur rebels in Southern Xinjiang. Uyghurs plundered the possessions in Karghalik of Rai Sahib Dip Chand, who was the aksakal of Britain, and his fellow Hindus on 24 March 1933, and in Keryia they slaughtered Hindus. These Hindu diaspora communities originated from Sindh's Shikarpur district. The slaughter of the Hindus became known as the "Karghalik Outrage", in which Uyghurs killed nine of them. The killing of two Hindus at the hands of Uyghurs took place in the Shamba Bazaar. The Uyghurs plundered the valuables of slaughtered Hindus in Posgam on 25 March as on the previous day in Karghalik. Killings of Hindus also took place in Khotan at the hands of the Bughra emirs.
Japanese attempt to set up a puppet state
The Japanese invited an Ottoman prince, Abdulkerim, and several anti-Atatürk Young Turk exiles from Turkey to assist them in setting up a puppet state in Xinjiang with the Ottoman prince as sultan. Mustafa Ali was the Turkish advisor to the Uyghurs in the TIRET. Muhsin Çapanoğlu was also an advisor, and they both had pan-Turanist views. Mahmud Nedim Bey, another of their colleagues, was also an advisor to the Uyghur separatists.
The Turkish government under Mustafa Kemal Atatürk reacted angrily at this plot and the Turkish embassy in Japan denounced the Japanese plan to create a puppet state, labelling it a "Muslim Manchukuo". Soviet news agency TASS claimed Sabit invited "Turkish emigrants in India and Japan, with their anti-Kemalist organizations, to organize his military forces."
Ma Zhongying returns
Ma Zhongying returned to Xinjiang in 1933 to continue the war. Ma Zhongying had an ambition to create an empire covering the whole of Soviet and Chinese Central Asia.