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Who Are The
Terrorists That China Is Dealing With?
The Uighurs are a predominantly Muslim group in the
Northwestern province of Xinjiang. The Uyghur are a
Turkic people of Central Asia. Today Uyghurs live primarily in the
Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region also known by its controversial
name Uyghurstan or East Turkistan as separatists insist. The name
Xinjiang, which means "new territory" in Chinese, is considered
offensive by many advocates of Uyghur independence who prefer to
use historical or ethnic names such as Uyghurstan or East
Turkestan. Turkic peoples are Eurasian peoples residing in
northern, central and western Eurasia who speak languages
belonging to the Turkic language family. These peoples share, to
varying degrees, certain cultural traits and historical
backgrounds. The term Turkic represents a broad ethno-linguistic
group of people and includes existing societies such as the
Kazakhs, Uzbeks, Kyrgyz, Uyghur, Azerbaijani, Turkmen, and Turkish
people. Xinjiang has about 8.3 million Uighurs, and many are
unhappy with what they say has been decades of repressive
Communist Chinese rule
Many Uighurs feel they face religious
persecution and discrimination at the hands of the Chinese
authorities. Uighurs who choose to practice their faith can only
use a state-approved version of the Koran; men who work in the
state sector cannot wear beards and women cannot wear headscarves.
The Chinese state controls the management of all mosques, which
many Uyghurs claim stifles religious traditions that have formed a
crucial part of the Uyghur identity for centuries.[2] Children
under the age of 18 are not allowed to attend church or mosque.
Religious figures may not hold high-level state positions or be
school teachers. Uyghurs claim that a large number of individuals
have been arrested by the government as political dissidents and
that a large number have been executed.
Separatists groups within the Uighur
population are accused of being linked to al Qaeda and want to
create an Islamic State in the Xinjiang region of China.
East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM,
Turkish:Doğu Türkistan İslâm Hareketi) is a militant, Uyghur
organization that advocates the creation of an independent,
Islamic state of East Turkestan, formally part of Afghanistan in
what is currently the Xinjiang region of the People's Republic of
China. The founder and leader of the organization was Hasan Mahsum,
who was shot and killed by the Pakistani Army on October 2, 2003.
Following the attacks in the USA on September
11, 2001, the Chinese authorities have actively sought to
justify their crackdown in the region as part of the international
"war on terror" in an attempt to gain international support for
their actions. Since then, the Chinese authorities have widely
publicized the occurrence of a number of explosions and other
violent activities attributed to armed Uighur nationalist groups
during the 1980s and 1990s and used this as a pretext to justify
the government’s crackdown in the region as of late in terms of
"counter-terrorism. The build up to the Summer Beijing
Olympics has seen a flurry of news reports confirming China's
claims that terrorists are targeting the 2008 Summer Olympic
Games.
The
Chinese government blamed ETIM members for several car bomb
attacks in Xinjiang in the 1990s, as well as the death of a
Chinese diplomat in Kyrgyzstan in 2002, but the group has neither
admitted nor denied such accusations
In
January 2002, the Chinese government released a report in which it
showed proof that Hasan Mahsum met with Osama bin Laden in 1999
and received promises of money, and that bin Laden sent "scores of
terrorists" into China.
ETIM
has had, and may still have links with Al-Qaeda. In its 2005
report on terrorism, the US State Department said that the group
was "linked to al-Qaida and the international jihadist movement"
and that Al-Qaeda provided the group with "training and financial
assistance".
In 2007 Chinese officials said that 18 people
had been killed when police raided a Uighur terrorist training
camp with ties to Al Qaeda. The raid netted 1,500 grenades.
In
April 2008, Chinese authorities said that they had confiscated
explosives from Uighurs who were planning suicide bomb attacks.
Then
in May 2008, a crowded bus blew up in Shanghai, killing three
people and injuring many more. No one publicly claimed
responsibility, but it recalled the 1997 Uighur bus bombings.
The Chinese government recently announced
that several terrorist plots by Uyghur separatists to disrupt the
2008 Olympic Games involving kidnapping athletes, journalists and
tourists have been foiled. The security ministry said 35 arrests
had been made in recent weeks and explosives had been seized in
Xinjiang province. It said 10 others were held when police smashed
another plot based in Xinjiang back in January to disrupt the
Games. However, Uyghur activists have accused the Chinese of
fabricating terror plots to crack down on the people of the region
and prevent them airing legitimate grievances. Some foreign
observers are also skeptical, questioning if China is inflating a
terror threat to justify a clampdown on dissidents before the
Olympics.
Chinese authorities say they have broken up
numerous terrorist cells in Xinjiang and arrested over 80 suspects
so far this year. China's Public Security Bureau said they were
plotting to attack major cities during the Olympics and to abduct
foreign athletes and journalists. An extremist group calling
itself the "Turkistan Islamic Party" has claimed responsibility
for a series of bomb attacks in China.
Ronald Noble, the secretary general of
Interpol, cited these incidents - and also reports of a separatist
plot to disrupt the Olympic Games with poison gas - and told a
news conference that a terror attack at the Olympics was "a real
possibility."
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