MUSLIM HATE FOR CHINA

China releases terror blacklist in Olympic plot

By CHRISTOPHER BODEEN – Oct 21, 2008

BEIJING (AP) — Chinese police called for the extradition Tuesday of eight alleged separatists accused of plotting a campaign of terror to coincide with the Beijing Olympics — a scheme that reportedly included bomb attacks within China and in unspecified countries in the Middle East and South Asia.

A Public Security Ministry spokesman said the eight men, all Chinese citizens, were believed to have financed, incited and organized attacks during and around the Aug. 8-24 games as part of an ongoing insurgency against Chinese rule in the traditionally Muslim west.

Wu told reporters at a news briefing that the men were members of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, a murky collection of extremists believed to be based across the border in lawless areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan

The eight "seriously threatened the security of the Beijing Olympic Games and China's social stability, while at the same time composing a threat to the security and stability of relevant countries and the region," Wu said.

Wu did not say where the men were suspected of hiding and left the briefing without taking questions.

He said one of the men planned to bomb a supermarket popular with Chinese business people in an unspecified Middle Eastern country ahead of the opening of the Olympic Games. Another suspect had prepared to attack a Chinese club in a South Asian nation, he said, without giving details.

The men also organized numerous attacks within China but it was not clear from Wu's statement if any of them were carried out.

After years of relative quiet, the western region of Xinjiang was rocked in August by a series of guerrilla-style attacks and bombings that killed 33 people.

Wu did not say if the eight men were thought to be behind those attacks.

The violence was reportedly carried out by radicals among Xinjiang's native Uighur ethnic group, Muslims whose language, culture and religion is distinct from China's Han majority. Like Tibetans, many Uighurs complain of a colonial-style Chinese presence on their territory, chafing under tight religious and cultural strictures and complaining that economic development has disproportionately benefited Chinese migrants.

China says it has stopped a number of other terrorist plots before they could be carried out, including an alleged attempt by a 19-year-old woman to blow up a Beijing-bound plane with liquid explosives in March of this year. But it has provided little direct evidence to support authorities' claims that they were ordered by Islamic Movement leaders based across the border.

Overseas Uighur activists say such accusations are politically motivated and designed to justify strict curbs on religious, political and cultural rights in Xinjiang.

Dilxat Raxit, spokesman for the Germany-based World Uighur Congress, said Tuesday's announcement was part of an attempt to provide legal cover for a wide-ranging crackdown on Uighurs that followed the Olympics.

China's refusal to publicly release evidence or allow an independent investigation into the recent attacks undercuts its accusations of terrorism, he said.

"I have never heard of these people and none of these accusations have been independently confirmed, but I'm sure they will use them to ratchet up pressure further in Xinjiang," Raxit said in a telephone interview.

A news release issued at Wu's press conference offered basic biographical information about the men and vague claims about their alleged terrorist activities. Photographs of seven of the eight men were also included.

It identified one man, 37-year-old Memetiming Memeti, as the leader of the movement, saying he had joined the group in an unidentified South Asian country after leaving home in 1998 and assumed the leadership after its former chief was killed in a skirmish with security forces in Pakistan in 2003.

The statement said that under Memeti's guidance an unspecified number of terrorists sneaked into Xinjiang and other Chinese areas with plans to "sabotage the Olympic Games by conducting terrorist attacks within the Chinese territory before the Games opened."

He also allegedly "sent dozens of terrorist teams to some Middle East and west Asian countries to raise funds and buy explosive materials for terrorist attacks against Chinese targets outside Chinese territory."

Others accused include 33-year-old university graduate Tuersun Toheti, an alleged bomb maker blamed for planning attacks on Chinese targets outside the country.

The release did not link the men to specific incidents, although one of them bore the alias "Saifula" that was also used by a man shown issuing threats against the Olympics on a videotaped messaged released in July. In the video, a masked man speaking Uighur claimed responsibility for a bus bombing in the Chinese city of Kunming and warned spectators and athletes, "particularly the Muslims," not to attend the Olympics.

Li Wei, a counterterrorism expert at a Chinese government-backed think tank, said Tuesday's announcement was a sign of China's sustained commitment to defeating the extremists following the end of the Olympics.

"China's major investment in Olympic security has helped them apprehend evidence of potential terrorist activity," said Li, who speculated that the eight named men were hiding in neighboring Central Asian states.

"However, counterterrorism is also a long-term task which the government should devote their resources to continuously," Li said.

China marks Muslim area's 50th year Saturday 01 October 2005

China has marked the 50th anniversary of the establishment of Xinjiang as an autonomous region, as activists say anti-Chinese sentiment is rising in the Muslim-majority frontier region.

Muslim Uighur separatists, who Beijing says are terrorists trying to split China, have been struggling for decades for self-determination in the remote northwestern region formally established on 1 October 1955.

China says its system of ''autonomous regions'' for ethnic minorities allows them a degree of self-governance, but activists say it is a means for Beijing to maintain tight control.

"Ever since the establishment of the autonomous region 50 years ago, Uighur government workers have never had the right to make decisions. They are all made by the Han Chinese," said Dilxat Raxit, of the World Uighur Congress, a Germany-based group seeking more freedoms for the region they call East Turkestan.

A delegation of Chinese leaders, led by security chief Luo Gan, was on hand in the Xinjiang capital, Urumuqi, for anniversary celebrations that started on Saturday with a flag-raising and cannon shots.

"The unprecedented achievements Xinjiang has made in the past 50 years have proven that only by upholding the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party and taking the socialist path can there be ... happiness for Xinjiang people from all ethnic groups," Luo said at the ceremony broadcast live on state television.

Warnings of violence

Despite the gala song and dance shows aimed at showcasing ethnic unity, Luo repeated warnings of potential violence.

"We have to further ... oppose and crack down on forces of ethnic separatism, religious extremism and violent terrorism and safeguard social stability and national security," he said.

This past week, Luo told police to "prepare for danger" in Xinjiang, accusing dissidents of plotting to sabotage the celebrations.

The United States warned American travellers ahead of the anniversary to be vigilant against "terrorist" attacks there.

The Public Security Ministry last month labelled East Turkestan forces as the main "terrorist" threat to China, and said more than 260 "terrorist" acts had been committed in Xinjiang in the past two decades, killing 160 and wounding 440.

But a report this year by Human Rights Watch said China was using its support for the US "war on terror" to justify a wider crackdown on Uighurs that was characterised by arbitrary arrests, closed trials and the use of the death penalty.

The World Uighur Congress said 1 October should be marked as a day of mourning in the region, and added that while the group did not support violence, frustration with Chinese rule was growing.

"The Uighur people in East Turkestan are in a very hopeless, desperate and frustrated situation. Continued hopelessness could lead to violence," the group said in a statement.

Reuters

Muslim voices rising in China

By Jehangir S. Pocha, Boston Globe Correspondent

November 19, 2006

HETIAN, China -- On a recent Friday, the holy day of Islam, crowds swelled inside the antique Jame mosque, the largest in this ancient town in Xinjiang Province in the far west of China, home to the nation's small but restive Muslim minority.

The turbaned and bearded clerics who preached to the gathered faithful had all been vetted for their political beliefs by local Chinese authorities, who determine what sermons they can give, what version of the Koran they may use, and where and how religious gatherings can be held.

The Chinese government forces all Muslims in China to adhere to a state-controlled version of their religion, and banners placed around town warn locals not to stray from the official faith. The imams are not even allowed to issue the call to prayer using a public address system.

The Chinese government has tightened its constraints on the Uighur ethnic minority in western China amid official fears of a rise in militant Islam. The Chinese are acutely aware of the growing strategic importance of Xinjiang in Central Asia and the large oil and natural gas reserves under its soil.

In turn, resentment among the Uighurs toward perceived repression by the Chinese has intensified. And increasingly, the Uighurs are speaking out and demanding autonomy, thanks in part to the emergence of articulate Uighur voices at home and in exile.

Though Xinjiang is ostensibly an autonomous province, Wang Lequan, the local Communist Party secretary, who is Chinese, has publicly called for Uighurs (pronounced Wee'-gurs) to learn more Mandarin and adopt more Chinese customs.

To dissuade Uighur youths from inheriting their traditional Islamic culture, the government has banned children from entering mosques, studying Islam, or celebrating Islamic holidays.

During the month of Ramadan, when devout Muslims fast through the day, schools take special care to ensure that all their students eat, a local school principal said.

The fear and state control under which Uighurs live in Xinjiang was apparent when some foreign journalists, who are generally not allowed into the province, were taken on a tour by Chinese officials last month. The journalists were carefully monitored, but when they did manage to go out alone, most Uighurs were too scared to talk about the antipathy they bear toward China.

A man who identified himself only as Abdel rubbed his clean-shaven chin anxiously as the four Uighur Muslim friends finished their dinner of goat soup and noodles.

"The government doesn't allow young people here to grow beards," he said as the sun set. "If you do, they will send you to the forced labor camps. This is a communist country and it is scared of Muslims. Our Uighur ethnic group is suppressed the most."

Abdel asked not to be fully identified out of fear of reprisal from local authorities. But his is just one of the angry whispers filtering through the crumbling buildings and twisted alleys of Xinjiang's Uighur cities and villages.

Resentment against Beijing has been building here since 1949, when Mao Zedong annexed the independent nation of East Turkestan and began to assimilate it into mainland China. To do this Beijing imposed strictures on Islam and sought to dilute the culture of the local Uighurs, a Central Asian people with a Turkic-Persian culture.

Abdel fidgeted uncomfortably throughout the few minutes he talked to the journalists, saying the biggest problem Uighurs face is that of social and economic exclusion.

"The truth is, where you see money there will be Han, where there is poverty you will see us Uighurs," Abdel said. Han is an ethnic group that makes up the majority of China .

Some Chinese officials say they are baffled by the criticism China receives for its policy on Xinjiang, where the nation's relatively small Muslim population of about 8 million is concentrated.

"On the one hand the world complains that Pakistan doesn't do enough to control its madrassas, and on the other they complain when China does not allow them," said one official, referring to Muslim religious schools. The official asked not to be identified as he was not authorized to speak to the press. "We believe Islam can be an unbalancing force so we need to control it."

Though Uighurs have traditionally followed a moderate blend of Sunni Islam and Sufi mysticism strongly influenced by local folklore and rural traditions, a rising Islamic mood is palpable in Xinjiang. More and more women are wearing veils, residents say, and mosques are packed on Fridays.

Mostly this is due to a rising interest in religion that is common across much of China, where people are reacting to the intense atheism of the Maoist years. But in Xinjiang, rising Islamic sentiment has also taken on a political hue, with many separatists demanding the re-creation of an independent East Turkestan on religious grounds. Some of these separatists have conducted armed attacks against Chinese targets, and Chinese officials say they are also behind most of the public protests that have rocked Xinjiang in recent years.

After the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, Chinese authorities have used the global war on terrorism to crack down on suspected separatists. Plainclothes policemen routinely roam the rustic mosques and bustling markets of Uighur towns. Human rights groups and local residents say anyone thought to be acting suspiciously is hustled away and often punished without a fair trial.

Though Chinese actions in Xinjiang have been very similar to its actions in neighboring Tibet, whose Buddhist culture has been systematically undermined by Beijing, the situation in this remote western province has received much less global attention.

That is changing, thanks to the emergence of a new generation of articulate Uighur leaders and to growing support for Uighur separatists from Islamists in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and other Central Asian countries -- part of the global upsurge in pan-Islamism.

Rebiya Kadeer, a Uighur exile living in Washington, D.C., who reportedly had been considered a leading candidate for this year's Nobel Peace Prize for her human rights work in Xinjiang, says the world is taking notice of the Uighurs' suffering from what they see as Chinese colonization.

"The Chinese have denied us basic rights and freedoms -- that's why we now want them out of our land," Kadeer said in a telephone interview. "A lot of doors are being opened to me [in Washington] so I am able to raise the issue of the Uighur people at very high levels."

In the streets of Hetian, it is easy to see how different Xinjiang is from most of the rest of China. The skyline is crowded not with traditional Chinese sloping roofs but with Islamic domes and spires. Most of the older buildings have elegant Turko-Persian style balconies decorated with floral filigree work, and men wearing doppas -- small four- or five-cornered brimless embroidered hats -- sit on benches in the street smoking water pipes and eating grilled skewers of meat.

But Chinese officials insist Xinjiang was historically part of China until the Soviet Union briefly helped separatists create East Turkestan in the 1930s.

Part of the reason China is tightening its grip on Xinjiang is its growing strategic importance. The province has been found to be rich in oil. It also borders Mongolia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India, and has become an essential launching pad for China's geopolitical interests in these areas, where the United States is also jockeying for influence.

Beijing is also worried that the disintegration of the Soviet Union and emergence of the independent "Stans" could motivate Uighurs to re-create East Turkestan.

Faced with the might of the Chinese state, many Uighurs fear their unique Persian-Turkic culture, which also includes its own language, will soon fade into history.

Ahmet, a 16-year-old student in Kashgar, a city near Xinjiang's southern border with Pakistan that is a hotbed of insurgent activity, said the solution his parents are holding out is simple.

"They tell me to marry a Han girl," he said. "That way we can get some chances. Otherwise, as Uighurs, life is very hard." 

In China's Far West, Violence Is Just The Eruption of Long-Pent Tension

By JAMES T. AREDDY

The Wall Street Journal
August 8, 2008; Page A9

KASHGAR, China -- When Dang Dongming completed a military tour in this remote corner of western China, he did an increasingly common thing. He stayed.

The 26-year-old son of a farmer from China's Gansu province refers affectionately to Kashgar as "an oasis in the desert," a good spot to practice his hobby of photography and to build a car tour business. He even learned to speak the Turkic language of local Muslim Uighurs.

But Mr. Dang doesn't feel welcome. As a member of China's dominant Han ethnic group, Mr. Dang says, "I'm a minority here."

Historically an important way station between east and west on the Silk Road, Kashgar today is a flash point of ethnic tension in China. Sometimes the unrest is punctuated by violence, as in a deadly attack on 16 policemen this week.

More often, though, the anxieties are reflected in a daily disconnect over food, fashion, religion and language. There are the newcomers like Mr. Dang, hoping to make their fortune on the nation's frontier, and the area's 13 other ethnic groups, who feel they are being shoved aside in the gold rush. China's government has encouraged the westward push -- by bolstering infrastructure links to the richer east, for instance -- partly to bring the outlying regions in line with the nation's extraordinary economic boom. Tibet festers with similar tensions, apparent this March when Tibetans rampaged against Han business owners in Lhasa.

Local groups like the Uighurs complain of the Communist Party's heavy hand in their religious affairs and challenges to other aspects of traditional life, while officials in Beijing express frustration about what they perceive as ingratitude for the money they have invested in the region.

The two groups can't even agree on the time of day. Hans recognize the national time zone called "Beijing time," while the watches on Uighur wrists are set two hours earlier to reflect their city's location roughly 2,200 miles west of the Chinese capital.

Chinese authorities described Monday's attack here in Xinjiang province as the work of two men affiliated with a terrorist separatist movement. On Aug. 1, a Xinjiang separatist organization that calls itself the Turkistan Islamic Party released a video with a burning Olympics logo and an explosion superimposed on one of the venues for the Olympic Games starting today in Beijing, according to IntelCenter, a Virginia organization that monitors such releases. The government blamed people with similar ties for an attempt in March to blow up an airliner that had taken off from Urumqi, the capital city of the vast Xinjiang region that includes Kashgar.

"The attack won't have a big impact on Kashgar's development," says the city's top Communist Party official, Shi Dagang. "This is a very promising piece of land."

Yet the Uighurs and the fast-growing population of transplanted Hans occupy what looks like two Kashgars. Ethnic Hans are rarely seen near the city's traditional Uighur bazaar, where the walls are made of mud and blacksmiths pound iron into door hinges and pots. Instead, they shop at a modern market with escalators and a guard who checks handbags for weapons. Visible from the grounds of a 556-year-old mosque in the old city and rising from behind mud structures is a new Ferris wheel, and beyond that a 59-foot-tall statue of Mao Zedong. Feeding suspicions, few speak the other's language.

Uighurs say they are afraid to speak out. To explain why, an unemployed Uighur sitting in a restaurant demonstrates by grabbing his own neck and forcing it near the floor, then putting his hands behind his back as if he were being handcuffed. Another Uighur, a guard at a hospital entrance, describes an often intimidating police presence in the city, but cautions as a Han person approaches, "Don't tell her what I said."

Han people worry that they are surrounded by devout followers of a religion they don't understand well. Mr. Dang, for instance, claims he can identify Islamic fundamentalists by their long beards and draped jackets. "When they come close to me, I'm afraid," he says.

Mr. Dang says the language training the military gave him offers him some insight into the Turkic-speaking community around him. But he concedes that most of the conversations he overhears are about no more than "what happened yesterday or today." The worst thing he has heard a Uighur say involved applying to individual Han a derogatory term for the Chinese military that translates as "black jacket."

Mr. Dang agrees with a widespread view among Uighurs that Han people tend to have better jobs and more money, but he says it reflects hard work and education.

After his rural boyhood in mountainous Gansu, Mr. Dang joined the military at 17 and spent two years in Tibet before being sent to Xinjiang by the People's Armed Police, a paramilitary unit. After two years, Mr. Dang dropped out of the service but decided to stay in Kashgar. "I don't have much pressure here," he says. "It's an easy life."

But Mr. Dang acknowledges he has no Uighur friends and says none of his pals would dare date a local woman, partly for fear they would need to convert to Islam and give up eating pork.

Mr. Dang has a hard time convincing others that he has made the right decision to live in Kashgar, including his worried parents. The one time his girlfriend came to visit, she wasn't impressed.

Asked to explain what he enjoys most about Kashgar, Mr. Dang suggests he is having trouble convincing himself, too. "There is no best thing," he says.

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