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Xinjiang threatens to become another place where the jihad ideology becomes the dominant expression of local desires for autonomy, and ends up poisoning any prospects for a legitimate negotiated settlement. This has been going on in Chechnya and elsewhere for quite some time. "China Puts Focus on Security in Muslim Region," from the LA Times, with thanks to Kemaste:
BEIJING — China urged local security agencies Thursday to "prepare for danger" and remain vigilant against terrorists in the predominantly Muslim northwestern region of Xinjiang....Muslim Uighur militants in Xinjiang have fought for several decades to establish an independent nation that would be known as East Turkestan.
China, which has aggressively confronted the movement, said this month that 160 people had been killed in Xinjiang since the mid-1980s in 260 attacks blamed on terrorists....
About 60% of Xinjiang's population of 20 million is Muslim, who are considered an ethnic minority in predominantly Han China....
China released a leading Uighur figure, Rebiya Kadeer, from prison March 17 and exiled her to the U.S. following years of pressure by Washington. This occurred shortly before a visit by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. China has a history of releasing one or two high-profile activists before major international visits.
The overseas Uighur community is relatively fractured, but analysts say Kadeer is a particular object of Beijing's distrust because she has the stature to unify disparate groups under an international banner, in much the same way the Dalai Lama has done for Tibet.
"Her release appears to have introduced more cohesion to the community," said Ben Edwards, a researcher with the Uighur Human Rights Project in Washington, who said the mainstream movement is nonviolent.
"The Uighur people are Muslim, but there's no connection to the wider, broader [Islamic] jihad."...
In the post-Sept. 11 world, China has labeled many in the Uighur separatist movement as terrorists, part of a global trend by governments to deflect international criticism of internal crackdowns.
"There is no real definition of a terrorist in Chinese criminal law," said Anu Kultalahti, a London-based campaigner with Amnesty International. "We definitely know of people charged with crimes related to terrorism or employing evil forces who we consider prisoners of conscience."
Liu Wenzong, a member of the China Society for Human Rights Studies, said that although most people in Xinjiang were peaceful, a small minority had links to the Taliban in Afghanistan.
"We're talking about terrorists," he said.
Anu Kultalahti should know that there's no real definition of terrorist anywhere. It is long past time for the Americans, the Chinese, and everyone else to stop talking about fighting terrorism and start acknowledging that we are defending ourselves (sometimes not very effectively) against a global jihad.
Posted by Robert at September 30, 2005 4:25 PM
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This should be interesting - two totalitarian groups at odds.....do you think that China will worry about what Amnesty International or the UN will say if the Muslims are "suppressed/oppressed"?
maya
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at September 30, 2005 5:16 PM
The Uighurs have houses that are neat and clean, the Chinese living cheek-by-jowl, per contra, are very unclean and un-neat. And no doubt the Uighurs have a point. But in the larger scheme of things, which from here on out is all that matters, Infidels have to take the side of Infidels, because in the end, alas, local Muslims with any axe to grind will not be immune to the larger message that Al-Jazeera and a thousand other sources of Muslim propaganda, helpfully translated into local languages, is spreading all over the world.
By all means support an independent Tibet. Tibet deserves independence. But when it comes to Xinjiang, simply swallow any scruples, and be on the side of China, even ruthless Communist China, imposing the will of the people of Han on the people of Hui, or something like that.
It is an Us-Them situation. That is what those who wish us Infdiels ill are taught to believe, or most of them, and that is the way in turn, Infidels, out of self-preservation, must come to see things.
One should be able to support an indepedent Tibet and yet support the suppression of any move by Uighurs for greater independence in Xinjiang. They are different things, that only superficially appear to make the same appeal. One situation involves Islam; the other does not. And that makes, as Robert Frost would put it, all the difference.
Posted by: Hugh at September 30, 2005 5:36 PM
HELL Amnesty International didn't give a damn about the 300,000 found in mass graves in Iraq??
OR more than 180,000 killed by islamic terrorist in the Sudan NO Amnesty International can say nothing??
as for the UN=LON=AL China has a Veto??
It is Islamic Terrorism and their followers we fight!!
Remember James ujama went to this region and the organ 5??
Remember this would be a good place for the illness to start??
OH YEA this is where SARS started and the Bird Flue started there too??
Maybe this is why the Russians and the Chinese showed Pakistan what they would be up against if they make trouble??
What about the appesers of Europe??
Part of the American Tribe
Squirrel Hunter
Spider Killer
God Bless the Countries who have Heros pity NOT the Countries who need them Amen
at September 30, 2005 8:15 PM
Hugh:
The Muslim Turkic peoples of Sharki Turkistan and the Hui of China Proper, Taiwan, and the Golden Triangle taught me long ago that there are Muslims and Muslims, that the international Ummah sounds nice from the minbar on Friday, but it is no reality on Saturday. The pro-American attitude of a lot of Muslims in Chinese territory, whether Sinophone or Turkophone was quite evident in the 1990's; and even now, Muslim Turkic dissidents from Sharki Turkistan will stand up for their Tibetan neighbors and Christians in central and eastern China. Maybe it's just a start, but it shows a somewhat different political ballgame.
I also would love to see OBL ending his days in an orange jumpsuit and a needle in his arm on an American prison gurney. Yet I have seen as well a short-sighted, ignorant, and arrogant political, academic, and media leadership in America (long before Bush II) push us by the backside into a global struggle with Islamic "fundamentalism" which, from a purely human standpoint, simply didn't have to be.
When the Communist Party of China takes a long, hard, sympathetic look at the US and Canada as a possible solution for the Taiwan problem and takes its hands off the unofficial CHristian churches and responsible Muslim dissidents (especially Hui, whose "patria" is China anyway), recognizes that the USA isn't the evil capitalist-imperialist monster (sorry, I read Chinese and no some of the internal rhetoric on this one), I'll reconsdier my "benign neglect" sympathy for Sharki Turkistan's anti-colonial struggle.
Kepha the Sinophone
Posted by: Kepha at September 30, 2005 11:25 PM
So there is terrorist threat coming from China's repressed Muslim minority. But aren't the Christian and Buddhist communities repressed in exactly the same way? Yet, we haven't heard about violent sentiments getting a foothold among members of other confessions. How come it is always the Religion of PeaceTM> that breeds the blood-thirsy jihadists, ready to kill the infidels en masse?
-----------------------------
dolphin, CAGE co-founder.
http://www.acage.org
at October 1, 2005 2:35 AM
Catholics, Protestants, Falun Gong, Buddhists and others have suffered tortures from China but their answer is the international pressure and complaining. However islam is different. jihad is the answer.
I donīt what to prefer, the current China or the jihadists, difficult dilemma.
at October 1, 2005 8:02 AM
Franze:
China's internal dissent picture is a very complex matter. While most underground Christians are peaceful, there are a few groups like the Shouters who seek confrontations. There is also a group called Eastern Lightning, which claims that Christ returned as a woman in Henan province, and kidnaps members of other groups to pressure them into joining--and sometimes commits murder.
Sometimes, rural people who have been pressured to abort children also take advantage of kinship ties to local police and officials to murder children of the offending health officials or the officials themselves. Objections to abortion in rural China are closely linked to concepts drawn from Buddhism, Daoism, and the ancestor cult. The willingness of rural people to get violent over forced abortions is one reason why China's population control policies have faced great problems in large sections of the country.
Eastern Turkistan and Tibet are rather special cases, since they are essentially contiguous colonial territories of China with very different national and cultural traditions. This is one reason why Eastern Turkistan dissent seeks national separation; while dissent among the Hui (Chinese-speaking Muslims) tends to seek greater religious liberty within the context of the Chinese national state itself.
Believe me, the habit of some 19th century Europeans who spoke of the "historyless" peoples of Asia missed the boat!
Sinophone Kepha
Posted by: Kepha at October 1, 2005 10:12 PM
China released a leading Uighur figure, Rebiya Kadeer, from prison March 17 and exiled her to the U.S. following years of pressure by Washington. This occurred shortly before a visit by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
WHAT?
at October 3, 2005 10:12 AM
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