Recently in China Category

Yet another link between the Qur'an and jihad terror. Despite a mountain of such links, authorities steadfastly refuse to examine the phenomenon of Qur'an-inspired terrorism or its implications.

"China says clash suspects met to study Quran," from the Associated Press, April 30 (thanks to Kenneth):

BEIJING (AP) -- The perpetrators of deadly violence last week in China's Xinjiang region held secret Quran study sessions and possessed extremist religious literature, authorities said Tuesday, accusations likely to be used by Beijing as justification for its strict rules on Islam in the vast northwestern territory.

The claims came amid new revelations about the April 23 clash in which 25 assailants, police officers and local government workers were killed near the city of Kashgar. It was one of the deadliest incidents of violence in Xinjiang since nearly 200 people were killed in a July 2009 ethnic riot in the regional capital, Urumqi. Police say they arrested 19 suspects and killed six others, all of them from the region's native Turkic Uighur Muslim ethnic group.

The group was led by Kasmu Memet, who began hosting the Quran study sessions in September, according to an account from the Xinjiang police that was posted to official websites. In March, they began manufacturing swords and conducting test explosions in preparation for carrying out a major attack this summer in densely populated areas of Kashgar, the account said....

"The community people were just conducting regular checks, but the action from the rioters was planned and well prepared. It's certainly a terrorist attack." Reuters, however, rushes to exonerate the jihadists: "But many rights groups say China overstates the threat to justify its tight grip on the region."

There's no doubt that the Chinese government is a bloody tyranny. There is also no doubt that there is a global jihad against non-Muslim states, and there is no obvious reason here to doubt the official Chinese account of these events.

"'Terrorist' axe, knife and arson attack kills 21 in China's Xinjiang," from Reuters, April 24 (thanks to Kenneth):

(Reuters) - A confrontation involving axes, knives, at least one gun and ending with the burning down of a house left 21 people dead in China's troubled far-west region of Xinjiang, a government spokeswoman said on Wednesday, calling it a "terrorist attack".

It was the deadliest violence in the region since July 2009, when Xinjiang's capital, Urumqi, was rocked by clashes between majority Han Chinese and minority Uighurs that killed nearly 200 people.

Nine residents, six police and six ethnic Uighurs were killed in Tuesday's drama, said Hou Hanmin, spokeswoman for the Xinjiang government.

It was not immediately clear how many burnt to death.

Hou did not name any group, but China has blamed previous attacks in energy-rich Xinjiang - strategically located on the borders of Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Central Asia - on Islamic separatists who want to establish an independent East Turkestan.

Many Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking Muslim people native to Xinjiang, chafe at Chinese controls on their religion, language and culture.

Three "community workers" were patrolling a neighborhood of Bachu County, known as Maralbexi by Uighurs, in Kashgar after a tip-off that there were "suspicious people" in a private house, Hou said.

One of the three used a phone to call for help after they found a number of knives, resulting in their being killed by 14 Uighur "rioters" in the house, Hou said.

"The community people were just conducting regular checks, but the action from the rioters was planned and well prepared," Hou said. "It's certainly a terrorist attack."

Several police and other "community workers" came in different groups to the home where the Uighurs used axes and large knives to slash the police officers and workers, Hou said.

Only one police officer was armed with a gun, she said.

The battle ended with the gang members burning down the house, killing the rest of the people there, Hou said. Eight people had been detained.

Some Chinese officials blame such attacks on Muslim militants trained in Pakistan. But many rights groups say China overstates the threat to justify its tight grip on the region.

Dilxat Raxit, spokesman for the exiled World Uyghur Congress, said the violence was sparked by the shooting and killing of a young Uighur by "Chinese armed personnel", prompting the Uighurs to retaliate....

Possible. But jihadists always claim to be retaliating to some provocation, although they usually are carrying out an unprovoked attack.

Others say that the Chinese are trumping up the whole problem. Funny how everyone seems to imagine a jihad problem, yet no one really has one. "China jails 20 on jihad, separatism charges in restive Xinjiang," from Reuters, March 27:

(Reuters) - Chinese courts have sentenced 20 people to up to life in jail on charges of separatism and plotting to carry out jihad in the restive far western region of Xinjiang, the government said on Wednesday.

The courts in Kashgar and Bayingol said the 20 - all ethnic Uighurs judging by their names - had had their "thoughts poisoned by religious extremism", and used cell phones and DVDs "to spread Muslim religious propaganda", the Xinjiang government said on its official news website (www.ts.cn).

Some of them bought weapons to kill policemen as part of their jihad and spread propaganda related to the banned East Turkestan Islamic Movement, the report said, a group which China says wages a violent campaign for a separate state.

Many Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking Muslim people native to Xinjiang, chafe at Chinese controls on their religion, language and culture.

China has blamed violence in energy-rich Xinjiang - strategically located on the borders of Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Central Asia - on Islamic separatists who want to establish an independent East Turkestan.

Some Chinese officials have also blamed attacks on Muslim militants trained in Pakistan. But many rights groups say China overstates the threat to justify its tight grip on the region.

Dilxat Raxit, spokesman for the exiled World Uyghur Congress, said the 20 were actually guilty of no more than listening to the U.S.-funded Radio Free Asia and using the internet to discuss the importance of religious and cultural freedom.

"Giving heavy sentences to Uighurs (on the excuse) of terrorism is China's special way of carrying out suppression," he said in an emailed statement.

In December, a Xinjiang court sentenced three men to death and another to life in prison for attempting to hijack an aircraft in June.

What could go wrong? "U. S. nuclear component reaches Pakistan via China," by Narayan Lakshman in The Hindu, January 19 (thanks to Lookmann):

Pakistan is circumventing matters of legality and geopolitical complexities in the procurement process for nuclear components.

This may well be the conclusion reached in the case of Qiang Hu, a Chinese national who has been charged in Massachusetts with “conspiracy for violating U.S. export controls by allegedly selling thousands of pressure transducers to unnamed customers through his position of sales manager at MKS Instruments Shanghai Ltd. in China”.

Among the list of nations that use pressure transducers to measure the gas pressure inside centrifuge cascades in nuclear plants is Pakistan. The list reportedly includes Iran and possibly North Korea, but Pakistan, according to experts at the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security, is among those nations that “use a considerable quantity of the equipment in their centrifuge plants and have regularly sought them through surreptitious means as used in this alleged scheme”.

That Islamabad was a likely final customer of Mr. Hu’s deceptions cannot be ruled out. According to a report published by ISIS on this case, “Hu and his co-conspirators allegedly arranged their unlawful export to unauthorised Chinese end-users or to other, unnamed country end-users”.

The report’s authors, David Albright and Andrea Stricker, told The Hindu that while recent case studies or evidence of Pakistani procurements of pressure transducers may not be available, Pakistan is “likely procuring them, assuming they don’t have enough in their centrifuge plants or haven’t made them themselves”....

The high cost of misunderstanding Islam affects even Muslims in China. Yet still no Muslim groups anywhere devote even a single program to try to prevent young Muslims from misunderstanding their peaceful religion. Now, why is that?

"Death for three Xinjiang plane hijackers: China media," by Neil Connor for AFP, December 11:

A court in China's restive Muslim-majority region of Xinjiang sentenced three men to death on Tuesday after they were found guilty of trying to hijack an aircraft and detonate explosives, state media said.

The men, along with a fourth who received a life prison term, were among a group of six that tried to seize the aircraft after it had taken off from Hotan in the northwestern region and were thwarted by passengers and crew, the official Xinhua news agency said, citing a court statement.

The other two gang members died in the struggle, which also resulted in injuries to 24 crew members and passengers, the statement said.

They were confronted after they tried to "detonate explosive devices", the statement from the Intermediate People's Court in Hotan Prefecture said, adding that "converted metal crutches and explosives" were used in the hijacking.

The men attempted to commandeer the Tianjin Airlines flight 1,400km away from its destination, the regional capital city of Urumqi.

They were influenced by religious extremists and "loudly shouted religious extremist cries" on board the aircraft, the Xinhua report said, citing court testimonies.

Zowie! Which religion, Xinhua? Were these Buddhist extremists again?

"They decided to blow up the aircraft and die along with all the other passengers," it added.

Ringleaders Musa Yvsup and Arxidikali Yimin, along with Eyumer Yimin, who played a major part in the attempted hijack, were sentenced to death.

Alem Musa received a life sentence as he played a minor role in the incident and showed "a good attitude" after being arrested, according to the statement.

"All the defendants confessed the above crimes at the court," the report added.

In China Islamic supremacists play the victimhood card, too:

However, Dilxat Raxit, a spokesman for the exiled World Uyghur Congress, disputed the official version of events, claiming that a fight over seating broke out on board the aircraft between a group of Uighurs and Han Chinese, the country's majority ethnic group.

"The men who were sentenced were not allowed their own lawyers, only those that were given to them by the government," he said.

"The Xinjiang people believe this has been arranged for the Chinese authorities' political purposes. They could use this to step up suppression of the Uighur people. We believe the whole thing has no transparency."

Xinjiang is home to around nine million Uighurs, many of whom complain of religious and cultural repression by Chinese authorities -- a claim the government denies.

The vast resource-rich region, which borders Pakistan and Afghanistan, has been under heavy security since July 2009, when bloody ethnic riots in Urumqi killed 197 people and injured around 1,700.

Rights groups say the violence in the region stems from long-held grievances among Uighurs, who complain that an influx of Han is eroding their culture.

Beijing says it has provided much-needed development in the region, and blames much of the violence there on what it calls the three "evil forces" of religious extremism, separatism and terrorism.

The attempted hijack resulted in an 'economic loss' of 28.58 million yuan (4.58 million U.S. dollars), the court statement said.

Such incidents on Chinese planes are rare, although in October a man was arrested for allegedly making a hoax threat that forced a plane into an emergency landing, state media said.

The China Southern Airlines flight had originally taken off from Istanbul in Turkey and landed in Urumqi. It was en route for Beijing when the alert happened.

Last year a plane bound for Urumqi was forced into an emergency landing after a passenger claimed there was a bomb on board.

Police detained the 27-year-old woman passenger after she threatened to detonate explosives during the China United Airlines flight from Beijing to Urumqi.

Score two for the Infidels. An update on this story. "2 suspects dead in China plane hijack attempt," from the Associated Press, July 2 (thanks to Pamela Geller):

BEIJING (AP) — Two men who allegedly tried to hijack a plane in far west China by battering the cockpit door with a crutch and trying to set off explosives have died from injuries sustained in a fight with passengers and crew, state media said Monday.

Earlier reports said six Uighur men were arrested Friday following the foiled hijack attempt in Xinjiang region. Four crew members were injured in the tussle. Xinjiang is home to a large population of minority Uighurs (pronounced WEE'-gurs), but is ruled by China's ethnic majority Hans. There have been clashes between authorities and Uighurs resentful of government controls over their religion and culture.

An overseas rights group says the incident wasn't a hijacking attempt but an in-flight brawl over a seat dispute.

The state-run Global Times newspaper reported that two of the suspects had died in hospital from injuries sustained in the fight with passengers and crew, but didn't say when. The report cited local officials who weren't identified by name. Global Times said two others were hospitalized after mutilating themselves, but gave no details.

The report said authorities were investigating how the men, aged 20 to 36 and all from the city of Kashgar in the west of Xinjiang, managed to get the explosives past security checks.

Xinjiang regional government spokeswoman Hou Hanmin on Monday said she was unable to confirm whether any of the suspects had died.

Hou said the men took apart a pair of aluminum crutches and used the pieces to attack people while trying to break into the cockpit. She said they also had material believed to be explosives but that was still being tested by police....

I guess aluminum crutches will be verboten on airplanes now.

Crew members and passengers thwarted the murderous jihadis. Bravo. "China says plane hijack attempt thwarted," from AFP, June 29:

Six members of China's Uighur minority tried to hijack a plane flying from a restive city in the far-western Xinjiang region on Friday but crew members and passengers thwarted them, authorities said.

The plane returned safely to the airport in Hotan city -- which has seen a spate of violent clashes between mainly Muslim Uighurs and police due to simmering ethnic tensions -- and the suspects were detained, authorities said.

"The six hijackers are Uighurs," Hou Hanmin, a spokeswoman for the government of Xinjiang told AFP.

"For the moment, we don't know the purpose of the hijack. It's still under investigation," she said, adding at least seven crew members and passengers had been injured in the incident....

Uh, maybe jihad? Naaah. That couldn't be it.

Leftist film producer Tommi Trudeau joins Nonie Darwish and Evan Sayet on the gang — and voices a curious prediction.

Maybe they were reading some of those cheap, typo-riddled Chinese-made Qur'ans that had Iran so irate. Maybe that's where all that "misunderstanding" came from. "Muslim militant group claims western China attacks," by Chi-Chi Zhang for Reuters, September 8:

BEIJING (AP) — A militant Muslim group claimed by video it carried out recent attacks in western China that killed at least three dozen people, a monitoring group said.

The video was purportedly made by the Turkistan Islamic Party, which seeks independence for China's western Xinjiang region, the SITE Intelligence Group said this week. The militants are believed to be based in Pakistan, where security experts say core members have been trained by al-Qaida.

Xinjiang is home to largely Muslim ethnic Uighurs (pronounced WEE'-gur) who say they have been marginalized by an influx of China's majority Han to the region. Ethnic riots there two years ago killed at least 197 people.

Security has been raised, but still, dozens were killed in slashings and arson and hit-and-run attacks in the cities of Hotan and Kashgar in July.

The more than 10-minute video released in late August features Turkistan Islamic Party leader Abdul Shakoor Damla, whose face is blotted out, saying those attacks were revenge against the Chinese government.

Ben Venzke, of Washington-based IntelCenter, another monitor of militant groups, said TIP threatened to attack the 2008 Beijing Olympics and should be taken seriously.

"Their profile has been heightened since threats made during the Olympics and videos have shown us that they have even received recognition from senior al-Qaeda leaders recognizing their presence in China," Venzke said.

In 2008, TIP released videos claiming responsibility for several bus bombings in China and warned Muslims to stay away from any place Han Chinese were, including buses, planes, buildings and trains.

"TIP is a very real jihadist group and their threats should be taken seriously. In addition to being active in China, we also have seen videos of them conducting operations in Pakistan and Afghanistan," Venzke said.

The latest video shows a brief biography and footage of what it says is Memtieli Tiliwaldi wrestling with other fighters in a TIP training camp. Xinjiang police had identified Tiliwaldi as a suspect in the July attacks and said they fatally shot him in a corn field days later.

In the video, group leader Damla speaks in the Turkic language of the Uighurs, who have with a long history of tense relations with the central government.

Militant Uighurs have for decades been fighting a low-level insurgency to gain independence for lightly populated but resource-rich Xinjiang, which borders Pakistan, Afghanistan and several unstable Central Asian states.....

On second thought, maybe that's where all this "misunderstanding" of Islam is coming from! Now, Islamic interest groups can blame bad Chinese reprints. "Iran says cheap "Made in China" Qurans full of typos," by Patrick Winn for Global Post, August 31:

Iran's Organization of the Holy Quran is scolding Iranian publishers who've outsourced production of the holy book to Chinese printers.

There is officially a cheap Chinese knockoff of everything.

Apparently, their copies of the Quran are riddled with typos, according to the Tehran Times.

"These tableaus are made quite cheaply in China but are sold for much more than they are really worth to make that much more profit," said an official with the organization who monitors and evaluates Qurans available in Iran.

The official even urged importers to halt future Quran shipments from China, the Times reported....

China says Muslim separatists trained in Pakistan were behind an attack which killed six civilians in the western region of Xinjiang on Sunday.

In an online statement, the local government said "armed terrorists" stormed a restaurant, killing two, then fatally stabbed four people outside.

Police responding to the attack shot dead five suspects.

When the cops immediately shoot the terrorists dead, you know you're not in the West (i.e. 'not in Kansas') anymore, friends. Western cops can't be seen as violating anyone's civil or human rights, don't cha know.

The attack was part of a week end of violence which left up to 18 people dead.

Kashgar is in west of Xinjiang region, which has a Muslim Uighur population and has seen regular outbreaks of ethnic tension, mainly triggered by the influx of Han Chinese.

Firearms and explosives

The Kashgar city government said suspects captured after the restaurant attack had admitted their leaders had joined the separatist East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) and been trained in making firearms and explosives.

The attackers followed "extremist religious ideology" and advocated "jihad", the statement said.

Note the use of the passive voice -- trained in making firearms and explosives by who, exactly? It wouldn't, perhaps, be the government of Pakistan that's providing the training, would it?  You know, the government that's supposed to be allied with the US, and the one that's been lavished with billions in aid from the US in the past ten years, right? 

As this is a BBC piece, no further information on the 'extremist religious ideology' is provided, nor is there any explanation as to how this 'extremist ideology' would be distinguishable or different from Islam.

But it's all right -- they were responding to decades of oppression, doncha know. "Ten die in Xinjiang knife attack, blast," by Peter Parks for AFP, July 31:

Ten people were killed in a knife attack and blast in China's ethnically-tense Xinjiang region at the weekend, state media and authorities said Sunday, in the latest bout of unrest to hit the area.

A knife attack in the ancient Silk Road city of Kashgar on Saturday saw seven people killed and 28 hurt by two knife-wielding assailants.

One of the attackers was later killed in violence that erupted at a night market, government authorities said.

Hou Hanmin, spokeswoman for the government of the northwestern region, told AFP the attackers were both members of the mainly Muslim Uighur ethnic minority, adding the suspect who was still alive had been detained....

An explosion rocked city on Sunday, killing three people, including a police officer, and injuring three others, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

Police had already detained two suspects, Xinhua said, although it was not immediately clear what had caused the blasts....

Uh, maybe jihad?

According to tianshannet.com, a website run by the regional government, the suspects in Saturday's attack hijacked a truck that was waiting at a light at the food market in Kashgar, not far from the border with Kyrgyzstan.

They killed the driver, ploughed the vehicle into passers-by on a nearby pavement, then got out of the truck and stabbed people at random, leaving six bystanders dead before the crowd turned on them and killed one attacker.

An English-language report from Xinhua said two blasts were heard before the incident, saying the first came from a minivan and the other was heard almost simultaneously and originated from the market....

Dilxat Raxit, a spokesman for the Germany-based World Uyghur Congress -- an exile group -- cited local sources as saying the assailants had clashed with members of a civilian force that maintains public security.

"This incident is hard to believe but must be addressed. Beijing should accept the responsibility that repression triggered this incident," he said.

Of course. It is never the responsibility of the jihadists or their allies. And as always, it is a response to oppression -- although ironically, we never seem to see this kind of behavior from the non-Muslims who suffer oppression in Muslim societies such as Egypt, Pakistan and Indonesia:

Many Uighurs are unhappy with what they say has been decades of political and religious repression, and the unwanted immigration of China's dominant Han ethnic group.

While standards of living have improved, Uighurs complain that most of the gains go to the Han.

This tension has triggered sporadic bouts of violence in Xinjiang -- a vast, arid but resource-rich region bordering Central Asia, home to more than eight million Turkic-speaking Uighurs.

Earlier this month, more than 20 people were killed in a violent clash with police in the remote city of Hotan.

State media quoted an official in Xinjiang as saying that clash was a "terrorist" attack, adding that four people including a police officer were killed when a crowd set upon a police station.

But Uighur activists called it an outburst of anger by ordinary Uighurs and said security forces beat 14 people to death and shot dead six others during the unrest.

Here is a more realistic account of what happened there.

In the nation's worst ethnic violence in decades, Uighurs savagely attacked Han Chinese in the regional capital Urumqi in July 2009 -- an incident that led to retaliatory attacks by Han on Uighurs several days later.

The government says around 200 people were killed and 1,700 injured in the violence, which shattered the authoritarian Communist Party's claims of harmony among the country's dozens of ethnic groups.

China threw a huge security clampdown onto Xinjiang after the violence, and many Uighurs are enraged by the arrests and alleged disappearances of people rounded up across the region in the aftermath....

Ah, even Uighurs play the victimhood game. Has Honest Ibe Hooper flown over to Xinjiang to give them lessons?

Pakistan should never again get another penny of American money. An update on this story. "Analysts see Pakistan terror links to Xinjiang attack," by Ananth Krishnan in The Hindu, July 21 (thanks to Mehreen):

Officials on Wednesday said this week's attack on a police station in China's far western Xinjiang region had been “masterminded” by terrorist groups, while security analysts here suggested separatist groups active in Pakistan had a role in the violence.

Officials raised the death toll from Monday's attack in Hotan, a city in southern Xinjiang, to 18. While police shot down 14 “rioters”, four others, including two women, were killed in the attack.

Hou Hanmin, the head of the regional information office in Hotan, told The Hindu in a telephone interview that the attackers were “organised”, and armed with knives and grenades.

The rioters had entered a nearby government office before attacking and setting fire to a police station. They had taken six hostages before the police shot 14 of the 18 reported attackers, according to official accounts.

“They held up a banner calling for ‘holy war',” said Ms. Hou. “The attack was brutal and ruthless. This was clearly an attack masterminded by terrorist groups.”...

Still more Islamophobia. "14 rioters shot down in Xinjiang attack," from Xinhua, July 20 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):

HOTAN, Xinjiang - Police shot down 14 rioters who attacked a police station in Hotan city of Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region on Monday, a Communist Party official in Hotan said Wednesday.

The official, who declined to be named, said the attack left four people dead, including an armed police officer, a security guard, a woman and a teenage girl. At least three others were injured.

Rioters hacked security guard Memet Eli to death while they were trying to break into the Na'erbage police station shortly after 12 pm Monday, said Ablet Metniyaz, chief of the police station.

"He is just 25. He planned to get married in September," said Abliz, an officer of the police station.

In addition to Eli, an armed police and two civilians died in the incident, according to Metniyaz, 38, who has been serving as chief of the police station for three years.

The rioters had taken six civilian people and some police staff hostage, and set fire and smashed things in the police station, leaving damaged computers, printers, furniture and clothes scattered around, Metniyaz said.

Shouting frantic religious slogans like "Allah the only God", the rioters ran to the top floor and police opened fire to stop them, said an anonymous policeman with the police station.

When the attack took place, most of the police station's staff were following Metniyaz to visit local residents in an effort to seek their opinions about safeguarding public security.

The rioters had occupied the police station when Metniyaz led his team back.

"I shouted in Uygur language, asking the rioters to stop doing things that run against the law and to settle disputes in peaceful way. But they kept casting gasoline bottles and rocks to us," said Metniyaz.

"I saw the rioters hacking innocent people, some of them got injuries on their faces, noses and ears."

Rioters also attacked the adjacent industrial and commercial bureau, injuring two staff there....

No doubt they're enraged over the opposition to the Islamic supremacist mega-mosque at Ground Zero. That's why Muslims like Reza Aslan are seething with anger these days, isn't it? Or is it over the Israeli incursion into Gaza? No, that was last year's outrage. Have you noticed -- as I have often pointed out -- that the pretexts always shift, but the anger, and the resultant jihad, are constant? "Police arrest 4 in bomb attack in China's restive Muslim far west," from Associated Press, August 25 (thanks to Twostellas):

BEIJING (AP) -- Police have arrested four suspects in a deadly bomb attack on police auxiliary forces last week, a government spokeswoman said Wednesday, in the latest violence in China's restive Muslim far west.

The four were part of a "violent gang of six people" responsible for the attack in the city of Aksu, said Hou Hanmin, government spokeswoman in Xinjiang, China's Central Asian buffer province where Aksu is located.

In the attack last Thursday, the assailants drove a three-wheeled motorized vehicle into a crowd of people and then set off explosives. Eight people died, including two attackers and members of a civilian police auxiliary force, Hou said.

She and a report by the state-run Xinhua News Agency did not ascribe a motive. But Xinjiang has been beset by ethnic conflict and a sometimes-violent separatist movement by Uighurs, a largely Muslim ethnic group that sees Xinjiang as its homeland. Many Uighurs resent the Han Chinese majority as interlopers....

We have a Tiny Minority of Extremists who have Hijacked the Religion of Peace™. Chinese authorities have "criminal gangs." Both groups are simply Islamic jihadists. "Seven Killed in Suspected Terror Attack in Xinjiang," from Outlook India, August 19 (thanks to Sanjay):

Renewed violence struck China's restive Xinjiang province when seven people were killed and fourteen wounded in a suspected bomb attack today, local officials said.

The explosion took place on a three wheeled vehicle in Aksu city and the local officials blamed the blast on "criminal gangs", an abbreviation used by authorities for Muslim separatists.

Official Chinese newsagency Xinhua quoted a spokeswoman of the provincial government as saying that the blast was being treated as a criminal case and that one suspect had been apprehended....

Xinjiang has been beset by ethnic conflict and separatist violence for the past few years and last summer witnessed bloody clashes between the Uighurs, the largely Muslim ethnic group and the majority Han Chinese settlers which left 197 people dead.

In the wake of the riots, authorities in a major crackdown arrested hundreds of people and about two dozen people were sentenced to death for inciting ethnic riots.

The provincial Governor Nur Bekri in a speech just before the blast had blamed Islamic terrorists for recent unrest in the region and said authorities were faced with a complicated separatist struggle....

And the learned analysts are dumbfounded, bereft of any means of understanding why such a thing would happen. "Chinese Separatists Tied to Norway Bomb Plot," by Edward Wong in the New York Times, July 9 (thanks to Bill):

BEIJING -- The arrests on Thursday of three men in Norway and Germany accused of orchestrating a terrorist bomb plot seemed like another routine raid by a Western government in the continuing campaign against groups linked to Al Qaeda. But one detail stuck out: Norwegian officials said one of the men was a Chinese Uighur, and all three supposedly belonged to a group that advocates separatism in western China.

If the Norwegian officials are right, the bomb plot was a rare instance in which the group, the Turkestan Islamic Party, had tried to carry out an attack in the West that was unrelated to its goal of gaining independence for the restive region of Xinjiang, in China's hinterlands.

And that indicates yet again that the jihad is a global struggle, with the various "nationalist" struggles of Muslims in various countries as its local theaters. This is something that mystifies the learned analysts, for they see all these local conflicts as discrete nationalist insurgencies that just happen to involve Muslims. In that view, there would be no reason for Muslims involved in a nationalist struggle in China to get involved in any violent activity in Norway. The Times reporter's apparent surprise and belief that this involvement is newsworthy stems from his mistaken premises about the nature of the conflict in China -- and in Norway -- as well as his mistaken premises about the nature of Islam and jihad.

Terrorism experts say the plot in Norway indicates that Al Qaeda and the few members of the Turkestan Islamic Party, or TIP, who trained in the tribal areas of Pakistan see some mutual benefit in cooperating. The use of relatively obscure ethnic Uighur recruits could allow Al Qaeda to penetrate more deeply into the West.

For militant Uighurs, taking part in attacks against the West could give them a raison d'être at a time when the Chinese government has seemingly defused any chance of a widespread insurgency's taking root in Xinjiang, despite occasional spasms of violence. Uighurs may also feel alienated by the West given that the United States and most other major nations have largely accepted China's contention that Uighur separatists are part of a broader threat to stability posed by Islamic fundamentalists.

Alienated. And you know what happens when Muslims get angry. Western governments seem devoted above all to making sure they don't grow alienated, because when they do, the bombs start going off. The specter of manifestly non-alienated Muslims, such as the Glasgow doctors a year or two ago, engaging in violent jihad activity is yet another inexplicable and surprising phenomenon that leaves the learned analysts mystified.

Did Barack Obama ever call upon Muslims in China to operate in a "transparent manner"? The ChiComs are undeniably brutal and bloody; last year, however, the jihadis in China were instigating violent riots, without a word from Obama. His human rights concerns are, yet again, one-sided. Find out why in The Post-American Presidency.

"US urges China transparency in Xinjiang," from AFP, July 2 (thanks to Maxwell):

WASHINGTON -- The United States on Friday urged China to show transparency and respect legal rights of its citizens one year after deadly ethnic violence erupted in the Xinjiang region's capital Urumqi.

"We continue to urge China to handle all detentions and judicial processes relating to last year's violence in Urumqi in a transparent manner," State Department spokesman Mark Toner told AFP.

"We have urged China to ensure that the legal rights of all Chinese citizens are respected in accordance with international standards of due process," he said.

Toner said that the United States has discussed its concerns "repeatedly" to China via its embassy in Beijing.

Urumqi erupted in violence on July 5, 2009 pitting the region's mostly Muslim Uighur community against members of China's majority Han ethnicity.

The government says nearly 200 people were killed and about 1,700 injured in the unrest, China's worst ethnic violence in decades, with Han making up most of the victims.

Uighur activists say thousands of people remain unaccounted for after mass raids by Chinese authorities to round up suspected sympathizers.

Backing what looks like the strong horse in this age of Obamaite appeasement. "China seeks mutual support, co-op with Islamic world," from Xinhua, June 18:

BEIJING, June 18 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi met here Friday with Secretary-General of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, pledging to enhance cooperation with the OIC.

Yang said the OIC is playing a more and more important role in international and regional affairs, and China is willing to further enhance exchanges and cooperation with the organization.

"China and the Islamic world shared a long-term friendship," Yang said. China hoped that the two sides would continue to support one another on issues concerning each other's core interests....

Ihsanoglu hailed the traditional friendship and the broad prospects for cooperation between the two sides. He said the OIC attaches great importance to relations with China, and is ready to promote the development of friendly cooperation between China and the Islamic nations....

Muslim Uighurs seek an independent Islamic state. But are they peaceful? Amnesty International thinks so. But of course, Amnesty International has never yet uttered the words "jihad" or "dhimmi" -- so how useful is its perspective on human rights, when it ignores these elephantine sources of human rights violations? From Radio Free Asia, :

HONG KONG, Sept. 13, 2004--Authorities in China's northwestern Muslim region of Xinjiang have sentenced more than 50 people to death this year in what government officials say is a war on terrorism.

"Due to the fact that the activities of international terrorist forces are rampant, we believe our fight against the crime of violent terrorists will continue for a long time to come," Xinjiang Communist Party leader Wang Lequan told reporters visiting the region.

Prior to the war in Iraq, which it opposed, Beijing backed the U.S.-led war on terror, using its momentum to call for international support for its campaign against Uyghur separatists, whom it has branded terrorists.

Conflicting claims

China says Uyghurs seeking an independent Islamic state have killed 162 people and injured 440 others.

But human rights groups say Beijing is using the threat of terrorism as an excuse to perpetrate further human rights violations against those involved in a peaceful campaign for an independent Uyghur state, which exiled groups call East Turkestan.

"Over the last three years, Uyghur nationalists who would formerly have been branded as 'separatists' have increasingly been labeled 'terrorists,'" Amnesty International said in a report last month on China's "War on Terror."

The government had cracked 22 groups involved in separatist and terrorist activities and meted out the 50 death sentences in the first eight months of the year, Wang said. But none of those sentenced to death had yet been executed, Wang said without explaining.

"Our efforts will exist as long as there are terrorist crimes," Wang said.