Dateline Xinjiang, May 22, 2014: Jihad Shifting Focus to Developing Markets: “The occasional 9/11 or 7/7 is good PR, but the real growth potential is in the Mideast, Africa and Asia: no red tape and no global outrage. A hashtag or two against us, an article from Reuters or AP explaining that we’re doing all this because we’re economically disadvantaged and politically oppressed, and then we move on.”
“Muslim terrorists blamed for market bombings in China that kill 31,” by Cheryl K. Chumley, The Washington Times, May 22, 2014:
At least 31 were killed and more than 90 injured in bomb blasts that rocked a market area in the northwestern region of Xinjiang in China early Thursday.
Local government authorities said the attack is believed to have been carried out by radical Muslim separatists and described it as the most “serious violent terrorist incident of a particularly vile nature,” CBS reported.
The attackers drove SUVs through metal barriers in the city streets and smashed into the crowd of shoppers, dumping explosives from their vehicle windows onto the ground, CNN said.
The SUVs then crashed into each other head-on and one exploded, an eyewitness told local media.
Recent acts of violence in the volatile region have been blamed on extremists with the Turkie [sic] Uighur Muslim ethnic group that seeks to oust China’s influence in the area — and officials say this attack is yet one more committed by the same organization, CBS said.
Photos of the scene showed bodies in the street and a large fire in the background.
Chinese authorities vowed to “severely punish terrorists and spare no efforts in maintaining stability” in response to the market attack, CBS reported.
John C. Barile says
You must have gotten that prefacing satirical insight from a jihadist website, right?
jerryj26 says
Just wondering if the politically correct elite of the chinese government will downplay this.
john spielman says
it will be interesting to contrast the western democracies and their denial response with the Chinese authoritarian active response to jihad murderers.
No1 says
The Chinese response appears to be rather pathetic at the moment, for all the talk about them being brutal, it seems to be that their brutality is reserved for Fulan Gong, Tibetans, and other peasants who can’t and won’t fight back. I’d take the Russian response any day of the week.
Mazo says
Tibetans don’t fight? I know plenty of decapitated French priests who would beg to differ. Those Tibetans cut the Catholic priests to pieces.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1905_Tibetan_Rebellion
http://www.maristmessenger.co.nz/2013/05/01/missionary-audacity-the-mission-to-tibet/
As for Falun Gong, many true anti-government Chinese human rights activists like Harry Wu are quite sick of their lies.
As for the “Russian response”, if you think your own western leaders are “PC”, if you actually paid attention to what Russian leaders say and do you would actually think they are more pathetic than your own leaders.
Putin said Islam is a Russian religion and that Islam is closer to Orthodoxy than Catholicism.
http://risu.org.ua/en/index/monitoring/society_digest/39697/
After defeating the separatists in Chechnya, Putin allowed the Pro-Russian strongman Ramzan Kadyrov to take absolute control with his own private Kadyrovsty army and Kadyrov is now enforcing Sharia in Chechnya and encouraging mothers to name their children after the prophet.
http://www.rferl.org/content/islam-chechnya-muhammad-baby-names/25228441.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7933204.stm
Kadyrov said Sharia is more important than Russian laws.
http://eng.kavkaz-uzel.ru/articles/13423/
http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/08/26/idUSLDE67O0S0
Your own Jihadwatch is complaining
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2012/05/chechnyas-muslim-president-misunderstands-islam-endorses-honor-killing
I laugh in your face at your thought that Islam has been crushed in Russia, while the Russians are supporting a ruler who supports Sharia, and while Russian leaders say Islam is a Russian religion.
Many Russian Orthodox nationalists hold Catholicism and Protestanism in contempt, more than Islam.
Mazo says
The Tibetan army committed aggresion against Qinghai province of China in 1932 but were beaten back with their tails between their legs by Hui Muslim General Ma Bufang.
umbra says
Publicly it will, but away from public eyes, it will send in the PAP.
umbra says
Islamic terrorists in China do not seem to understand, the CPC respond to force with even greater force and it is not going to be swayed by the type of political correctness that afflicts the West. Furthermore, political pressure from outside China will not save these savages from CPC crack downs. China simply ignores any and all criticism of “human rights” violations levelled against her.
Mr. Squat says
I’m not so sure. These attacks keep happening, and the Chinese gov’t seems powerless to stop them. Why are you guys so confident about the Chinese being immune to political correctness? It is a global disease.
umbra says
China is not immune to political correctness. However, when it comes to terrorist violence within her borders, the Chinese government is not as helpless as many western governments. There is what the Chinese government says to the public and then there is what it does away from public gaze. All this talk about maintaining peace and harmony in Chinese society does not extend to terrorists in the eyes of the government. These terrorists (suspects, sympathisers) are surveilled and hounded continuously by the security force. Also, there is a complete press blackout of Chinese security operations against these terrorists in mainstream Chinese media. No one to report on the “oppression” inflicted upon the these helpless “victims”, a narrative that is so often seen in western media. Perhaps as a result of this, the overwhelming public opinion in China is that the populace supports the government’s actions against these terrorists. In fact, the government has been seen (though not publicly critiqued) on certain occasions for not “doing enough” in addressing these sorts of terrorists threats – codeword for not cracking down hard enough.
Kepha says
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn observed what may well explain China’s “powerlessness” towards the Uighur separatists when he was in exile in Kazakhstan. Solzhenitsyn actually admire the way that the exiled Chechens in Central Asia “dropped out” of the Soviet system and rebuilt their own tribal, family, and cultic ties while in exile. Somehow, the KGB could never infiltrate them and get information from them. Maybe this is why the Chechens returned to their historic homeland broke out in rebellion as soon as they could.
I think many Uighurs have taken a similar stance vis-a-vis the Chinese Communist state. The few contacts I had with them when I lived in China during the 1990’s made me feel that the chief lesson they drew from the Soviet collapse was not that they were better off under an expanding Chinese economy (the conventional wisdom at the time), but that Big Brother was indeed mortal.
I feel for the aggrieved families in Urumqi, but a deadly genie is out of the bottle, and perhaps not even China’s vaunted security, military, and demographic advantages can put it back in.
umbra says
It seems that China will do what China has to quell rebellions (Chinese leaders see the uyghur problem as a ethnic rebellion, not a direct islamic supremacist rebellion – a flawed understanding on their part). Mass slaughter is not beyond the CPC if it deemed to be necessary. This brutality is not a unique feature of the CPC, but a cultural aspect of China – at least historically. Chinese history is littered with examples of mass slaughter (civilians and soldiers), particularly in civil wars that led to the demise of one dynasty and the subsequent birth of another. Sporadically, within the rule of dynasties, large scale unrests and rebellions have also led to slaughters. The Chinese civil war of the early 20th century is another example. Despite having suffered enormous casualties and war exhaustion from ww2, both sides still managed to rack up a casualty toll in the millions (mostly civilians).
The resolve of the CPC is clear. 25 years ago, the world saw the events that unfolded in Tiananmen Square. CPC was prepared to use considerable force to crush what it saw was a threat. It was brutal, unapologetic and methodical. If the uyghur problem is seen as a similar level of threat, then it is inevitable that troops and tanks will roll in and do what they have to do. By that stage, there is nothing these terrorists can do other than run.
Mazo says
Did those Uyghurs forget to mention that violent Uyghur separatist groups received heavy training and funding from Soviets and the KGB before the Soviet Union collapsed?
The URFET terrorist group which conducted attacks in the 1990s, was spawned out of a Soviet funded group in the 1970s. The Soviets supplied tons of weapons, cash, and training to Uyghur terrorists to commit attacks .
Thousands of attacks were done by Soviet supported Uyghur terrorists were done from the 1960s to 1970s.
In the 1944-1946 “three districts rebellion” (Ili Rebellion), Soviet supported Uyghur terrorists of the “East Turkestan Republic’ massacred all Chinese civilians in the Ili districts.
Rebiya Kadeer’s father was one of those Soviet support terrorists, in Kadeer’s own autobiography, she said many Uyghurs admired the Russians and though of the Soviet Union as their ally.
Many Uyghurs who grew up in the 1990s read Turghun Almas’ Soviet inspired trash book Uyghurlar and grew up on delusions of granduer of a past that never existed. There was no 6,000 year old Uyghur Empire to rebuild. That was Soviet propaganda to justify Uyghur independence.
Something some terrorist Uyghurs drew from the Soviet collapse was that they were extremely pissed off that their main sponsor was dead. And also the people (Soviet propaganda “historians”) writing fictional historical accounts about how great their ancestors were, were now unemployed.
Urumqi is in Dzungaria and not part of Uyghur land in the Tarim Basin.
Mazo says
China also reguarly beamed radio broadcasts to Muslims living under Soviet rule in Central Asia in the 1980s, telling them that the Soviet Union was going to collapse and that it was an enemy of Islam and was torturing and killing Afghan Muslims. Some Kazakhs who received the broadcasts listened enthuisiatically.
http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/may2010/gb20100528_168520.htm
The same messages were beamed domestically to Uyghurs, that the Soviets were killing Afghan Muslims and were enemies of Islam, and that the collapse of the Soviet Union was coming.
China also trained anti-Soviet Afghan Mujahideen in camps near Kashgar where the majority of Uyghurs live.
China was drilling home the point that the Soviet Union was mortal right in their faces, because the Soviets were the ones supporting Uyghur seperatists. The Soviets used Radio Tashkent to beam Uygur language broadcasts into Xinjiang, telling the Uyghurs that they should revolt and that China was going to collapse.
Mazo says
Uyghurs are allowed to carry knives by the Chinese government for “cultural reasons” since they have a “knife culture”, while no other people in China are allowed to carry knives. Han, Muslim Hui, Muslim Salar, Muslim Dongxiang, and Manchu are not allowed to carry any sort of weapons on their bodies while Uyghurs can.
Name says
No knife in this attack
Steffen Larsen says
Wot? Noone been here yet to claim it has nothing to do with Islam and everything to do with social issues and the struggle for independence?
Mazo says
How certain ultra nationalist Uyghurs express Islam mixed with radical pan-Turkic ultra nationalism has nothing to do with Muslim Hui, Dongxiang, or Salars, and there are less Uyghur than Hui. Uyghurs are a minority in the Muslim population and their only importance is geopolitical since they are positioned in a strategic frontier province.
PJG says
I hope you’re right, Mazo. Of course, things can change when the going looks good.
Name says
I think the number of hui and uyghur are about the same about 10millions each, the other muslim minorities are not significant in number
joeb says
The BBC this morning in the UK had their reporter from Beijing saying that the Chinese government were trying “to curtail religious expression” of muslim Uighurs.
Well, looking at this and other bombings and knife attacks recently, it seems to me the Chinese AREN’T doing anything to curtail religious expression, because that’s precisely what this is.
Name says
I look up to wikipedia for terrorism in china, it looks like majority of attack in xinjiang occurred in uyghur majority prefectures aside from urumqi.
Name says
This attack came a day after the court convicted 39 uyghur terrorists, the last one was a day after xi visited the region, and during the visit 3 han officials were murdered, it looks like they are challenging the government or perhaps it is a war statement. Think the government should impose the israeli style checkpoint in xinjiang if this continue to happen.
Mazo says
Israel’s checkpoints are directed at non-citizen Palestinians, residents of non-annexed parts of the West Bank.
Although Israel would love to, they are legally barred from checkpointing their own Israeli Arab citizens and treating them the same way as non-citizen Palestinians, but they disciminate against them in other ways.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_citizens_of_Israel
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_people
Seeing as how Uyghurs are citizens of China and all of Xinjiang is legally part of China, your suggestion to copy Israel is pointless and completely irrelevant, since Israel cannot stop their own Arab citizens at checkpoints.
However, the Syrian government stops its own Arab citizens at checkpoints, seeing as its in the middle of a Civil War, to stop car bombings and attacks.
If you are going to make suggestions, don’t call them “Israeli style” because the majority of the world is against Israel and it will elicit a negative reaction.
Seeing as the majoriry of participants in civil wars all around the globe set up checkpoints, why are you putting a label on them? Russian separatists in Ukraine are setting up checkpoints against Ukrainians, Syrian Arab government is setting up checkpoints against its own Arab citizens, etc. there is no need to label it with an inflamatory label like “Israeli” since alot of people hate Israel.
Ruth Hirt says
Simply out of fury, Chinese government can harshly react. What with the actual execution of backlash? Cannot tell so much, though apparent how well they can carry through their expression of outrage. True what the rest here voices, the West should cower with shame in comparison to how much a smug culture like China can vow punitive measures to perpetrators against her people.