Asia-Pacific News
BACKGROUND: China equates pro-independence Uighurs with terrorists
Apr 3, 2008, 13:06 GMT
Beijing - China's ruling Communist Party has intensified its ideological battle with members of its Uighur minority who seek an independent state in the Central Asian region known by Beijing as Xinjiang.
Uighur exiles, human rights groups and scholars say the global fight against terrorism following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States has allowed China to claim the moral right to crack down on political and religious dissent in Xinjiang.
The party closely monitors religious activities and wages a public war against what it terms the 'three evil forces' of religious extremism, separatism and terrorism.
It has claimed to have evidence showing that Rebiya Kadeer, the exiled president of the World Uighur Congress and an advocate of Uighurs' political rights, has 'conspired with separatists and religious extremists to plan terror attacks'.
Kadeer on Tuesday accused China of enforcing 'policies of cultural assimilation and political persecution in Tibet and East Turkestan', using the name still given to Xinjiang by many Uighurs.
'Because of our shared experience under the Chinese regime, Uighurs stand in solidarity with the Tibetan people and support their legitimate aspirations for genuine autonomy,' she wrote in the Washington Post.
'To Beijing, any Tibetan or Uighur who is unhappy with China's harsh rule is a 'separatist',' Kadeer said.
'Uighurs are also labelled 'terrorists',' she added.
Kadeer was imprisoned in 1999 after she was convicted of 'providing state secrets abroad.'
Rights groups said she was convicted only of sending newspaper clippings from Xinjiang to her husband in the United States.
China released her on medical parole in March 2005 and allowed her to leave for the United States, later accusing her of plotting terrorist attacks in Xinjiang.
Xinjiang is a vast Muslim-majority region that borders Pakistan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and Kazakhstan. More than 60 per cent of its 20 million people are from the Uighur, Kazakh, Kirgiz, Hui, Mongol and other ethnic minorities, according to government statistics.
Some 7.5 million Uighurs, most of whom are Muslims, form the largest minority in Xinjiang. Millions of ethnically Chinese people have migrated to the region since it came under Communist Party control in 1949.
The World Uighur Congress accuses former Chinese communist leader Mao Zedong of colonising Xinjiang after reneging on a promise to allow self-determination for the region.
In parts of Xinjiang the hostility of Uighurs towards Chinese people is palpable. Many Uighurs complain of cultural and religious repression and claim ethnically Chinese migrants enjoy the main benefits of development in the oil-rich but economically backward region.
Some Uighurs favour independence from China and have staged small- scale terrorist attacks in the past. The government said terrorists were responsible for 200 incidents that killed 162 people in Xinjiang from 1990-2001, but almost no terrorism-related incidents have been reported there in recent years.
In January 2007, China said its forces killed 18 suspected terrorists and destroyed an East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) training camp in Xinjiang, claiming evidence that ETIM had more than 1,000 members trained by al-Qaeda.
International experts cast doubt on China's account of the incident.
'The organization [ETIM], if it exists at all, was never large and dropped out of sight with the death of its reputed leader, Hasan Mahsun, who died in 2003 at the hands of Pakistani troops,' Dru Gladney, an expert on Xinjiang an president of the California-based Pacific Basin Institute, said last year.
Yet Wang Lequan, the Xinjiang regional secretary of China's ruling Communist Party, last month said another suspected ETIM terrorist group raided by special forces in Xinjiang in January had plotted an attack on the Beijing Olympics.
Amnesty International and other rights groups regularly accuse China of using the fight against global terrorism to justify 'long- standing repression' of the rights of Uighurs.
Dilxat Rexit, the Munich-based spokesperson for the World Uighur Congress, last week said Chinese police had started a new crackdown on Uighur dissent in Xinjiang ahead of an Olympic torch parade there in July.
Dilxat Rexit urged global leaders to boycott the opening ceremony of the Olympics in Beijing on August 8 in protest against the crackdown.
'Uighurs oppose Beijing holding the Olympics because China didn't fulfil its promise of improving human rights, but Uighurs respect the Olympic spirit and will never sabotage the Olympics,' he said.
COMMENT
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Older Talkback
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I have not heard of any public demand for independence of those US-controlled areas. I have, on the other hand, heard of near-universal demand for independence for Tibet as it was prior to 1950, and of wide popular support also for regaining of independence for East Turkestan (called 'Xinjiang' by China).
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Californian_independence
Sorry, I am not American, and so have not heard not much about those American stories. But I do not live in China either, but have still heard a lot about the desires of people in Tibet and East Turkenistan to undo the brutal invasions of their territories.
Have you heard of the Iraq war going on right now?
Stay on topic, please!
What is the relevance of the Iraq War to the desires of the people of Tibet and East Turkmenistan to run their own nations themselves? Nobody has declared Iraq to be an 'inseparable part' of any other country. While I think that the Iraq War was/is a stupid mistake, and should be the subject of a separate discussion, I do not see that as any kind of excuse for China to bully the people under its Imperialist thumb. This topic is about the rights of people not to be dictated to by Chinese Invaders.
Have you found an excuse for the U.S. to bully Iraq?
Do Iraqis have their rights to repel the American invaders?
What made you think the Iraq invasion was only a mistake?
You should also think about finding excuses for the genocide of Native Americans, since I will ask you about that later on.
I am still not sure what your problem is.
We are discussing China's continued brutal occupation of lands it invaded. Are you embarrassed to keep to that topic? How does anything that America did, and for which it too might receive condemnation, bear any relation to this? It is not a competition between two big countries to see which is the most oppressive towards other peoples.
For the record, in case it is on any interest to you, I did not state the full force of my feelings about the Iraq War, because that is not our topic here. But I was strongly opposed to it from the beginning, for pretty much the same reasons as I am opposed to China's denial of rights to the peoples in its empire. I was pleased to be in a country that did not take part in the invasion or either Iraq or Tibet.
So, now, to return to the actual topic at hand, what can we do to encourage China to allow some freedom to the people under its tight control?
Although I knew from the beginning you are not intelligent enough to discuss anything constructively, I thought that you at least would remember what you wrote in your own posts.
'I have not heard of any public demand for independence of those US-controlled areas. '
So I was giving you examples of such. Get it now? High school drop-out.
You missed the point of that comparison. It was a response to the rather illogical comparison you had already made of those causes with that of the people in the Chinese Empire. Even though America has excellent mass communication, there has not been any loud call for independence from any part of its territory. There are calls from small minorities, but those calls have not ignited any popular passions. On the other had, even though there is no independent mass media in China, the calls from the people there are still loud enough, and have enough popular support, to be heard around the world. Therefore, the voices of those people are quite important, because of the popular support for them, whereas the voices calling for independence from American domination are small enough to be nearly insignificant. Maybe there are real grievances to be addressed there, I do not know enough about it, but I have heard enough about the grievances of the people in the Chinese Empire to know that those injustices are real, and inexcusable.
As a separate matter, here is a useful hint. Name-calling is not a useful debating device. It simply makes the person doing the name-calling look foolish, and is more often taken as an indicator of the name-caller's own state of being, than any real reflection on the person being addressed in that manner.
You said you didn't know something. I provided some related info. If that was helpful, show appreciation. If you don't intend to study them, go screw yourself. What else do you want from me? Idiot.
If you want, I'll give one more advice. If you haven't even heard of the American Civil War, stop thinking about Tibet and other more complex garbage stuff.
By the way, you sounded like you're very proud of your country. Where are you from?
Who in America still supports the right of the South to secede from the rest of the country? I have not heard of any mass movement to that effect. Even if there was, that would not have any relevance to what this discussion is about, which is about China and its conquered territories, not about anybody else. This particular thread is not the place for discussing your grievances about other countries.
This discussion is about China, not about the misdeeds or problems of other countries.
If you are willing to discuss China, which you seem singularly unwilling to do, then I will engage in further debate with you. I will wait until you have indicated that willingness.
It is about time to redefine the outdated One China principle as follows in order to have a long lasting peace in that region:
There is only One China on earth which consists of Xinjiang, Tibet, Taiwan, Mongolia, Manchuria, PRC [if not vanish like USSR did] & other ethnic groups inside China.
Furthermore PRC represents CCP only instead of the entire China. In other words, PRC is not equal to China & neither China equals to PRC.
Nixon & USA have made a serious mistake on the One China policy with PRC since 1972 & PRC has taken advantage of that mistake ever since. You will see more and more uprisings in Tibet, Xinjiang, Taiwan & other regions in the future due to that mistake.
Unfortunately, the entire world seems to be very eager to get a piece of PRC's market & no one dares to upset that regime today. That is why you don't hear 'Boycott' or 'Sanction' anymore as you did before. The FREE WORLD seems to prefer having Good Life & Profits to Democracy, Human Rights & Justice for the time being.
A good number of Uighurs were trained by AlQaeda to fight for an Islamic state in China. As long as there are dissent in a country that are potential adversary to the US . CIA will fund and cultivate such groups. Its a fact that CIA played a big role in instigating the 1959 Tibetan uprising , 1989 Tiananmen protest and instigating India to contain China. With American subversion the leaders in China has become paranoia and harden its stance. As long as westerners are giving support to such groups,
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Independent Hawaiian Kingdom!Apr 3rd, 2008 - 17:18:37
Immediately!!!!!!!
Also return of California, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, and Utah to Mexico.
Independence for Puerto Rico!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And unification of Alaska and so-called Northwest Territories for an independent Inuit homeland!!!!!
By the Independent International Commission for Human Rights Check Against White Occupied Countries
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