|
China Cracks Down on Muslim Uighurs
BEIJING, Oct 10 (News Agencies) - Chinese authorities are reportedly cracking down on Muslims in Xinjiang in western China. This report came on the same day as Chinese Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan compared the "separatist tendency" in Eastern Turkistan (Xinjiang) with the ongoing insurgency in Chechnya.
The semi-official China News Service reports that police in the city of Urumqi began a "campaign to clear up cases" earlier this month to curb "terrorist and separatist" activities.
"This action is aimed at maintaining public order and stability during the winter and next spring by smashing the bloated pride of violent terrorists," Urumqi public security bureau chief Du Jianxi was quoted as saying.
"Striking hard at violent terrorist activities and ethnic separatists is one of the main goals of this campaign," he said.
The Chinese News Service report claims that so far this year, 10 "violent" groups have been "wiped out" and around 210 "hardened minority splittists [sic], suspected violent criminal terrorists or religious extremists" arrested in Urumqi.
Du said the city was seeing the second stage in a campaign linked to the nationwide "strike hard" crackdown; a more generally aimed anti-crime drive that began in April.
The Independent newspaper of London reported in early August that the People's Liberation Army was conducting large-scale war games in Xinjiang region. The report claimed that several hundred armored personnel carriers, tanks and other military vehicles reportedly moved into position for the four day exercises taking place at a desolate mountain-fringed plateau 20 kilometers north from the city of Kashgar.
In another significant move, Chinese Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan, in a telephone conversation with Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and Qatari Foreign Minister Hamad bin Jassem al-Thani, told them that China was also a "victim of terrorism".
According to the People's Daily newspaper, Tang told Ivanov that "Russia is being severely harmed by the [Chechen] terrorists as China is also harmed by separatist-minded Eastern Turkistan terrorists." Tang said that as a country that borders Afghanistan, China has made efforts to resolve the Afghan conflict.
Meanwhile, an unconfirmed and seemingly contradictory report from the Israeli Debka-Net-Weekly claims that China has deployed thousands of troops to back the Taliban.
The report, parts of which were published in the Russian daily Pravda, says that "long Chinese convoys were carrying armed Chinese Muslim servicemen through northwest China into Afghanistan to support the Taliban militia prior to today's U.S. offensive."
According to the Debka File report, troop strength of the Chinese columns is between 5,000 and 15,000, and they crossed the border Friday.
The report claims the troops are being deployed in Whakyir and Jalalabad. "From Whakyir, the Chinese generals believe, with bin Laden's and the Taliban's tacticians, they will be able to block off the movement of the U.S.-led force from its rallying point in Dzhartygumbez, Tadjikistan, no more than 35 miles from Little Pamir, into the mountains of Hindu Kush." the report said.
According to official estimates, there are 20 million Muslims in China. Most of them are concentrated in Xinjiang, Ningxia, Gansu, and Qinghai regions and provinces. Smaller Muslim communities can also be found throughout China's interior.
In the late 1940s, Muslims declared an independent East Turkistan Republic, but their aspirations were shot down after China brought the province under its firm control in 1949.
China is trying to reduce the Muslim majority in the region by relocating thousands of Han Chinese into the area. In 1997, a series of bomb blasts in the region were blamed on Muslim separatists. Last December, six Muslims were killed in Shandong after Muslims protested a "Muslim pork" sign at a Han butcher shop and the hanging of a pig's head outside a local mosque.
|
