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Activist Slams China’s Anti-Muslims "Opportunistic Bid"
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Becquelin
said “Uighur terrorists” have become part of the official
Beijing vocabulary since September 11.
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BEIJING,
September 6, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – A human
rights activist Tuesday, September 6, said that China’s accusation
to Muslims in the northwestern region of Xinjiang of being terrorists
was an “opportunistic bid” to shift attention form its oppressive
rule there.
“The
government uses terrorism as an excuse or an argument so that foreign
countries don't look into what is happening in Xinjiang,” Nicolas
Becquelin, a Hong Kong-based researcher for Human Rights in China,
told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
“They
(terror bids) are a way to legitimize the very grave and serious
violations of ethnic minorities' rights in Xinjiang, including
religious freedom.”
The
harsh criticism followed statements from senior government officials,
who claimed that the gravest terrorist threat right now was in
Xinjiang.
They
claimed that what they termed as "Muslim separatists" in
Xinjiang have killed more than 160 people in the past decade.
China
appears to have stepped up a crackdown on Xinjiang's Turkish-speaking
Uighur minority as the government prepares to mark the 50th
anniversary of its annexation of the region on October 1, AFP said.
Uighurs
are a Turkish-speaking minority of eight million whose traditional
homeland lies in the oil-rich Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region in
northwestern China.
China
sees Xinjiang as an invaluable asset because of its crucial strategic
location near Central Asia, AFP said.
Its
large reserves of oil and gas are an additional reason why
energy-starved China considers control of the region a top priority.
Policy
Shift
Becquelin
said in the late 1990s China rarely described Xinjiang separatists as
“terrorists” but that word has become part of the official Beijing
vocabulary since September 11, 2001.
In
an indication that China remains keen to link its problems in Xinjiang
with the global war on terror, Zhao Yongchen, deputy director of the
public security ministry's Anti-Terrorism Bureau, claimed that
Xinjiang Muslims had ties with Al-Qaeda in central Asia.
“They
have close ties and even align with terrorist groups including the
Taliban, the Uzbekistan Islamic Liberation Movement and Al-Qaeda,”
he said in statements carried by Xinhua news agency.
In
a 114-page report released in April, Human Rights Watch said Chinese
policy in Xinjiang “denies Uighurs religious freedom, and by
extension freedom of association, assembly, and expression.”
In
August, police detained a Uighur woman and 37 of her students, some as
young as seven, for studying the Noble Qur’an.
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