News
After Paris attacks, China again seeking to place East Turkestan on "international war on terror" map
Beijing demands Western support against Uyghur pro-independence movement · World Uyghur Congress rejects link between self-determination and violence, says Chinese government uses terrorism threat to "oppress" Uyghurs
Those demands were voiced by Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi at the G20 meeting that took place in Turkey over the weekend. Wang was mainly referring to the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), an armed group that is fighting since the 1990s for the establishment of an Islamic state in Uyghur-majority East Turkestan.
Little is known about ETIM, some experts even suggesting that it might not be one single, unified organization, but a constellation of not very cohesive armed groups, some of them not even Uyghur-based.
Anyway, peaceful Uyghur organizations such as the WUC are blaming the Chinese government for systematically using ETIM to link self-determination demands in East Turkestan to Islamist violence. WUC spokesman Dilxat Raxit believes Beijing is now repeating the strategy: "China has always taken every opportunity to use international terrorist attacks" with a "political aim: to link Uyghurs to terrorism."
"The Chinese government," Raxit argues, "shoots Uyghurs who protest persecution under its rule, and then says they were terrorists - yet another form of special policies aimed at the oppression of Uyghurs."
Rare pictures of anti-terror operation
The day after the Paris attacks, the Chinese government released nine pictures of what official state media reported to be "a full attack on the terrorists" in East Turkestan, which "got great results" after "56 days of pursuing and attacking." The pictures show armed policemen in a mountain scenario, apparently being ready to storm a house.
It is unusual for the Chinese authorities to release pictures of security operations in East Turkestan.