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Chinese Police Arrest 166 Xinjiang activists
China acts tough, but human rights
groups call foul
BEIJING, Jan. 6 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Police
in the capital of China's predominantly Muslim western
Xinjiang region have arrested 166 “separatists and
criminals” during a three-month campaign, Chinese
state media said in news agency reports Friday.
The arrests took place in Urumqi from September 20 to
November 30, 2001 during a crackdown on crime, the
Xinjiang Daily said in a report seen in Beijing Friday,
Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
Among the 166 were ethnic Uighurs classified by
Beijing as "terrorists" and other "major criminals"
the paper said, without giving a breakdown of the
figures.
The Chinese government has dubbed Muslim activists
working for a separate state of East Turkestan as "terrorists"
in the wake of the September 11 attacks in the U.S.
Police employed modern technology in making the
arrests, apprehending 91 of the 166 after posting
their data on the internet, the paper said.
The Chinese government insists it faces a serious
terrorism threat from Xinjiang activists, who are
mostly members of the Turkic-speaking Uighur minority.
In recent years the region has seen a sporadic and
limited campaign of violence by freedom fighters,
mainly in the form of bombings and riots.
However, the U.S. has said it does not consider
Xinjiang separatists to be terrorists, and human
rights groups have strongly stated their concern that
such labeling promotes human rights abuses.
The London-based human rights watchdog, Amnesty
International, issued a report warning that the
Chinese government's call on October 11 for
international support of its crackdown on "terrorism"
raised concerns about repression.
"The Chinese authorities do not distinguish between 'terrorism'
and 'separatism'," Amnesty International said in its
statement released the same day.
"Separatism in fact covers a broad range of activities
most of which amount to no more than peaceful
opposition or dissent. Preaching or teaching Islam
outside government controls is also considered
subversive."
Amnesty said that since the mid-1990s, several hundred
Uighurs accused of such activities have been executed
while thousands more have been detained, imprisoned
and tortured.
The group also said that the Chinese government has
placed growing restrictions on the practice of Islam
in the region.
In November, at the start of the Muslim holy month of
Ramadan, local and overseas news agencies reported
that some Muslims in Xinjiang province had been
forbidden from fasting and from wearing Islamic
headcovers.
A German-based Uighur group, the East Turkestan
Information Center, said schools and government
offices had banned Muslims from adhering to their
religious practice of fasting in daylight hours during
Ramadan, AFP reported.
A teacher at the Hotan Hygiene School, which trains
nurses in the southern Xinjiang city of Hotan, told
AFP that, "Because of what's happening in Afghanistan,
we've been told to increase our political ideology
training."
Students would be forced to eat together in the school
cafeteria, he added, and those who refused to comply
could be expelled. He confirmed that middle and
elementary schools were ordering pupils not to observe
fasting.
Also, earlier in November, Uighur women working in
government offices had been told they could not wear
headscarves during work because it was "feudalistic,"
the East Turkestan group's spokesman said.
"Typical headscarves are OK in our school, but those
tied in a religious way, showing only the face, are
not acceptable," the Hotan Hygiene School teacher told
AFP.
United Nations Human Rights Commissioner, Mary
Robinson, warned Chinese leaders during a visit to
Beijing in November that they should not use the war
on terror as an excuse for widespread repression in
Xinjiang
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ETIC REPORT 2000 
