|
Mon December 15, 2003 06:15 AM ET
China Issues Wanted List of
Muslim Separatists
By Jonathan Ansfield
BEIJING (Reuters) - China released a wanted list of
Muslim separatist groups and individuals Monday,
accusing them of acts of terror and appealing to
foreign governments to ban the groups and track down
and hand over their members.
One day after the United States announced the capture
of toppled Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, China's
Ministry of Public Security named four groups
campaigning for self-rule in the tense northwest and
11 ethnic Uighur suspects -- all of whom are at large.
"They have planned, organized and carried out a series
of violent terrorist activities such as bombings,
assassinations, arsons, poisonings and attacks," Zhao
Yongchen, deputy chief of the ministry's anti-terror
bureau, said in a statement.
He appealed to other governments to ban the groups,
stop them from getting support or asylum, freeze their
accounts and prosecute wanted individuals and
extradite them to China.
China, which threw its weight behind President Bush's
war on terror and won U.S. and U.N. support for an
earlier crackdown on one of the four groups, opposed
the war in Iraq.
But as a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council,
it is an influential voice the United States will be
keen to keep onside in the debate on Iraq after
Saddam's capture.
Many Turkic-speaking Uighur people dream of
establishing an independent state in the Xinjiang
region, which they would call East Turkestan.
A spokesman for two pro-independence groups that were
named Monday denied terrorist activity, saying they
were political movements legally registered in Germany
and operating within the law.
Rexiti Dilixiadi, speaking by telephone from Sweden,
said the Chinese government had waited to release the
list until after Premier Wen Jiabao's visit to the
United States last week, when he pledged China would
work on its human rights record.
OVERLOOKED?
"Saddam has just been captured, some Western countries
are celebrating and under these circumstances, they
will be distracted," Rexiti, of the East Turkestan
Information Center (ETIC) and World Uighur Youth
Congress, added. Continued ...
China has blamed pro-independence activists for a
string of bombings and riots since the 1980s in
Xinjiang, which borders the former Soviet Central
Asian republics and Pakistan and Afghanistan, as well
as in other parts of the country.
But Uighur and human rights activists abroad accuse
China of using the global war on terror to legitimise
a tightened clampdown and single out groups unfairly.
Some Western diplomats and scholars also doubt there
is a unified Uighur independence movement. They say
most Uighurs are struggling against cultural and
economic inequities and, under the watch of police and
military, lack the coordination to execute sustained
violence.
The other two groups police named were the East
Turkestan Liberation Organization and the East
Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM).
The United States added the ETIM to its terrorist list
last year at China's bidding. China says ETIM members
have trained with and fought alongside militants from
Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network.
Police said ETIC hatched a plot in March to blow up
train tracks linking Xinjiang to the neighboring
province of Gansu but Rexiti denied any such plot: "The
Chinese government's unilateral accusations should not
be believed."
|
