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CHINESE REGIME UNLEASHES STATE TERROR AGAINST EAST TURKISTAN
(Editorial)
In the beginning of April, 2001, the communist Chinese regime ordered the Chinese law enforcement agencies to start a new cycle of the "strike hard" campaign to fight "crime" in the country. The leaders of the Chinese communist party described the main goal of the "strike hard" campaign as "to improve the social order through defeating dark groups and various criminals". But, in the Xinjiang-Uighur Autonomous Region, this campaign turned into persecution of Islam, Muslims, and anyone suspected in favoring the idea of independent East Turkistan.
Commenting on the main target of "strike hard" in East Turkistan, Chairman of a puppet government of the Xinjiang-Uighur Autonomous Region, Ablet Abdurishit, an ethnic Uighur himself, said: "Ethnic separatists are the main dark group and most dangerous criminals in Xinjiang, and, this time, Strike Hard has to aim at fighting with ethnic separatists".
During his visit to East Turkistan on April 13, Chi Haotian, the Chinese Defense Minister, stressed at the meeting of the region's military and Bintuan officials that "PLA divisions and Bintuan located in Xinjiang must unite efforts to fight ethnic separatists".
In early 1990s, the fall of the Soviet Union caused sudden and profound changes in the world, including break-ups of the USSR and Republic of Yugoslavia. Dozens of new nations appeared on the world map. These changes fueled the pro-independence aspiration of the Uighurs whose home country, East Turkistan, has been a Chinese colony since late 19th century.
Since then, the idea of independent East Turkistan has penetrated all levels of the Uighur society. Some Uighurs resorted to various form of actions, while others remained silent supporters of the idea. The proportion between these two groups is steadily changing in the direction of increase of the former. The pro-independence struggle interlaced with the struggle for human rights and self determination in East Turkistan.
However, the Chinese communist leaders in Beijing still do not understand that the age of colonialism and totalitarianism has come to its end, and that the world is entering the unprecedented epoch of freedom and democracy. The Chinese leaders have not learned right lessons from the collapse of the USSR, the break-up of Yugoslavia, the war in Kosovo, downfall of Milosevic, and the ongoing war crime trials in Hague. On the contrary, the Chinese regime believes that the Chinese empire must be saved at any cost because the downfall of the empire will be the end of the communist rule in this Asian country.
Beijing rulers learned one lesson from the break-up of the USSR, that is, if they give more freedom to the Chinese people and if they let their colonized peoples free, they will be ousted from the power and persecuted. That is why the agonizing regime strengthening repressions against all of its political opponents, including the suppression of any signs of dissent in East Turkistan.
Nowadays, millions of Uighurs and other non-Chinese peoples suffer in East Turkistan from the state terror unleashed by the criminal regime in Beijing. The last decade entered the Uighur history as the decade of harshest repressions against the Uighurs by the communist Chinese government. Since 1996, thousands of innocent people in East Turkistan were thrown in prisons being labeled as "ethnic separatists" and "reactionary religious elements", and many were executed in the result of the "strike hard" campaign. Arrested people are often subjected to barbaric medieval tortures. Evidently, a new cycle of repressions is on the way in the "strike hard" against Uighurs.
Wang Lequan, a Chinese communist party boss in Xinjiang-Uighur Region, said "take as many people as necessary, but do not let even a single separatist escape from the net". Such repressive actions against the Uighur people can be compared with the Stalin's policy of collective punishment of "unreliable" peoples of 1930's and 1940's.
Amazingly, the international community turned a deaf ear to screams of the tortured and last dying sighs of the executed. Rustling of money falling from the trade with China is the only sound that the ears of the international community are capable to hear nowadays. The silence by the international community on the situation in East Turkistan unleashes hands of the Chinese authorities in harsh handling of the Uighurs in East Turkistan.
It is even more disappointing that Russia, Pakistan, and Central Asian republics pursuing their short sighted interests support the bloody suppression of Uighurs in East Turkistan.
On the contrary, pursuing its far fetching policy, China initiated and organized a military-political alliance with Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan by signing the Shanghai Five agreement in April of 1996 on coordinated actions "against terrorism and separatism in the Central Asian region". No doubt that the only reason of initiating this alliance was the preparation for the future "Chechnya" in East Turkistan.
The Chinese democracy movement seems to be in disarray. The Chinese intellectuals understand the need for democratic reforms in China. Still, many of them deny the colonial nature of the Chinese state and put interests of the Chinese state above the interests of the oppressed peoples.
More Uighurs realize today that the actions of the Chinese government against Uighurs target not individual "criminals" but the Uighurs as an ethnic group potentially capable to consolidate and to break away from the Chinese empire.
To repulse this last rampant assault of the hateful Chinese regime, the Uighur independence movement should consolidate, and the Uighur Intifada type movement should be initiated in East Turkistan. The Uighur population in other Central Asian countries and Uighur diasporas in Turkey, western, and Muslim countries should strike bells and should continue to direct the attention of the international community to the outrageous actions of the Chinese regime in East Turkistan. The international community should be persuaded to monitor the situation with human and minority rights in East Turkistan and to express protests to the communist Chinese government in Beijing for ist uncivilized treatment of the Uighurs.
[ETIC, April 21, 2001]
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ETIC REPORT 2000 
