China calls for help against terror
CHINA has appealed for international help in the battle it says it is waging against Islamist militants in its far western region of Xinjiang.
This comes as Beijing seeks Western support for its own “war on terror” in the wake of the Paris attacks.
Hundreds of people have died in unrest in Xinjiang, home to the mostly Muslim Uighur people, and other parts of China over the past three years or so.
Beijing has blamed much of the violence on Islamist militants, led by the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (Etim), a group it says has ties to al-Qaeda and wants to establish an independent state called East Turkestan.
China has
reported
that
some Uighurs have travelled to Syria and Iraq to fight with Islamic State and other groups.
Speaking in Turkey on Sunday on the sidelines of the G20 summit, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi called on the international community to form a “united front to combat terrorism” in the aftermath of the Paris attacks. “China is also a victim of terrorism, and cracking down on Etim should become an important part of the international fight against terrorism,” he said.
Many foreign experts doubt Etim exists as the coherent group China portrays, or even exists at all.
Western countries have long been reluctant to share intelligence with China or otherwise cooperate, saying China has provided little evidence to prove Etim’s existence and citing worries about possible human rights abuses in Xinjiang.
One Beijing-based Western diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, said it was inevitable China would try to use what happened in Paris to seek Western support in Xinjiang, much as it did after the September 11 2001 attacks in the United States.
Rights groups and exiles say the violence stems more from widespread Uighur resentment at Chinese controls on their religion and culture rather than being committed by a well-organised militant group.
China strongly denies abusing human rights in Xinjiang.
“Nobody wants to cooperate closely with a government that is so oppressive at the religious level,” Amnesty International’s East Asia director Nicholas Bequelin said.
The Global Times, an influential tabloid published by the ruling Communist Party’s People’s Daily, slammed what it said was the hypocrisy of Western nations, who reeled from their own attacks and yet refuse to offer wholehearted support to combat China’s militant problems.
President Xi Jinping, called on Sunday at the G20 Summit for the world not to adopt “double standards” when it came to terrorism, Chinese code for the anger it feels at the lack of strong Western condemnation of violence in Xinjiang. — Reuters