Foreign Ministry Spokesman Zhu Bangzao disclosed November 13 that
the "East Tujue" forces had all along had the support and training
from Osama Bin Laden, while denying the saying that there were
"East Tujue" elements receiving training in Pakistan.
A
reporter asked: At the weekend, Mme Robinson, senior commissioner
of the UN Human Rights Commission, disclosed to the media that a
Chinese official told her about 1,000 Uygurs of China were
receiving training in Afghanistan. Please prove this. The reporter
also asked: Are there also people being trained in Pakistan? How
many people are there?
Zhu Bangzao answered that there is an "East Tujue" force long been
engaged in terrorist activities. The "East Tujue" force has all
along received support and training from the Bin Laden Clique, and
has created a series of terrorist activities in China's
Xinjiang. Given this situation, crackdown on and eliminating
this terrorist force is an important component part of the
international anti-terrorist struggle.
Zhu indicates that China is willing to cooperate closely with the
international community in a common struggle against all forms of
terrorist activities, including the "East Tujue" terrorist force.
With regard to the question concerning the concrete number of
people, Zhu said he didn't have the figure at hand. With regard to
the question regarding whether there are people receiving training
in Pakistan, the Pakistan side has clearly indicated that there are
not such people receiving training in Pakistan.
Chinese Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan pointed out at the UN
Security Council foreign ministers conference on the morning of
November 12 that the "East Tujue" terrorist forces have long been
receiving training, financial aid and support from the
international terrorist clique, have repeatedly created various
kinds of terrorist activities in China's Xinjiang region and other
countries, done harm to the innocent. "East Tujue" is out-and-out
terrorism, is part of international terrorism and so should be
dealt with telling blows.
The term, "East Tujue", to be more exact, appeared in Chinese mass
media reports for the first time on October 10. The China News
Agency report said: Tang Jiaxuan indicated that China has been
subject to the serious harm of terrorists. Thereafter, a news
spokesman of the Chinese side said: conclusive evidence indicates
some of them have received training in the campsite of Afghanistan.
One of the "East Tujue" elements even went to Chechenya to
participate in illegal armed fights, said Zhang Guofeng with the
Eastern Europe and Central Asia Research Institute under Renmin University of
China. During Zhang's visit to Russia in November last year,
the picture of the TV news report he saw was: Two "East Tujue"
elements captured by the Russian army were being transferred to the
Chinese side.
Are there any "terrorists" in China? Scholars and common people in
Xinjiang and China's other regions have different answers to this
question, said Prof. Yang Shu, vice-president of Lanzhou
University and expert in the subject of Central Asia.
This reporter paid a special trip to Urumqi for news covering, when
he strolled along the street, he did not find any difference
between Urumqi and Beijing, but a Xinjiang native doing journalist
work told the reporter, "For a period of time, almost half a year,
I would go to work on foot, because I dare not take the bus."
"Crackdown on and high-handed measures" against terrorists is the
term often used at various conferences held in Xinjiang, the result
of this government policy is the peace and tranquility being felt
by the reporter. So, Yang Shu reminds the reporter, in the term of
"East Tujue", what merits our greater attention is -- "Its choice
of time". Whereas our policy toward terrorism "has hitherto
remained unchanged."
Before the APEC Conference in June this year, heads of state of the
six countries, China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan,
Uzbekistan gathered in Shanghai to declare the founding of Shanghai
Cooperation Organization (SCO), and jointly signed the Shanghai
Convention on Attacking Terrorism, Splittism and Extremism. The
Liberation Army Daily said: The signing of the Convention
has achieved a breakthrough in the turn from signing political
documents to signing legal documents. The difference between this
Convention and the Dusanbe Statement published by the five nations
a year ago is that the ordering of "terrorism" has been raised from
the second place to the first place.
Islam Karimov, president of Uzbekistan who had just joined the SCO
this year encountered in February 1999 the terrorist blast action
directed against him, the series of explosive incidents occurred in
Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan killed 15 innocents. Terrorism
has gradually become a chronic disease of this region.
OPEC leaders' anti-terrorism statement expresses in this way: In
the opinion of the leaders, this action of slaughtering lives and
all other forms of terrorist actions, no matter when and where they
occur, whom they are directed against and who perform these
actions, have posed serious threat to all people, all beliefs as
well as the peace, prosperity and security of all countries.
Terrorism also constitutes a direct challenge to the goal of
freedom, opening and prosperity as well as to the concept of value
advocated by the OPEC members.
Ili Incident
The news about the verdict carried in Xinjiang's Ili Evening
News on October 16 did not attract too much attention from
inland society: Criminals Abdul Mecid and Abdul Ahmad were
sentenced to death for "jeopardizing the basic interests of the
state". Quite a number of local media of Xinjiang did not mention a
single word about this.
The execution carried out on October 15 had an important reason:
The splittist was involved in the Ili incident occurred in 1997
that shocked people at home and abroad, the violence terrorist
activity, which was officially determined in nature as the February
5 incident of beating, smashing and looting disturbance. The
incident caused the death of nine people and injuries of more than
200 people, one of the condemned criminals, Abdul Mecid was
confirmed as the initiator of the terrorist activity.
Ms
Ma, engaging in news reports on the legal system, did not know the
news published on October 16, but she knew the Ili Incident. On
October 26, when the then situation was once again mentioned, she
remained as frightful as she did four years ago. Like most people
without similar experience, just taking a glance at the picture,
she genuinely felt for the first time the huge impact and threat
brought to the people by violence terrorist criminals. That was a
picture taken in the vicinity of the Yining City People's
Hospital.
--A young couple, who were prepared to go home to spend the Spring
Festival, encountered the terrorists when they reached the crossing
of the hospital. The gang grabbed the young woman's hair, her arms
were tied behind her back, they randomly made cuts and marks on her
face, kicked and trampled upon her until she died, the young man
was also beaten beyond recognition.
--When a soldier reached Qianjin (Progress) Street on his way to
visit relatives at home, he was stoned to death; a secretary of a
township cultural station was stabbed to death when he got to the
crossing of Ili Street and his body was thrown into a heap of
burning paper; a 50-year-old pedicab driver from the inland was
beaten to death by a gang of thugs with stones and clubs when he
reached the southern end of Shengli Road; a family of three were
seriously wounded by terrorists who broke into their home.
What was described above was only a small part, approximately 1,000
pictures and more than 500 objects simultaneously appeared at the
Xinjiang Exhibition of Crackdown on Violence Terrorist Criminal
Cases, aside from the February 5 Ili Incident, several influential
violence terrorist incidents occurred between 1996 and 1997 also
appeared in the exhibition.
Experts in the study on terrorism said: In the process of terrorist
activities and anti-terrorist struggle in Xinjiang, one very
important point is that the February 5, 1977 Ili Incident was an
indication of escalation, as well as the pinnacle of terrorist
violence activities.
The scale of the February 5 incident and the terrorist activities
in the ensuing days was unprecedented. When the head of the police
substation on East Xinhua Road, Yining city began to note that when
rioters suddenly appeared on the Taxi Laifu Market, at first, they
were only about 30 in number, the number was rapidly expanded to
several hundred till it reached 1,000.
An
official from the Yining city government watched a video tape which
shows: the rioters shouted the slogans "Driving the Han people
out", "Setting free the captured persons", and burned their ID
cards, register residence booklets and driver license, their
extreme act was stripping the Han pedestrians off their clothes
until some of them were naked at the chilly time of the Spring
Festival and the ethnic Id al-fitr festival.
The result of a subsequent police survey indicates that the key
elements of the February 5 incident traveled from Kashi, Hotan to
Yining, they said mysteriously: "Don't ask my address and my name,
I was sent by Allah" At that time, they forced the masses to burn
their ID cards and marriage certificates. They said: "that is
genuine Moslems".
Create Terror
Three weeks after the occurrence of the Ili Incident, a case of
nationally shocking bus explosion occurred in Urumqi City at 18:30
on February 25, 1997 which caused the death of nine people and
different degrees of injuries to 58 people. According to some CAS
experts in the study of terrorism, material from the police shows
that executors of the explosion case simultaneously set up an
illegal organization which had under it three action groups: a
fund-raising group, a murdering group and an explosion group.
The result of the study on the means used in world terrorist
activities between 1968-1987 indicated that the five main methods
for terrorist activities: blasting, assassination, (armed) raids,
kidnapping, abducting people as hostages and hijacking planes,
vehicles and ships used over the past 20 years accounted for over
80 percent of international terrorist activities, while explosion
made up 57 percent. By 1997, the five main methods accounted for
over 98 percent and explosion rose to 67 percent. Experts in the
study of terrorist activities in Xinjiang proved to this reporter
that in China, the means of assassination and kidnapping were
seldom used; most extremists were keen on creating assassination
incidents in the case of explosion, with their proportion even much
higher than the international average.
Prof. Wang Zhe with the Geography Department of Xinjiang Normal
University was on the scene on the day the February 25 incident
occurred. After hearing the deafening sound, he and his friends
first thought that the cement plant was blasting rocks, then they
guessed that the "arsenal was exploded", and then they saw the
three blasted buses on Xibei Road, Xiangyang Slope and People's
Road. The explosions were done mostly by one man and one woman who
got down the bus after setting time bombs on it.
Selection of explosion as the means conforms to the purpose of
terrorists in creating terrorist activities which, from the very
beginning, resulted in the killing of the innocents. Xiao Ma, a
staff member with the Xinjiang Legal Daily, would go to work
on foot rather than taking a bus for more than six months since the
occurrence of the case; this was the same choice for the majority
of people.
Origin of Terrorists
Xiaoklaiti Mahmti and others, the creators of the Ili incident,
were captured on February 11, 1999. According to a news report on
June 16, a member of the violence gang headed by Xiaoklaiti Mahmti
"had received military training at a certain place, after that he
sneaked back to Xinjiang and organized and carried out a series of
violence terrorist activities".
In
most news reports, the address where terrorists received military
training was very obscure. A material from a news briefing on the
"crackdown" and sentence meeting held by Urumqi Intermediary
People's Court on June 25 clearly pointed out that four criminals
fled to a little known place (guessed to be in the east of Kabul
and a training base of Laden) in Afghanistan in the period between
November 1995 to November 1997 to receive the training of making
detonation devices.
The four criminals, after receiving military training, returned in
succession to Xinjiang between the period from December 1997 to May
the following year. As soon as they arrived in Xinjiang, one of
them, named Usman Yimiti, set about to organize personnel to
receive detonation training, he also bought some sulfuric acid,
phosphorus and other chemicals for making blasting devices. The
chemicals he and other gangsters bought numbered as many as 8,200
bottles which were later transported to nine secrete military
training places, more than 100 persons under him participated in
the training of manufacturing detonation devices.
Fleeing to Afghanistan to receive military training is the main
choice of these terrorists. Sun Zhuangzhi with the Central Asia
Research Office under the Chinese Academy of
Social Sciences, citing statistics from related Russian
department, said about 200 Xinjiang terrorists had received
training in the Laden base, whereas Zhang Guofeng from the Renmin
University of China claimed that related Chinese statistics
indicated that "more than 1,000 people had received military
training in Afghanistan." What's interesting was when Zhang Guofeng
paid a visit to Russia in November last year, he saw the picture on
a TV news report that the two "East Tujue" terrorists captured by
the Russian Army were being turned over to the Chinese side. Prof.
Yang Shu with Lanzhou University said that these terrorists were
concentrated in Central Asia, some others were active in Germany
and Italy, whereas we traditionally thought they would choose
Turkey to be the place for their activities, now the concept has
somewhat changed.
As
regards how Usman Yimiti and others got to Afghanistan, there is no
definite saying about the choice of route. Yang Shu guessed, there
were most probably two lines: one was going from the south into the
Khyber Mountain Pass, the other route was Vahan Corridor, although
there is no formal road there, it is accessible. Of course, this
path is difficult of access.
According to Wang Mingye, terrorists can go to various Central
Asian countries and to Afghanistan in the name of doing business
and going on pilgrimage there, so the possibility of entering
Afghanistan from Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenstan cannot be
ruled out.
The same means of terror used in south Xinjiang is completely
different from that used in north Xinjiang. Yang Shu discovered
through research that terrorist incidents of violence are more in
south Xinjiang, but the resultant incidents of injury are
relatively less; the terrorist incidents of violence are very few
in north Xinjiang, but they are shocking at home and abroad.
In
the opinion of a researcher on terrorism who does not want to be
identified, the key areas of terrorist activities of China's
Xinjiang is north Xinjing, i.e., Ili, whereas in south Xinjiang,
terrorist activities are concentrated in places such as Kashi,
Aksu, Hotan and Yecheng. It is said that influence of foreign
terrorist forces is a characteristic of Ili's terrorist activities.
Such influence can simply be summed up as: Afghanistan is the
training place, while Central Asia is the base of activities.
Anti-Terrorism Force
Wang Lequan, secretary of the Communist Party Committee of Xinjiang
Uygur Autonomous Region, said in his report to the region's 6th
Party Congress held on October 24: We must strike resolute and
heavy blows at the key separatists, chief religious extremists and
violence terrorist criminals, "we must continue to launch
concentrated rectification work in key areas to ensure sustained
and stable development of Xinjiang."
In
Urumqi, most people are living in an environment of peace and
tranquility. School teacher Li Dong even feels that terrorism is a
distant thing. What Li Dong said a distant thing meant the most
serious terrorist activities that occurred in the two years of 1996
and 1997. While in Urumqi, this reporter asked Xinjiang locals
about their feeling, their answer was: terrorist activities reached
a peak, but now the situation is tranquil and the "sense" of
terrorism has even disappeared. Yang Shu, who often made tour to
Xinjiang for the study on the Central Asian issue proved to the
reporter this judgment. The reason he gave was that the local
government always maintained the "crackdown and high-handed" policy
toward terrorism, terrorist activities were nipped in the bud. So
it is very hard for ordinary people to perceive the existence of
terrorism. A relevant fact to the feeling of ordinary people was
the contract on investment project signed between a Hong Kong
business investigation group with Xinjiang in May this year, with
the amount of investment exceeding 1.5 billion yuan. From another
angle this shows the current social stability of Xinjiang.
But for public security personnel, such "distance" is non-existent.
A policeman with the New City District Public Security sub-bureau
in Urumqi said in their feeling, the "September 11" incident is far
away from the inland, but is near them.
"East Tujue"--Its Past and Present
During the Shanghai APEC Conference, Chinese Foreign Ministry
spokesman Zhu Bangzao explained China's official definition of
"East Tujue" element--There are indeed a group of national
splittists who attempt to separate Xinjiang from China through
terrorist means and set up a so-called "east Turkstan", we call
them "East Tujue" terrorists.
With regard to the reason for the emergence of "East Tujue"
elements, what academic circle has confirmed is the influence of
Islamism and Pan-Turkism in history.
Based on textual research, a scholar pointed out that historically,
Tujue (Turk) was a nomadic ethnic group who once set up two Tujue
Khan States in areas of Central Asia. East Tujue (Turk) was
subjugated by Huihe (direct ancestors of Uygur), and West Tujue was
subjugated by the Tang Dynasty. Since then the Tujue people (Turks)
lost the historical chance for developing into a modern
nationality. The two tribes of West Tujue moved westward to the
Asia Minor Peninsula and settled down there, their descendants
established the Otman Islam Empire, brilliant for quite a while.
After World War I, Kemal founded the Turkey republic on the ruins
of the said Empire.
Turkstan relevant to this concept is a place name, originally
referred generally to the birthplace of Tujue people in Central
Asia. In the 19th century, European geographers began to use this
name and expanded the scope of its affiliated land-Central Asia
became West Turkstan in the part of Russia, where Xinjiang of China
became East Turkstan.
In
the middle part of the 19th century, an Afghan proposed founding a
unified Islamic political entity by uniting all Islamic countries,
thus beginning the spread of Islamism. Pan-Turk-ism originated from
the Tartars who were oppressed by Pan-Slav-ism under the rule of
tsarist Russia, it was aimed to establish a unified Turks Empire by
uniting all nationalities from Asia Minor to Central Asia under the
Turki language system. Manifestation of these two trends of thought
in Xinjiang was the "East Turkstan independence movement".
Pan-Islamism and Pan Turk-ism began to spread into Xinjiang in the
early 19th century, they began to take shape in the early period of
the Republic of China. A Turk named Karmal and a Uygur intellectual
named Maiswood who was returned from Turkey after finishing his
study there were representatives of these two trends of thought..
In the early 1830s, Xinjiang was in a chaotic situation, taking
advantage of this opportunity, East Turkstan movement established
an "East Turkstan Islamic Republic" in Kashi. This regime existed
only three months, but it marked the beginning of the East Turkstan
movement, which has been carried on to this date.
"East Tujue" elements currently have two main activity centers,
said Sun Zhuangzhi, a young scholar with the Chinese Academy of
Social Sciences who is engaged in the study of Central Asian
subject. One center is in the West, mainly concentrated in Germany
and Italy, they attack the Chinese government by aid of the
viewpoint on the so-called human right situation in China; the
other is in Central Asia. Taking advantage of the chaotic situation
in the early period of independence in various Central Asian
countries, they emerged in succession in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.
Generally, they carry out their activities underground, the
governments of related countries adopted an attitude of attacking
them.
Prof. Yang Shu listed two currently influential "East Tujue"
organizations: 1. East Turkstan liberation front organization which
registered in Kazakhstan in 1994, later it was outlawed by the
Kazakhstan government, the organization's core member was Ahxil
Vyiding, who was once a high-ranking official in the Xinjiang Uygur
Autonomous Region. 2. The Uygur international union, its leader was
a Uygur researcher with the Hazakhstan Academy of Sciences.
It
should be pointed out here, "East Tujue" element is a general
concept, not the name of an organization. Prof. Yang Shu said that
there were over 50 "East Tujue" organizations of various sizes
abroad, concentrated mainly in Central Asian region. Generally an
organization was formed by several Uygurs. The activities of a
small organization generally include rally, distribution of
propaganda materials, training, drug trafficking or creating some
violence incidents in Xinjiang. Bigger organizations carry out
their activities in Europe, for instance, demanding "independence"
of Xinjiang.
Both Yang Shu and Sun Zhuangzhi held that despite the many
organizations, they fail to set up a genuine "East Tujue" core of
leadership. "East Tujue" elements have a certain socio-economic
foundation, their financial sources include operation of businesses
abroad, drug trafficking and obtaining financial aid from Arab
countries.
( November 16, 2001)