Beijing’s ‘war on terror’ hides brutal crackdown on Muslims

[spindrifter]

From The Sunday TimesJuly 22, 2007

<snip>

Today China is waging a propaganda and security battle to guarantee its control over Xinjiang, its name for the vast province rich in minerals and strategic supplies of oil and gas which are vital to the expanding Chinese economy.

China claims that Al-Qaeda has trained more than 1,000 members of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, classified as a terrorist group by America and the United Nations.

The group took its name from the short-lived Republic of East Turkestan that was declared in Xinjiang after the second world war, then crushed by the communist revolution of 1949.

China has persuaded Pakistan and Kazakhstan to hand over captured militants for interrogation, secret trials and execution, a policy that may have fuelled the fundamentalist rage now gripping Pakistan.

<more>

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/china/article2116123.ece

[libodem]

1. Mark my words

History will see these unfortunate Human Beings as martyrs. They will be as pitied as the German Jews were in WWII. God, I wish we could help them now. You just can't go around scapegoating whole segments of the population. It leads to genocide. It's WRONG! The world's gone insane.