Posted on 12/11/2001 11:56:17 AM PST by super175
Edited on 04/29/2004 1:59:46 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
HONG KONG, China (CNN) -- Anti-Beijing "terrorist" forces in Xinjiang have killed more than 40 people and injured 330 since the early 1990s, according to officials in the autonomous region.
Xinjiang, in the west of China, has been a base of Uighur separatism and pro-Islamic religious groups.
(Excerpt) Read more at asia.cnn.com ...
However, I have one question for him...
Anti-Beijing "terrorist" forces in Xinjiang have killed more than 40 people and injured 330 since the early 1990s, according to officials in the autonomous region.
So they took 40 of 'yours' but how many of 'theirs' have the CCP taken since the 1950s?
Mao tried to reconquer a land and a people that were conquered by the Qing, and they did it in no different terms than the Qing did...
Therein lies the problem.
Quoting officials, the paper said separatists and terrorists had killed or tried to assassinate senior cadres as well as "patriotic religious personnel" in the region, including a vice-chairman of the regional Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.
All these targets were Chinese Communist Party. That's not terrorism. That's insurrection, civil war, rebellion, whatever you call it. But not terrorism.
The fact is the Chinese Communist party has closer ties and links and dealings with the Taliban and al Qaeda than the East Turkestan movement does. They didn't buy US cruise missiles from al Qaeda or build fiber optic networks for the Taliban, but the ChiComs did.
Bush himself in Shanghai said that the war on terrorism cannot be used as an excuse to persecute minorities. That had to just burn the ChiComs up.
And last week or so Gen. Frank Taylor went to Beijing and said the same thing.
The New York Times put it like this:
Also, General Taylor said he made clear that the United States would not support Beijing's effort to paint Uighur Muslim nationalists in China's Xinjiang region as terrorists. China has been criticized for trampling on people's rights as it tries to stamp out ethnic separatism in the region, but Chinese officials insist that Uighur militants have received outside training and aid.
Some Uighurs had been discovered with the Taliban forces in Afghanistan, General Taylor said, and some have committed acts of violence inside China. But he said that "the legitimate economic and social issues" facing people in northwest China "need political solutions, not counterterrorism."
After Taylor said this, the New York Times oddly titled their article:
"U.S. Official Praises China for Its Cooperation in Rooting Out bin Laden's Terror Network".
I think the charge was that the US was shipping weapons to Western China via the old mujahideen in Afghanistan (Northern Alliance)...
I don't know where they get the guns at for real though...
That's politics. BTW, the Xinjiang Islamic terrorists are not attacking exclusively on the CCP's military targets. They are attacking civilians, buses, post offices and public gatherings.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.