China: U.S. Hindering Anti-Terror Campaign

Chron.com ^

[maui_hawaii]

BEIJING — A top Chinese official accused the United States Friday of hindering the global anti-terror campaign by refusing to hand over five Chinese Muslims released from the Guantanamo Bay detention center.

Parliament Vice Chairman Ismail Amat, the highest-ranking member of the Muslim Uighur minority in the Chinese Communist Party, said his nation suspects the five men, who were captured during the U.S. assault on Afghanistan in 2001-2002, are members of a terror group.

"I think America is implementing a double standard in fighting terrorism. This is unacceptable to us," said Amat, who is also a member of the party's Central Committee, the heart of Chinese power.

The U.S. military flew the men to Albania last week after Washington concluded they posed no terrorist threat to the United States but might face persecution if they returned to China.

Beijing has demanded they be returned to China and linked them to the East Turkistan Islamic Movement, which it says has ties to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida terror network.

"They received Taliban or al-Qaida training in Afghanistan," Amat said. "They are hard-core terrorists and should be dealt with under the law."

Asked whether China had evidence against the men, Amat implied that their mere presence in Afghanistan was enough.

"The Americans caught them in Afghanistan," Amat said. "They were serving in a terrorist organization. They should be dealt with under the law."

China has been fighting a low-level insurgency against Islamic separatists in its western territory of Xinjiang, whose Uighur ethnic majority has close cultural and religious ties to other Central Asian groups. Xinjiang is sometimes referred to by Uighurs as "East Turkistan."

Beijing blames Uighur separatists for sporadic bombings and other violence in the Xinjiang region. But diplomats and foreign experts are skeptical and say most violence stems from personal disputes. China's military brutally suppressed a series of Uighur protests in the 1990s and is believed to continue to execute accused separatist activists.

No terrorist acts have been reported for years in Xinjiang.

While giving no figures for arrests, Amat said "mere followers" were sent to labor camps to be educated in "a correct understanding of ethnic unity and social stability," while organizers were "dealt with severely under the law."

[Lake]

>>The end results can be the same, but the ideology and reasoning behind it is different with each extremist movement.

So how do you define terrorism? By ideology or by the end results? Killing innocent people is not terrorism if it's agaisnt communism, right?

[maui_hawaii]

Violence by its very nature is 'terrorism'. The Nazis were terrified by the Allied Invasion...

How one defines 'terrorism' is a question thats been around for a very long time.

None the less innocent people should not be attacked.

[cmdjing]

I'm sorry, but saying someone else is full of crap when you wrote some ill-informed halfwit nonsense on a non-existant forced interracial marriage scheme that only even less-informed people at Free Republic would believe is the height of full-of-crapiness.

At least some people have a sense of clarity and ideological consistancy. It was only a generation ago that some were advocating on behalf of mohammedans against those oh so evil communists. Afterall they were spunky religious do gooders rebelling against Soviet atheist tyranny. Of course remind me again how that worked out.

[maui_hawaii]

The only ill informed person here is you. You might be better served reading a book rather than surfing the internet...

[Gorobei]

Sometimes tough decisions such as this need to be made, as we find ourselves faced with a choice of supporting one evil or another when thoese two are in opposition. President Reagan had the wisdom to prop up Hussein in the 1980's to blunt the reach aof the Ayatollahs. Setting them up to bea each other to a pulp was in our best interests, even if we would have otherwise shunned a thug like Hussein.

Let's look at the present; al Qaeda affiliated thugs vs. Communist China. Are we better off aiding China crush their dissident/separatist problem, or stand aside and let them have to deal with it on their own? I certainly would never advocate aiding and abetting the Uighurs, but at the same time I see no reason to actively hinder them either.