What Can We Learn From The Chinese Government Crackdown On Uighur Muslims?

[Mojo2]

Are there any lessons we can learn from the Chinese government crackdown on Uighur Muslims?

This requires you put on your thinking caps and read the article and apply that news with what we already know about our own situation in the US.

The Price of China's Uighur Repression Jailing of Ilham Tohti Will Radicalize More Uighurs

By NICHOLAS BEQUELIN
SEPT. 25, 2014

This story is included with an NYT Opinion subscription.

China’s sledgehammer approach to dissent was on display once more this week, when the authorities sentenced the Uighur economist Ilham Tohti to life in prison on Tuesday. The verdict attracted widespread international condemnation and risks further accelerating a vicious circle of repression, discrimination and violence in China’s westernmost region.

Mr. Tohti, a professor at Minzu University in Beijing, was found guilty of “separatism” — the usual charge leveled against nonethnic-Han Chinese, such as Uighurs, Mongols or Tibetans, when they criticize Beijing’s ethnic-minority policies. Mr. Tohti has always stressed his personal opposition to separatism, but according to the prosecution’s tortured logic, this was in fact proof that he was a “covert” separatist.

The real reasons behind Mr. Tohti’s conviction stem from his outspoken efforts to convince the central government to change the course of oppressive policies in his native Xinjiang, which he said were generating more violent resistance among the 10-million-strong mostly Muslim Uighurs.

Occasional violent outbursts have long been a feature of life in the Xinjiang region but the tumult reached unprecedented levels after mass riots in the capital Urumqi in July 2009. Triggered by the suppression of a peaceful demonstration by Uighurs calling for a government inquiry into mistreatment, the turmoil left hundreds of people dead, most of whom were Han Chinese, the country’s dominant ethnicity.

The Chinese government responded with a crackdown on the entire Uighur population, with thousands of indiscriminate arrests, disappearances, widespread use of torture and drastic controls on any form of expression of ethnic identity, including religion. In the last five years, China has in all but name adopted a counterinsurgency model in Xinjiang to wage its “people’s war against separatism.”

But the authorities have little to show for what they call “high-pressure” tactics. Since 2009, violence has been increasing, as more Uighurs are seeking revenge against all things Chinese by mounting spectacular and often suicidal attacks that have included ploughing vehicles into crowds, attacking Han Chinese travelers with knives, detonating bombs and killing local officials or Han Chinese settlers.

The Internet is undoubtedly playing a role in fostering Uighur violence, as it has made a kind of off-the-shelf jihadism available to aggrieved individuals. Websites justify indiscriminate attacks in the name of Islam, provide jihad how-to manuals, and give new “instant converts” a sense of meaning as members of a global jihadi struggle.

But Mr. Tohti was right: The escalation of violence is the direct result of China’s repression. The overwhelming majority of Uighurs are still opposed to violence, and to any form of radical Islamism, which they see as foreign and counter to their moderate way of life. Yet it should surprise no one that as Beijing tightens its grip, more Uighurs are becoming radicalized.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/26/opinion/nicholas-bequelin-china-jailing-of-ilham-tohti-will-radicalize-more-uighurs.html?_r=0

 

[waltky]

ISIS jihadis gettin' ready to move into China?...

Islamic State video shows Uighur training in Iraq, hints at terrorism in China
Thursday, March 2, 2017 - An Islamic State propaganda video circulated this week shows ethnic Uighur fighters training in Iraq and vowing to carry out horrific attacks in their Chinese homeland — the latest sign that the terrorist group hopes to expand operations into East Asia as it loses territory in the Middle East and North Africa.

The video, which features one fighter promising to make Chinese “blood flow in rivers,” has prompted unease in Beijing, where officials for years have characterized Uighur separatists in the nation’s western and mostly Muslim Xinjiang region as Islamic terrorists. Analysts say the video, which also shows an image of Chinese President Xi Jinping that turns into flames over a Chinese flag, marks the first time that Islamic State propaganda has so vividly and directly targeted China. The development adds a twist to months-old predictions that the group also known as ISIS is bent on spreading into Southeast Asia — particularly to Indonesia and the Philippines — as it slowly gets beaten back half a world away in Syria and Iraq. There were fresh reports of gains Thursday against Islamic State strongholds in both of those nations.

Syria’s military said it had fully recaptured the historic town of Palmyra, famed for its priceless Roman ruins, as Islamic State defenses crumbled against artillery fire and intense Russian airstrikes. It was the second blow to the Islamic State in Syria in a week. Turkish-backed fighters seized the Syrian town of al-Bab from the group on Feb. 23. In neighboring Iraq, the Sunni Muslim terrorist group is fighting for survival in western Mosul, where Iraqi forces backed by the U.S. recently took the city’s airport but are still struggling to secure major neighborhoods dense with houses and thousands of civilians caught in the crossfire.

The Chinese Embassy in Kyrgyzstan was attacked by a suicide bomber last year. Ethnic Uighur militants from western China have started joining global Islamic extremists.​

The United Nations warned Thursday that the situation has caused more than 28,000 people to flee their homes in recent weeks — far higher numbers of displaced people than in the four-month-long offensive for eastern Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, which was seized by the Islamic State in June 2014. Analysts and intelligence officials say the Islamic State faces an eventual ground defeat in Mosul and bleak prospects for holding its de facto capital of Raqqa, Syria, in the longer run. Terrorism analysts and Western intelligence officials fear that hardened Islamic State fighters, driving from the Middle East “caliphate,” will return home to carry out more traditional acts of terrorism. While many fighters have come from North Africa, Europe and even the U.S., an analysis by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point argues that “Asia, and particularly Southeast Asia, will likely [also] provide key staging posts for the group, critical to its long-term fortunes.”

“Islamic State operatives inside Syria and Iraq have leveraged existing local networks in Southeast Asian countries to remotely enable terrorist plots in their home countries,” said a summary of the report published last week. “There is concern that foreign fighters, and not simply Southeast Asian returnees, will export terrorism to the region as the Islamic State suffers setbacks in Syria and Iraq.” A separate analysis, published in October, asserted that the Islamic State had already deepened cooperation among several extremist groups in Southeast Asia, with an eye toward exploiting a decades-old insurgency in the Philippines as their “jihad of choice” once the group’s Middle East footprint is destroyed. “The Philippines is important because as far as the ISIS leadership is concerned, it is the extension of the caliphate in the region,” said the analysis by the Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict, an Indonesia-based think tank.

The China factor

 

[waltky]

ISIS jihadis gettin' ready to go after China...

China’s worst nightmare revealed in chilling ISIS video, Uighur militants vow to 'shed blood like river'
Friday 3rd March, 2017 - A video, released this week allegedly by the Islamic State group shows ethnic Uighur fighters training in western Iraq, along with images from inside Xinjiang, including Chinese police on the streets.

Beijing sees these fighters as a serious threat, even as hundreds of people have been killed in Xinjiang in the past few years, mostly in unrest between Uighurs and ethnic majority Han Chinese. Uighurs, a mostly Muslim people from western China's Xinjiang region, have travelled to Syria and Iraq to fight for militant groups there. In the video released by the Iraqi arm of ISIS, one shot that shows Chinese President Xi Jinping which then gives way to an image of the Chinese flag engulfed in flames.

It also includes images of Chinese police guarding mosques, patrolling markets and arresting men in what appears to be far-western China, according to the U.S.-based SITE Intelligence Group which analysed the footage. "Oh, you Chinese who do not understand what people say. We are the soldiers of the Caliphate, and we will come to you to clarify to you with the tongues of our weapons, to shed blood like rivers and avenging the oppressed," one Uighur fighter pledges in the video carrying out an execution. "Hey, brothers. Today, we are fighting with infidels across the world. I'm telling you this: Don't be complacent in this. Stay strong," one of the fighters says. "We will certainly plant our flag over America, China, Russia, and all the infidels of the world," he adds. In another shot, a man chanting in Uighur says, "Our land of sharia has been constructed with spilt blood."

In response to the video, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said on Wednesday he was not aware of the video. "But one point is very clear. We oppose any form of terrorism and proactively participate in international cooperation to crack down on terrorism," Geng told a daily news briefing. "We have long said that East Turkestan forces are a serious threat to China's security and we are willing to work with the international community to jointly crack down on East Turkestan separatist and terrorist forces," he said.

Meanwhile, commenting on the video, Rian Thum, a Uighur specialist at Loyola University New Orleans, said, "To me, the video says more about Islamic State tactics, propaganda, and ideology than it does about the relationship between Uighurs and the Chinese state." The video was released on the same day that more than 10,000 Chinese troops marched through the streets of Urumqi in a grand show of force against terrorism in the restive region. Experts say this is the first direct threat the terror group had made against China.

Chinas worst nightmare revealed in chilling ISIS video Uighur militants vow to shed blood like river

 

[whitehall]

The short answer is ...no. There is no comparison between the guaranteed Constitutional freedoms inherent in the United States and any other country, especially China which has a history of "crackdowns" on it's own people.

 

[Psuedo1776]

There is always a lesson to be learned, even in cases like this. The lesson that the American people should learn is that unprovoked attacks on ethnic minorities cause resentment in the minds of the attacked. Resentment that eventually leads into attacks. Of course this does not mean our country should roll over for everything, but that is a separate matter entirely.