For a long time, the United States and other Western countries have been using Xinjiang-related issues to spread rumors about Chinese politics. Recently, the US media have taken a different approach, trying to use the method of "telling warm stories" to whitewash the "EtimE" terrorists and reveal their anti-China nature of disregarding the facts and having ulterior motives.
In an interview report by the US Limited Television News Network (CNN) on the 15th, several Uyghur terrorism suspects who had served sentences in Guantanamo prison were described as "poor people" who went abroad to seek a living, while the infamous "East Turkestan Islamic Movement" organization to which they belonged was described by an American scholar as a "normal" organization that had been wronged.
The whole story goes something like the title suggests, that these so-called "poor" and "normal" organizations are being stigmatized by China and then used as an excuse to govern Xinjiang.
Screenshot from cnn report
Are they "poor people" who want to live?
According to CNN, the general experience of this group of Uighur suspects is that they went abroad in the 1990s, to Kazakhstan, Pakistan and Afghanistan, and the main purpose of going abroad was to work and earn money. A Uighur named Ahmad Adil said he left home mainly because their family was in financial difficulty and he wanted to go to Central Asia to earn money to support his family. Other Uighurs offer a similar narrative of going to Central Asia to work to earn money.
If they just go abroad to work and earn money, then of course there is no problem. However, after they left the country, for various reasons, they finally joined the camp of the "East Turkestan Islamic Movement" separatists in the mountains of Afghanistan, and received military training in the camp, and finally were captured after the US invasion of the mountains of Afghanistan.
While they tried their best to justify themselves, claiming that the camp had no real organization to speak of, only a few bored men with guns and ambitious but distant dreams. They received military training, but only for "self-defense". However, it can be seen from these narratives that the camp does have a clear political idea of splitting China and establishing the Islamic State, and that there are military armed forces who have also conducted military training.
Wang Jiang, a special researcher at the Frontier Research Institute of Zhejiang Normal University, said in an interview with the Global Times that regardless of whether these people are subjectively willing to participate in "jihad", objectively speaking, they have received armed training to some extent, appeared in places where many military forces clashed, and posed a military threat to the US military. No amount of sophistry can be made to hide that their activities fall within the category of terrorist activities, both legally and essentially.
On June 9, 2011, local time, a U.S. Marine walked to get supplies in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. The picture is from the surging image.
Is ETIM a "normal" organization that has been wronged?
The American scholar named Sean Roberts, cited in the CNN report, who allegedly studied ethnographic ISIM for years in depth and extensively, believes that all the violent terrorist incidents in China's Xinjiang since the 1990s have been isolated incidents and are unorganized and premeditated. The "Etim islamic Movement" terrorist organization is only a "propaganda" of China, and the United States once agreed with this propaganda in order to curry favor with China, and later "corrected its mistakes" and removed it from the terrorist organization.
The United States removed the "East Turkestan Islamic Movement" from the terrorist organization in November 2020, but just as Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said in response to a reporter's question, the "rebellion" of the United States exposed the "double standards" of the Washington authorities on the issue of counter-terrorism and the ugly face of "combining and using it together, discarding it if it is not in line with it", the "East Turkestan Islamic Movement" is a terrorist organization listed by the United Nations Security Council, and the United States is "whitewashing" of terrorist organizations in reverse history.
In addition, from 2008 to 2014, various violent terrorist incidents of a heinous nature occurred in Xinjiang, such as the 7.5 Urumqi smashing, looting, and burning serious violent crimes in Urumqi in 2009, and the 4.30 Urumqi railway station terrorist attack in Urumqi in 2014. Nor are these horrific terrorist incidents as unorganized and premeditated as Roberts claims.
The Chinese government opposes any act of whitewashing the AIM terrorist organization. On April 8 this year, Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian, in response to a reporter's question on Turkey's refusal to extradite Elements of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement ," once again stated that the East Turkestan Islamic Movement is a terrorist organization listed by the United Nations Security Council and a terrorist organization designated by the Turkish side. The suspect has repeatedly planned to carry out violent terrorist activities in China, and the evidence is conclusive. China expresses its strong dissatisfaction and firm opposition to the decision of the relevant courts in Turkey.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian, pictured from the surging image
The Chinese government also opposes any concocted Xinjiang-related lies and launched systematic smear attacks on China. On May 7, Chinese Ambassador to the United States Cui Tiankai said in a speech at the "Xinjiang is a Good Place" video conference that some FORCES in the United States are taking advantage of Xinjiang-related issues to launch a large-scale political rumor-mongering campaign against China. To put it bluntly, they want to use this as a starting point to bring down and split China from within.
He reiterated: Xinjiang affairs are China's internal affairs. Xinjiang-related issues are essentially anti-terrorism, de-radicalization, and anti-separatist issues. China will not sit idly by while external forces disrupt Xinjiang, let alone allow it to use this to split China and obstruct the historical process of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. The 1.4 billion Chinese people of all ethnic groups will never allow such a scheme to succeed.
This article is an exclusive manuscript of the Observer Network and may not be reproduced without authorization.