China has appealed for international help in the battle it says it is waging against Islamist militants in its far western region of Xinjiang, as Beijing seeks Western support for its own “war on terr
China has appealed for international help in the battle it says it is waging against Islamist militants in its far western region of Xinjiang, as Beijing seeks Western support for its own “war on terror” in the wake of the Paris attacks.
Hundreds of people have died in unrest in Xinjiang, home to the mostly Muslim Uighur people, and other parts of China over the past three years or so. Beijing has blamed much of the violence on Islamist militants, led by the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), a group it says has ties to Al Qaeda and wants to establish an independent state called East Turkestan.
More recently China has reported that some Uighurs have travelled to Syria and Iraq to fight with ISIS and other groups. Speaking in Turkey on Sunday on the sidelines of the G20 summit, Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi called on the international community to form a “united front to combat terrorism” in the aftermath of Paris attacks, state news agency Xinhua said on Monday.
“The UN’s leading role should be brought into full play to combat terrorism, and a united front in this regard should be formed,” Mr Wang said. “China is also a victim of terrorism, and cracking down on ETIM should become an important part of the international fight against terrorism,” he added. Many foreign experts doubt ETIM exists as the coherent group China portrays, or even exists at all.
Western countries have long been reluctant to share intelligence with China or otherwise cooperate, saying China has provided little evidence to prove ETIM’s existence and citing worries about possible human rights abuses in Xinjiang.
One Beijing-based Western diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, said it was inevitable China would try to use what happened in Paris to seek Western support in Xinjiang, much as it did after the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States. Then, China was able to get both the United Nations and Washington to place ETIM on lists of terrorist organisations.
Li Wei, a terrorism expert at the China Institute of Contemporary Internat-ional Relations, a think-tank backed by the secretive Ministry of State Security, wrote in the official China Daily that it was “urgent” that China should increase cooperation, such as joint drills, with Western countries.
