Condemning attacks as a dubious pretext for Muslims persecution, an international Uighur Muslim has condemned Wednesday’s bomb attack in China’s Xinjiang, accusing Beijing of escalating its crackdown on the Muslim minority.
Thursday, 01 May 2014 00:00
BEIJING – Condemning attacks as a dubious pretext for Muslims persecution, an international Uighur Muslim has condemned Wednesday’s bomb attack in China’s Xinjiang, accusing Beijing of escalating its crackdown on the Muslim minority.
“Uighurs struggling between despair and survival expect [President] Xi Jinping to come to East Turkestan to give constructive suggestions on improving the turbulent situation,” Dilxat Raxit, a spokesman for exile group the World Uyghur Congress, said in an e-mail cited by Agence France Presse (AFP) on Thursday, May 1.
“However, the fact is Beijing continues encouraging armed suppression of Uighurs.”
Wednesday’s explosion and knives attack at the southern railway station in Xinjiang’s capital Urumqi left at least three killed and 79 injured, according to China’s state media.
Explosives went off at 7:10 pm Wednesday, “centered around luggage left on the ground between the station exit and a public bus stop,” the official Xinhua news agency said citing witnesses.
Following the attack, Chinese authorities launched a crackdown on the Muslim minority, arresting dozens of them.
Blaming no particular group, Xinhua agency described the attack as a “violent terrorist attack”.
Last March, a similar knife-wielding assault shocked China’s southwest Kunming city, leaving at least 33 people killed and more than 140 injured.
Chinese authorities rushed to blame Xinjiang people for the attacks amid Uighur Muslims’ condemnations of the deadly attack.
The spokesman of the World Uyghur Congress argued that the situation remained volatile, as “any Chinese provocation would directly incite further turbulence”.
More than 100 Uighurs were arrested in the wake of Urumqi attacks, Raxit claimed.
In October 2013, the government has accused Uighur Muslims of plotting Tiananmen Square attacks that left two killed.
Uighur Muslims have dismissed China’s account of a Tiananmen Square “terrorist attack” as a dubious pretext for repression, amid signs of stepped-up security.
‘Decisive actions’
Wednesday’s attacks coincided with President Xi Jinping four-day visit to the resistive China’s far west.
During his inspection tour, Xi has called for crackdown on the area, urging “decisive actions” against “terrorist” attacks in Xinjiang.
“The battle to combat violence and terrorism will not allow even a moment of slackness, and decisive actions must be taken to resolutely suppress the terrorists’ rampant momentum,” Xi said in comments published early Thursday by Xinhua.
Touring a police station XI said: “Grassroots police stations are our fists and daggers so we must manage the basic level work well, care for our policemen, and you should protect yourselves well.”
“I hope you can make excellent achievements in the future work of serving the people and maintaining social stability.”
Analysts raised concerns over the soaring tension in Xinjiang.
“We have seen attacks and problems in Urumqi before, but we haven’t seen anything on this scale in quite a while,” Raffaello Pantucci, a senior research fellow with the military think-tank the Royal United Services Institute, told the BBC.
“I think the issue is that the problem [of attacks] in Xinjiang is getting worse,” he said, adding that he believed incidents were becoming more professional and aimed at larger targets.
On the other hand, several social media users have criticized the Chinese authorities for failing to tackle terrorism.
“If the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) doesn’t improve people’s well-being and win support from the majority, then counter-terrorism is a mission impossible,” a user of China’s Twitter-like microblog site Weibo posted.
Uighur Muslims are a Turkish-speaking minority of eight million in the northwestern Xinjiang region.
Xinjiang, which activists call East Turkestan, has been autonomous since 1955 but continues to be the subject of massive security crackdowns by Chinese authorities.
Rights groups accuse Chinese authorities of religious repression against Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang in the name of counter terrorism.
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