Four were shot while attempting to flee the country. One was arrested for allegedly planning to blow up a shopping mall. Another lost his leg at a squalid training camp overseas.<\/p>\n
Four were shot while attempting to flee the country. One was arrested for allegedly planning to blow up a shopping mall. Another lost his leg at a squalid training camp overseas.<\/p>\n
In recent weeks, Chinese state newspapers and TV broadcasters have issued a series of reports warning its citizens about the dire consequences of leaving the country to join militant groups in the Middle East, underscoring the government\u2019s growing concerns about an exodus of ethnic Uighurs from the northwestern Xinjiang region.<\/p>\n
Hundreds of Uighurs, a Muslim, Turkic-speaking group that makes up a plurality in the region, have fled China in recent years. According to state media, \u201cjihadi videos\u201d have influenced many to join militant groups, including the extremist splinter group Islamic State.<\/p>\n
Yet analysts and human rights groups say that many of the Uighurs leaving China may be trying to escape systemic oppression at home. The Chinese government maintains draconian religious, political, and cultural constraints in Xinjiang, including constant surveillance, as well as bans on traditional Islamic dress and, for some groups, fasting during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.<\/p>\n
The authorities are \u201cusing television to incite the Chinese people to antagonize the Uighurs because their own policies have led to the reality of people fleeing,\u201d Dilxat Raxit, a spokesman for the exiled World Uyghur Congress, told Reuters news service.<\/p>\n
Beijing denies any repression in the region.<\/p>\n
Xinjiang has been racked by violent clashes over the last year \u2014 often attacks on police and bombings in public spaces \u2014 and authorities have countered with a \u201cstrike-hard\u201d campaign, ratcheting up their already-tight controls. China has \u201cbusted\u201d 181 terror groups over the last year, the official New China News Service reported in May, adding that police have cracked down on videos \u201cpropagating terrorism.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yang Shu, a counterterrorism expert at Lanzhou University, said that the number of Uighurs fleeing China rose last year after an Islamic State propaganda video called Xinjiang a new frontier in its self-declared caliphate.<\/p>\n
The recent string of reports \u201cis the Chinese government using its own propaganda to counter ISIS\u2019 effort to get people to join them,\u201d he said, using one common acronym for Islamic State.<\/p>\n
On Monday, CCTV reported that police in the northeastern city Shijiazhuang arrested a man, referred to as Akbar, for allegedly planning to blow up a shopping mall. Akbar left the country in 2013, it said, after a religious leader named \u201cAli\u201d told him that he would go to heaven if he died while waging jihad.<\/p>\n
On Saturday, the broadcaster reported that police in the southern province of Yunnan, which borders Vietnam, Laos and Myanmar, shot to death four people for attempting to illegally cross the border. They also stopped more than 550 people from \u201cattempting to flee the country\u201d over the last year and a half, according to the report.<\/p>\n
Last week, police in Shenyang, the capital of northeastern China\u2019s Liaoning province, announced that they killed during a raid three \u201cXinjiang terrorists\u201d who were \u201cwearing headgear, holding long knives and shouting ‘holy war’ slogans.\u201d They arrested 16 others, according to a statement by the Liaoning government that was republished widely in state media.<\/p>\n