Word: separatist
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Only a few weeks ago, the decades-long conflict between the government and separatist fighters seemed to be inching toward a political solution. On Aug. 4, negotiators for the Philippine government and the main insurgent group, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), struck an agreement that would have set boundaries for an autonomous Muslim homeland, and, hopefully, dampened the insurgency. Yet, as has happened so often before in Mindanao, the center did not hold. After a challenge by Christian leaders in the minority-Muslim region who objected to the inclusion of some villages in the proposed Muslim area, the Philippines...
...night, the Russian response was all too predictable: having jealously guarded the territory's autonomy from Georgia as a point of leverage against Tbilisi's desire to join NATO, Moscow launched an offensive of its own, fighting Georgian forces inside South Ossetia and bombing cities inside Georgia proper. Meanwhile, separatist forces in Abkhazia, another Moscow-backed separatist Georgian province, opened a second front against Georgian forces, while Russia's Back Sea Fleet sailed from its base in Ukraine to impose a naval blockade along Georgia's coast...
...During the 1980s, Xinjiang militants routinely targeted police stations, military bases and similar targets, but such attacks stopped in the 1990s as Chinese control of the region solidified and was extended down to the village level. Bequelin, who wrote his Ph.D. thesis on the separatist movement in Xinjiang, says the latest attack underscores the "complete failure" of China's heavy-handed policies in both Xinjiang and Tibet. "We have to watch the government's reaction carefully," says Bequelin. "They shouldn't use this as an excuse to become even more oppressive. If people don't have the space to express...
That's true, but Chinese authorities claim the attack is part of a long-running effort by Uighur separatists to tarnish the Beijing Olympics. Without giving details, Shi said that a preliminary investigation found similarities between this week's attack and evidence uncovered from a raid on a Uighur separatist training camp in January 2007. "Starting from last year the East Turkestan forces at home and abroad tried sabotage and violent activities targeting the Beijing Games," Shi said, using the historic name of an independent Uighur state which some groups have hopes of restoring through violent struggle. "The East Turkestan...
...incident is the first fatal attack in the region by what are presumably separatist fighters in over ten years. In 1997, three bombs exploded on buses in the provincial capital Urumqi, killing nine and injuring 74. During the 1980s, militants routinely targeted police stations, military bases and similar targets, but such attacks stopped in the 1990s as Chinese control of the region solidified and was extended down to the village level, says Nicholas Bequelin, a China researcher with New York-based Human Rights Watch. Bequelin, who wrote his Ph.D. thesis on the separatist movement in Xinjiang, says the latest attack...