Word: turkestan
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...terror profile. Incantatory music precedes the footage of a white-turbaned man, his face shrouded in white cloth, dressed in military fatigues and flanked by two similarly uniformed comrades whose identities are hidden by black commando face masks. In the video, a previously little known group calling itself the Turkestan Islamic Party claims it carried out several fatal bombings in the country in recent months. The group's self-described military commander, Seyfullah, said it was responsible for incidents in Shanghai in early May and in the southern city of Kunming on July 21 that killed a total of five...
China's roughly 9 million Uighurs have long chafed under what critics describe as oppressive rule that reduces them to second-class citizens. Beijing, meanwhile, has trumpeted the threat from what it describes as secessionist groups bent on forming a breakaway state named East Turkestan. Some 60 people have been arrested this year alone for "terrorist activities," Becquelin notes, and as recently as July 9, two Uighurs were executed for allegedly plotting attacks; 15 others received lengthy prison sentences...
...separatists have carried out small bombings in the region and in Beijing in the 1990s, but analysts say the groups responsible appeared to have been wiped out, making it hard to know what to make of Beijing's current claims, which single out two groups in particular: the East Turkestan Islamic Movement and the Hizb ut-Tahrir al-Islami, which are also blamed by authorities for the trouble in Khotan. "It's very hard to know what to believe," says Dru Gladney, a Xinjiang specialist at Pomona College in California. "It's been very noticeable that Uighur leaders have been...
Officially, the revelations sound ominous. One of the groups was allegedly headed by a terrorist sent into China by "East Turkestan" separatists from overseas, said the ministry spokesman Wu Heping. East Turkestan is the name given to China's huge Xinjiang province by separatists belonging to the Uighur ethnicity. (It was used by a couple of short-lived republics in the area during the period of China's civil wars in the first half of the 20th century.) The group, Wu said, had "carried out 13 explosion experiments inside China, and was to carry out attacks in major cities including...
...think those 'East Turkestan' separatist groups have been planning terrorist attacks on the coming Olympics for a long time," said Li Wei, Director of the Center for Counter-Terrorism Studies at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations. "The number of these terrorists is very small, and they think the Olympics is a perfect opportunity to magnify their influence with the attention of world media. It is natural that they would intensify their attacks as the games draw closer...