China says tough measures in Xinjiang are to beat terrorism – why isn’t the
West convinced?
·
In 2014, President Xi Jinping launched strict new measures – ‘nets above
and snares below’ – following a string of violent incidents
·
Beijing’s narrative has been hampered by past downplaying of terrorist
events for fear of stirring ethnic tensions or damaging the image of Xinjiang
Jun Mai in Beijing
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Published:
10:00pm, 4 Apr, 2021
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Graphic: Lau
Ka-kuen
Zhang Chunxian was seen
by many as the hope of Xinjiang in 2010.
Just months after the
2009 bloodbath and violent ethnic clashes that shocked the region and left more
than 190 dead, Zhang, the region’s media savvy and somewhat charismatic new
party chief, stepped in to replace his iron-fisted predecessor who had ruled
the region for more than a decade.
In one month, Zhang
lifted an eight-month internet ban in Xinjiang. In 2015, he became the first
Xinjiang party boss ever to join Muslim groups to celebrate the
Eid ul-Fitr marking the end of the Ramadan, the month when Muslims fast.
Yet despite Zhang’s
pacifying approach deployed alongside his pledge of “no mercy to terrorists”,
violent attacks continued to increase under his watch and reached beyond the
region.
Former Xinjiang party chief Zhang
Chunxian. Photo: Simon Song
In 2013, attackers from the region
rocked the Chinese capital of Beijing with an
attack at the highly symbolic Tiananmen Square
. Months later, a group of
knife-wielding jihadists
stormed the railway station in Kunming city
in southwest China, leaving 33
dead.
Zhang said he
struggled to comprehend the attack.
“I was alone in a room
and thinking about this quietly,” he recalled his reaction after he first heard
of the attack. “How can there be such brutality?”
Xinjiang cotton dispute: human
rights, sanctions and boycotts
The conundrum Zhang
faced was hardly new for Beijing. The region of Xinjiang, home to more than 10
million Uygurs, among other ethnic groups, has been an intersection for
different civilisations and a headache for Chinese central governments in
Beijing for centuries.
As China faces
sanctions over its actions in Xinjiang
and accusations of
from Western governments, it has
failed to convince most of the developed world that its approach to terrorism
is justified- an issue that in Beijing’s mind should resonate in New York,
London, Paris, Brussels and Berlin.
Why China is keeping a
tight grip on Xinjiang
In the years of
violent attacks and ethnic clashes since the 1990s, Chinese officials have
blamed separatism, first stemming from the independence of neighbouring former
Soviet republics in Central Asia in the 1990s, and later global Islamic
extremism, which was exacerbated by the Syrian civil war.
That war – which was triggered by the
Arab spring and effectively provided the space needed by
to achieve global prominence
-broke out in 2011, a year after Zhang took the helm in Xinjiang.
Since 2016, China has
escalated its security measures in Xinjiang, including the extensive use of
internment facilities, strict surveillance and intense political
indoctrination.
These measures are
believed to be a response by Beijing to terrorist attacks and ethnic clashes
between 2009 and 2015, according to Raffaello Pantucci, a specialist on global
terrorism with the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore.
“Violence became more
frequent, and while it started in Nanjiang [in southern Xinjiang], you noticed
how over time it spread across the region,” said Pantucci. “Watched from
Beijing, I think the sense was that this was a problem which was growing -[it]
had gone from the predominantly Uygur parts of Xinjiang to all over China and
even abroad.”
Pantucci pointed to a
wide range of violent chapters, including the 2013 attacks in Beijing that
killed two and injured dozens, and an explosion and knife attack in Xinjiang’s
capital, Urumqi, on the same day in 2014 that President Xi Jinping wrapped up a
trip to the region.
02:27
US declares China has committed genocide
in its treatment of Uygurs in Xinjiang
US declares China has
committed genocide in its treatment of Uygurs in Xinjiang
The two events were
believed to have particularly angered Xi, who set a new tone for Xinjiang
policies in a key meeting later in 2014, Pantucci said.
During that meeting,
Xi called for a focus on fighting terrorism, mobilising civilians to support
policing and setting up “nets above and snares below”. In the same month, China
kicked off a year-long crackdown on terrorism in Xinjiang and beyond.
But the attacks and
clashes went on.
“By 2016 there was a
sense that whatever was being tried had not worked and something new was
needed,” Pantucci said. “Zhang Chunxian could not deliver it, which is why he
was booted out and Chen Quanguo brought in.”
With a set of policies
now defined as genocide by Western governments, Chen Quanguo, who took the helm
of Xinjiang in 2016, proudly reports zero terrorist attacks since 2017.
But Chen, who sits on
the 25-member Politburo of the Communist Party, also became the most senior
Chinese official to be sanctioned by Washington in 2020.
China’s
treatment of Uygurs meets criteria of UN Genocide Convention: report
China has said the
violent attacks and ethnic clashes were a result of planning and instigation by
extremists outside its borders.
The existence of such
threats were why harsh policies remained in place in Xinjiang, despite it
reporting zero attacks since 2017, said Li Wei, a counterterrorism analyst at
the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations in Beijing.
“The threats are not
posed by only extremists from inside Xinjiang, but more importantly parties
related to international terrorist groups outside China,” he said. “Such
parties still have the capacity to infiltrate via the internet.”
Beijing has mainly focused its blame on
the
East Turkestan Islamic Movement
(ETIM) for attacks in Xinjiang and
elsewhere in the country. The group has been listed as a terrorist group by the
UN Security Council al-Qaeda Sanctions Committee since 2002, a year after the
September 11 attacks. But late last year Washington decided to remove the group
from its sanctions list,
.
Chinese officials said
the group benefited from the rise of Isis, which turned parts of Iraq and Syria
into training grounds for militants from Xinjiang. But Wu Sike, China’s then
special envoy on Middle East affairs, said in 2014 that not all Chinese Isis
recruits would return to China.
Some 114 people from
Xinjiang were among the 3,500 foreign recruits to join Isis, as revealed by a defector
from the jihadist organisation, according to 2016 studies by the
Washington-based New America Foundation.
03:36
Beijing hits back at Western sanctions
against China’s alleged treatment of Uygur Muslims
Beijing hits back at
Western sanctions against China’s alleged treatment of Uygur Muslims
The number made
Xinjiang the fifth-highest contributor to the group’s fighters – behind three
areas of Saudi Arabia and one from Tunisia – which the study attributed to
failures in Beijing’s own policies.
While there is well
established evidence of Uygurs fighting in Syria for Isis and other groups such
as al-Qaeda, there was no proof they were associated with attacks in China,
Pantucci said.
“We have not seen any
evidence of these groups directing those people back to China to launch
attacks,” he said. “Isis/AQ are more focused on fighting on the battlefield in
Syria/Iraq or against the West.”
Despite the threat
Isis posed directly to Western governments, China’s efforts to justify its
Xinjiang policies have largely failed in the West.
This was partly
because the authorities had deliberately played down the severity of the
attacks for years, said Li Wei, the Beijing-based expert on terrorism studies.
“The consideration
then was to avoid affecting the image of Xinjiang, or to stir up tensions
between ethnic groups,” Li said. “So many attacks were deliberately downplayed
or not reported at all … and the effect has not been ideal.”
Beijing’s fear of
ethnic tensions at that time was not groundless. After the knife-wielding
attacks in Kunming railway station in 2014, Uygurs who lived in other parts of
the country faced widespread discrimination and anger from Han Chinese.
Later that year Yu
Zhengsheng, who was the fourth most senior official of the Communist Party,
felt it was necessary to tell the Chinese public not to apply any label - such
as terrorism - to Xinjiang.
The tensions were evn worse immediately
after the clashes in Urumqi in
. The then Xinjiang party chief Wang
Lequan appeared on television to try to stop ethnic Hans, who were gathering on
the city’s streets, from taking revenge against Uygurs.
But Beijing only
published more details about many of these episodes after its Xinjiang policies
were hit with a huge international backlash in the past two years. Some
information about the 2009 was not released until a decade later, in a
documentary by CGTN.
Why is Isis silent
on China’s Uygur Muslims, when US alleges genocide?
While there have been
groups similar to Xinjiang separatists in the past, the approach China is
taking is in stark contrast to that taken in the West, Pantucci said.
“Xinjiang separatists
are probably closer in ideology and outlook to ETA [the Basque nationalist
group] in Spain or the IRA [Irish Republican Army] or loyalists in Ireland,” he
said, adding that these groups believed they were fighting to protect their
community identity.
“Since Uygurs are
Sunni Muslims this means that some of them find themselves attracted to the
violent Islamist ideology which … appeals to their religious identity.”
But he said that in
Europe members of potentially violent groups could be channelled into a more
ordinary political approach through offering more political engagement and
opportunity. He said there were no such signs in Xinjiang.
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