This is...strange. The ETIM* been completely ineffective for at least ten years now. It would require a far more capable organization than they have shown themselves to be to pull off something like this, especially now. But nothing on this is on the Xinhua or People's Daily website, so I strongly doubt this is some evil plot from the PRC.

My opinion? Bad research on the part of MEMRI.

*Yes, there is a possibility that there is not, and never was, an organization called the ETIM. However, it is undeniable that there have been separatist movements that use terrorist tactics. And it is also undeniable that they have been ineffective for at least ten years now.

those photographs of the putataive Mahsum Hussain are definitely not of a Uyghur person. Try an Afghan Mujahid. Every other photograph on the ITP site is of masked men in camoflague- Unlikely to be Uyghur; although the site is written in the Uyghur language. The "Zarba" shot of theree semi nude Chinese proves well, what...? James

After another inspection, the supposed photo of Mahsum looks more like the famous Arab freedom fighter "Khatab" who was killed in Chechnya some years ago rather than a Uyghur. As I said the photograph is not of Mahsum. He has become a legend without a face, so I suppose any face will do. James.

This web site is obviously posted by an Islamicist group outside the PRC using expat Uyghur from within Xinjiang to do their scribe work - aimed at who? Can it be opened in Xinjiang? Such sites feed both sides propaganda : 1/ CCP - that such Uyghur terorist networks exist and 2/ Uyghur nationalists- that somewhere out there exists Uyghur training camps for the struggle against the CCP- in this case they are Islamic extremists. Unlike the 20,000 troops once outrageously claimed by the more secular Uyghur leader from Kazakhstan named Muhlisi some years ago.

If one would like to make sure if those fotos are of the now legendary Mahsum Husyan or not - they in the west should ask some of the Uyghur expat community in Canada or the States who knew him long ago in Kashgar when he was simply a young Uyghur nationalist long before he (Mahsum) became radicalized by Fundamentalist Islamic teachings in Pakistan and more pan-Islamic views.

Undoubetdly the Koran held in the foto is the Uyghur eedition previously avilable in Xinjiang and the East Turkestan flag drapes the wall behind him. However this website's origin in Pakistan betray a pan-Islamicist agenda rather than Uyghur.

I would say they might be filed photo's, possibly the oil workers nabbed in Pakistan a few years back. I could be wrong but it looks more like an opportunist job.

You mean the Chinese shots- hmmm...yu may be right. Overall we are looking at some prop. here. James

I hope these Uyghur terrorists keep doing something like that. Then, the Chinese government can kill them all or kick them to the middle-east. Uyghur has the talent to be the best terrorists in the world. But I think they can maximize the value of their talent if they use it on Jews and Americans.

I hope these Uyghur terrorists keep doing something like that. Then, the Chinese government can kill them all or kick them to the middle-east. Uyghur has the talent to be the best terrorists in the world. But I think they can maximize the value of their talent if they use it on Jews and Americans.

The Other 'Tibet'

Wednesday, Apr. 16, 2008
The Other 'Tibet'
By Simon Elegant

"Silk Road Gem and Jade Shop" the sign proudly reads. Centrally located just down the street from the main mosque in Khotan, a dusty oasis town in the vast Taklamakan desert in China's far southwest, the shop is a focal point for the Muslim Uighurs who make up the majority of the local population. But though it is mid-morning, its gates are secured with heavy steel padlocks. Pedestrians kept their distance, and warning notices from the Public Security Bureau pasted across the doors declare that the business has been closed indefinitely.

The store's owner, Mutallip Hajim, a successful Uighur jade trader well known for sponsoring religious education classes was arrested in January for unspecified crimes. On March 3, police announced that the 38-year old had died of a heart attack in prison. Mutallip was killed "because he was too powerful, too influential," claims a Uighur man in his 30s. "Any Uighur who gets to that kind of position will always be arrested." The man, who like many residents of Khotan is clearly anxious to avoid being seen talking with foreign journalists.

Police and other local authorities declined to talk about Mutallip, but his death marked the beginning of troubled times for a town that has become a locus of the problems plaguing the Chinese administration of the Uighur-dominated western region of Xinjiang. While repression in neighboring Tibet has generated global headlines recently, activist groups and rights advocates have long accused Beijing of similar discrimination and abuses in Xinjiang. And Beijing's fears of an angry backlash of the sort that has left scores dead in Tibet in recent weeks has prompted a tight clampdown on the restive Uighurs. Last week, Chinese authorities announced they had foiled a separatist plot to kidnap athletes at the Olympics, and made scores of other arrests. But the clampdown may be provoking the very backlash it aimed to preempt. Since Mutallip's death, say locals, Khotan and surrounding areas have been roiled by protests that are continuing despite hundreds of arrests.

Local farmers, jade hunters, shopkeepers, students and professionals interviewed by TIME complained of job discrimination and the curtailing of their language rights. Some expressed fears that the culture and way of life of the Uighurs — a central Asian people ethnically much closer to Turkey than China — is threatened by a steady influx into the region of Han Chinese, whose share of the population, according to official estimates, has grown from around 6% in 1949 to 40% today, although millions of undocumented immigrant workers make it far higher. Northern Xinjiang today has a Han majority, sparking similar ethnic tensions to those seen in Tibet.

Analysts fear that the combination of Han immigration and government repression fosters a potentially violent despair among the Uighurs, whose adherence to Islam has been used by Beijing to demonize them at home and abroad sijnce 9/11.

"It's a systematic Chinese policy to portray Uighurs as splittists and terrorists," says Rebiya Kadeer, a businesswoman who now heads the American Uighur Association and is the leader of an exile movement seeking greater rights for her roughly nine million compatriots who live in Xinjiang. Like Mutallip, Kadeer was once a rich businesswoman in Xinjiang but fell afoul of the authorities and served a six year jail sentence for revealing state secrets to foreigners. Two of her sons are still in prison in China. "It's a Chinese tool to have the Han feel a sense of animosity toward Uighurs," Kadeer says. "Look at it now! They have extracted all the natural resources and the oil. We're left in the darkness."

Beijing's security chiefs see a more sinister trend at work. On three occasions — most recently on April 10 — officials in the Chinese capital have announced that security forces foiled planned attacks by what they called Muslim separatists groups from the province. Details were scant, but the most recent announcement alleged that some 45 Uighurs in the provincial capital Urumqi had been arrested in raids that uncovered plans to kidnap athletes and others attending the 2008 Beijing Olympics. An earlier report alleged that a young Uighur woman had tried to smuggle a bomb aboard a commercial aircraft in an attempt to bring it down.

Xinjiang separatists in the past have carried out small bombings in the region and in Beijing in the 1990s, and a handful of Uighurs were detained by the U.S. at Guantanamo after being captured in Afghanistan. But while China likes to emphasize an al-Qaeda connection to militant separatism in Xinjiang, analysts are less sure of what to make of such claims. Whatever the truth about the alleged terror plots, resentment is growing in areas like Khotan. As violence erupted in Tibet, authorities here arrested large numbers of Uighur men, hoping to preempt similar protests. Instead, the detentions themselves became the focus of protests, according to locals, who claim that hundreds of veiled women demonstrated for independence during a weekly bazaar on March 23. Khotan residents say there have been smaller demonstrations since then, mostly in the countryside.

Despite the undercurrent of resentment, there's little sign of trouble on Khotan's streets, where commerce is brisk in everything from roast lamb and athletic shoes to hand-woven local carpets and the famous local white jade. But the almost exclusively Chinese traders in its business center are evasive when asked about ethnic tensions or the events of March 23, after which many of these shops stayed closed for days. One young woman from Sichuan province says it is getting dark outside and she must close her store because "we don't go out on the streets at night." In the the karaoke lounge of the nearby Wenzhou Hotel, businessman Wang Jianliang is giving a lengthy denunciation of the "spilitists," whom he dismisses as "just a small minority." Wang, who says he had been in Khotan five years, says residents should be grateful for the economic development of recent years. "When I came out here it was nothing. Now it's a big city." He turns to belt out a ballad in his native Fujian dialect. A fellow reveler, a 21-year-old who says he has only been in town a year, asks a visitor if he frightened by the rising racial tension. "No," comes the reply, "what's to be scared of?"

"They hate us," the 21-year-old says. "The Uighurs hate us Han." The one thing equally shared, today in Khotan, between Uighur and Han Chinese, is fear.

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1731474,00.html

@Kia. Maybe yu could go to Xinjiang and start the ball rolling. Uyghur are from there yu know- not the Middle East.

Restive Xinjiang: China's next trouble spot after Tibet?

By Lindsay Beck
Reuters
Thursday, April 17, 2008; 8:10 PM

KHOTAN, China (Reuters) - The two young women trying on headscarves at a dusty market stall have heard of the recent unrest in Tibet's capital Lhasa, but they say the same could never happen here in China's border region of Xinjiang.

Despite their confidence, tensions have bubbled to the surface in Xinjiang, much to the dismay of China's leaders who are anxious to maintain stability in the oil-rich region which borders Afghanistan and Pakistan and is home to about 8 million Uighurs, a Muslim Turkic-speaking people. "All the ethnicities in China are one big family," said one of the women, 19, as she studied herself in an orange headscarf in the mirror, debating whether to buy it.

It's a line that echoes the statements of China's Communist leaders in Beijing, but the sentiment felt hollow when the wave of anti-government protests erupted in its ethnic Tibetan areas last month.

Then came a demonstration in Khotan, an Uighur-majority town on the edge of Xinjiang's forbidding desert, where hundreds marched through the weekly bazaar in late March in a protest the city government blamed on ethnic separatists.

The demonstration, which was by all accounts a peaceful and isolated incident, nonetheless touched on the worst fears of China's leaders: the prospect Tibet's unrest could have a contagion effect on Xinjiang, its other sensitive border region, ahead of the Beijing Olympics in August.

But analysts say Xinjiang is not likely to be the next Tibet despite distrust between Han Chinese and Uighurs and disgruntlement among Uighurs over restrictions on their religion and culture.

"The broader perspective on this is that these kind of local demonstrations happen all over China -- if the security figures are to be believed, by the tens of thousands every year," said one Western analyst, who declined to be named, citing the sensitivity of the issue.

"It's become almost a standard way of dealing with local issues, a pressure release, but of course it's much harder for Uighurs to do this because they're branded separatists."

REPRESSION

The road to Khotan, flanked on either sides by unbroken stretches of desolate desert, is free of the kind of security personnel that has flooded into Tibetan areas since the protests began there in March.

At its weekly market, merchants flog everything from sides of mutton to delicate threads of saffron, much as they have for generations.

Residents say there is plenty of discontent, but not many outlets to express it.

"I could guarantee that kind of thing couldn't happen here," said Ahyiguzai, a 17-year-old Uighur resident, referring to the Lhasa riot.

"People have those feeling of dissatisfaction sometimes, but they wouldn't dare do anything. Those kinds of things are resolutely not allowed," she said.

Analysts say fears of separatist sentiment and the prospect of radical Islam making inroads have meant that Beijing's grip on the region is especially tight.

In its annual report, the U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on China said that religious restrictions on Uighurs remained "severe" and cited increased control over Muslim pilgrimages and vetting of the content of sermons.

But rather than having the assimilationist effect the government seeks, those policies could be having the opposite impact, driving the Uighur community to close ranks.

"The policies are actually widening the gap between Uighurs and the rest of the population," said Nicholas Bequelin, a Hong Kong-based researcher for Human Rights Watch.

"People build up barriers to protect their ethnic identity from the attempt by the state to remodel it."

Everywhere in Khotan and nearby towns there are signs of a community that is increasingly devout, an anomaly in officially atheist China.

Uighur women wear headscarves and, once married, many also cover their faces, leaving only their eyes visible.

Many residents in Khotan, as well as Yarkand and Kashgar, Uighur towns stretching along the ancient Silk Route, express a desire to make the pilgrimage to the Muslim holy city of Mecca, and unhappiness with government restrictions on the number of pilgrims permitted to do so.

TERROR THREAT?

China says the community poses a significant terror threat, and points to a January raid on a group that Xinjiang's Communist Party boss described as a "terrorist gang" as well as a foiled plot to attack a jet from the region bound for Beijing.

Last week, Chinese authorities announced the detention of 45 East Turkestan "terrorist" suspects, and foiled plots to carry out suicide bombings and kidnap athletes to disrupt the Olympics. Uighur activists say the terror plots have been fabricated.

The United States listed the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, which advocates for a separate state in Xinjiang, as a terrorist organization in 2002.

Rights groups say China exaggerates the threat of militant activity in the region to exert greater control, and analysts say those exaggerations mean that Beijing's intelligence on the issue tends to be unreliable.

Still, global fears about Islamic radicalism may limit the kind of international support that has helped the Tibet protests.

Uighurs also lack a figurehead such as the Dalai Lama to press their cause abroad, or an obvious catalyst for protest, such as the March 10 anniversary of the uprising against Chinese rule in Tibet that sparked the marches there.

But most of all there simply may be no space in Uighur society for widespread dissent to bubble to the surface.

"Even for small things you hear about people being taken away," said Ahyiguzai. "So any kind of bigger incident I don't think could happen here."

(Editing by Megan Goldin)
© 2008 Reuters

man havent the journalist been flocking to Khotan