| In which the Uighurs get it. A follow up to this report from February. Probably the events described herein are connected to the actions of the Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP) (also known as the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM)), a Uighur jihadi group fighting alongside al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan whose heart’s desire is a caliphate back home in Xinjiang, though the article does not mention them. |
[SinoDaily] The civilian group descended on the village under government instructions to "win the people's hearts", but it also had a darker mission: identifying and punishing threats to the Chinese state.
Four months after the Communist Party sent the "work team" to Akeqie Kanle, a fifth of its adult population -- over 100 people -- had disappeared into detention and re-education centres.
The team -- comprising staff from a regional university -- was among more than 10,000 such groups that poured into rural Xinjiang last year as part of the government's battle against separatism and "religious extremism" in the region, home to several Muslim ethnic minority groups. |