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It’s Islam’s Turn

Now that its attempts to blame Tibetans for all the bad publicity it is receiving have failed, the Chinese government is now making good use of its Muslim population in order to justify its "Olympic Crackdown".

After their recent claims that Chinese Muslims executed a failed attempt to hijack an airplane, which was not taken very seriously at the international level by anyone, government officials are now accusing the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, a little-known group from the Xinjiang province, of planning to kidnap athletes, tourists and journalists and also of planning kamikaze suicide attempts during the Olympic Games (therefore, in order to "protect" people, they might need to be kept under 24 hour-a-day surveillance by the Chinese secret police).

In this case, as usual, scarce evidence was provided - the usual photos of various arms and pamphlets on barren floors and tables were shown on Chinese national television. 45 persons have been arrested.

And, as usual, the subjects "confessed."

Ministry spokesman Wu Heping declared "The terrorism group was secretly recruiting members in China . . .  and many times they sent members abroad for training." (Will the next chapter in this fairy tale be that they were trained in Dharamsala by the Tibetan government in exile?).

Many terrorism experts criticized the Chinese government for failing to provide hard evidence of their recent claim that Uighurs had tried to blow up a China Southern jetliner. Nicholas Bequelin of Human Rights Watch, stated "China has a long history of conflating all sorts of incidents under the label of terrorism… Beijing needs to provide hard evidence."

The Uighurs are a persecuted minority within China, like the Tibetans. They claim that preventative arrests are being made within their community now that the Tibetan cause has gained such momentum, as the Chinese government fears that they will be the next group to begin gaining international attention.

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