Hizb ut-Tahrir in Xinjiang

The Chinese government claim that Hizb ut-Tahrir are operating in Xinjiang, the huge area north of Tibet where there's long been a movement among the indigenous and largely Muslim Uighurs for independence. Or is this an excuse for further crackdowns in advance of the Olympics?

In a back street in the old Silk Road city of Kashgar, the Chinese government has been spray-painting signs on dusty mud brick walls to warn against what it says is a new enemy – the Islamic Liberation Party.

Better known as Hizb ut-Tahrir, the group says its goal is to establish a pan-national Muslim state, or caliphate.

China claims Hizb ut-Tahrir is a terrorist group, and says it operates in the far western region of Xinjiang, home to some eight million Muslim, Turkic-speaking Uighurs, many of whom chafe under Chinese rule.

Yesterday, in a sign that such an insurgency may be active, Chinese authorities said police had shot and killed five people who were seeking "holy war" in Xinjiang.

China's official Xinhua news agency said the police had been on the trail of three men in the group whom they suspected of stabbing an ethnic Han Chinese woman at a beauty salon in the regional capital, Urumqi.

But despite such reported incidents, Hizb ut-Tahrir, and some observers, say they do not espouse violence, and they accuse China of playing up the threat as an excuse to further crack down in Xinjiang, ahead of this summer's Beijing Olympics.

"Strike hard against the Islamic Liberation Party" and "The Islamic Liberation Party is a violent terrorist organisation" read the signs in Kashgar, written in red paint in both Chinese and the Arabic-based Uighur script.

Residents passing by appear to give little heed to the notices, accustomed as they are to daily barrages of propaganda from the government denouncing "splittism", "illegal religious activities" and calling for ethnic unity and harmony.

As in Tibet, another strife-hit Chinese region, many Uighurs resent the growing economic and cultural impact of Han Chinese who have been encouraged by the government to move to far-flung parts of China.

Beijing accuses militant Uighurs of working with al-Qaeda to use terror to bring about an independent state called East Turkestan. It claims to have foiled at least two Xinjiang-based plots this year to launch attacks during the Beijing Games.

But the emergence of Hizb ut-Tahrir is a recent phenomenon in Xinjiang.

Comments

[Free-speaker]

such a shame that Chinese govt is blaming a party which is clearly non violent. Britain tried to do the same with hizb but they couldnt since in their laws they have to able to prove a party as violent before they can ban them :)