via Khmer NZ News Media
By CHRISTOPHER BODEEN (AP)
BEIJING — China said Thursday it had broken up a gang of "hardcore terrorists" who plotted attacks in the western region of Xinjiang, where scores were killed in ethnic violence last year.
Public Security Ministry spokesman Wu Heping said the attacks were planned for last year, after long-simmering tensions between Turkic Muslim Uighurs and majority Han Chinese migrants turned deadly in the regional capital Urumqi last July 5.
Nearly 200 people died in the violence that Beijing claims was plotted by overseas Uighur activists.
Wu said authorities had arrested more than 10 members of a gang of "hardcore terrorists" linked to the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, a banned terrorist organization advocating independence for Xinjiang. Among those detained were the group's co-ringleaders, who Wu said had carried out attacks around the time of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games and subsequently traveled through China preaching religious extremism, recruiting members, raising cash, and rehearsing attacks.
"The uncovering of this major terrorist group again proves that the ETIM and other terrorist organizations constitute the gravest terrorist threat that our nation faces at this present time and in the future," Wu said at a media briefing.
Wu said the gang had assembled bombs, pipe bombs and gasoline bombs, knives and other weapons and had planned attacks in southern Xinjiang cities between July and October 2009. The plot was discovered, and the gang members fled to different parts of China and overseas, he said.
Though Wu did not identify what countries they fled to, he said three were among a group deported to China in December. That same month, Cambodia repatriated 20 Uighurs it said had illegally entered the country, touching off an international outcry.
During the briefing, several slides were displayed showing knives and what appeared to be pipe bombs made from black powder and ball-bearings. Another showed a minivan and four-wheel drive vehicles allegedly used by the gang, while a third showed a kitchen-like room described as a bomb factory in Xinjiang.
The seizures "firmly frustrated the terrorists' sabotage plot and eliminated a potential threat to public security in a timely manner," Wu said.
No dates were given for the arrests and no reason was given why the announcement was made now, although it comes just before the first anniversary of the unrest.
Last July's rioting was the worst communal violence to hit Xinjiang in more than a decade, but authorities have for decades battled a simmering rebellion against Chinese rule. Uighurs' resentment has been fueled by what many see as Beijing's heavy-handed controls on religion and policies that favor the Han Chinese migrants flooding into their traditional homeland.
Overseas Uighur activist Dilxat Raxit said the announcement was deliberately timed to associate the Uighur cause with terrorism among international audiences. Beijing has made a "unilateral accusations" and its lack of transparency raises questions about the investigation and purported evidence, including the possibility that suspects were tortured into giving testimony, he said.
"China associates all Uighur causes with the ETIM, although no one seems to know what this group is or where they are located," Raxit said.
Reverend Marcus Ramsey, director of the Macau Interfaith Network that collaborated with other missionary groups to help the Uighurs escape to Cambodia, also said greater transparency was needed to give the accusations credibility.
"There's no press freedom, there's no independent verification of these things so I think they have the luxury of being able to make these claims," Ramsey said in a phone interview.
"Of course these things reinforce the claims of the Chinese government, but if they don't open these things up for proper scrutiny by the international community then it's very difficult to say, isn't it?"
Associated Press writer Gillian Wong contributed to this report.
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