What would you call driving an SUV through a crowded area, murdering two people with that SUV and then setting it ablaze in a final act of suicide? Most people would call that terrorism. Muslims in the area where the terrorists were from say it was not and that the act was justified because women are not allowed to cover their faces.
The terrorists were from northwest China, an area known as Xinjiang and the city they were from – Hotan – is 96% Muslim. These Muslims are known as “Uyghurs” and they are Turkish-influenced.
Xinjiang
China has blamed a fiery attack in Tiananmen Square on “terrorists” from Xinjiang backed by international militants, but residents say that rather than jihadism, violence is driven by cultural repression, corruption and police abuses.
The dusty city of Hotan on the edge of the Taklamakan desert is 3,300 kilometres (more than 2,000 miles) and a world away from Beijing’s Forbidden City, the symbolic heart of Chinese power.
Armed security personnel in camouflage and police vans patrol the streets in the city whose two million strong population is 96 percent Uighur, a mainly Muslim ethnic minority concentrated in Xinjiang.
China’s state broadcaster CCTV has said that the three people who carried out the Tiananmen attack, which saw their vehicle barrel into crowds and burst into flames, and five others detained in connection, were all from Hotan.
But residents reject the accusation that the deadly Tiananmen incident — the first attributed to Uighurs outside the far western region — and a series of clashes inside Xinjiang this year are the result of terrorism.
“Uighurs are angry that women are not allowed to cover their faces or that they must bribe government officials to get things done,” said a 30-year-old doctor. {emphasis ours}
That ‘do what we say and nobody gets hurt’ meme is indeed a common denominator among Muslims who commit terror and stealth jihadists who like to point to the threat of such acts for the same purpose. Ground Zero mosque imam Feisal Abdul Rauf did this during an appearance on Larry King back in 2010. He told guest host Soledad O’Brien that if the mosque wasn’t built, “radicals” might commit acts of terror.
Such behavior is not about human or even civil rights. It’s about power and control in an effort to annex Xinjiang and calling it East Turkistan. Have a look at this press release from the World Uyghur Congress.
“East Turkistan”
The reality is that bordering Xinjiang to the west are Pakistan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgystan, and Kazakhstan, which are all home to Uyghurs. If China forbids women from covering their faces, it’s China’s right as a nation to do so. Moreover, there are plenty of countries for Uyghurs in Xinjiang to move to, where covering the faces of women is common.
As usual, CNN is lending credibility to an absurd premise by entertaining both sides of the argument in an article entitled, “Tiananmen crash: Terrorism or cry of desperation?”