China says terror group uncovered that plotted attacks after last year’s Xinjiang unrest

China says terrorist group broken up in Xinjiang

BEIJING — China said Thursday it had crushed a gang of Muslim terrorists that plotted attacks in the wake of deadly ethnic violence in the northwestern region of Xinjiang last year.

Public Security Ministry spokesman Wu Heping said the “hardcore terrorists” had assembled pipe bombs, molotov cocktails, knives and other weapons to carry out 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.

The announcement comes just before the anniversary of last year’s violence, in which long-simmering tensions between Turkic Muslim Uighurs and majority Han Chinese migrants turned deadly in the regional capital Urumqi on 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 the gang, which he alleged was 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 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.

China claims the ETIM is allied with al-Qaida, although little is known about its organization or leadership.

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 vehicle 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.

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.

The 2009 violence was preceded by a wave of attacks the previous year aimed at disrupting the Beijing Olympics that the ruling Communist Party had hoped would display China’s economic development and social stability.

Wu said the gang was responsible for at least two of those: a ramming, bombing, and knifing attack on border police that killed 17, and a separate assault with homemade bombs on government offices in the town of Kuqa in which 12 died, including 10 militants.

The relatively unsophisticated nature of such operations reflects the immense pressure militants face from the powerful, well-funded security forces. Unlike across the border in Pakistan and Afghanistan, Uighur militants find if extremely difficult to communicate and organize effectively and have no apparent access to firearms and military-grade explosives.

As in past instances, overseas critics questioned the government’s claims.

Overseas Uighur activist Dilxat Raxit said the announcement was deliberately timed to associate the Uighur cause with terrorism among international audiences. Beijing has made “unilateral accusations” and its lack of transparency raises questions about the investigation and purported evidence, as well as 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?”

Liu Shanying, a security analyst at the official Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, dismissed such complaints and called the gang’s defeat a “major breakthrough in counter-terrorism.”

“Any country would have done the same,” Liu said.

Associated Press writer Gillian Wong contributed to this report.