THE ISLAMIC
STATE PLEDGED TO ATTACK CHINA NEXT. HERE’S WHY.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/uighur-fighters-vow-blood-flow-rivers-china-021316252.html
The Islamic State is now setting its sights on China, releasing on Monday a half-hour video in which they pledged to “shed blood like rivers” in attacks against Chinese targets. Experts say it’s the first threat the terrorist organization has leveled against China.
“Oh, you Chinese who do not understand what people say. We are the soldiers of the Caliphate, and we will come to you to clarify to you with the tongues of our weapons, to shed blood like rivers and avenging the oppressed,” an Islamic State fighter said in the video, which was analyzed and translated by U.S.-based SITE Intelligence Group. The video showed fighters, including heavily-armed children, praying, giving speeches, and executing suspected informants.
The video appeared to be the terrorist group’s “first direct threat” against China, Michael Clarke of the Australian National University, told AFP.
At first glance, China may seem like a strange target for the Islamic terrorist group. It has no real military footprint in the Middle East, and while Beijing is getting more involved in the region’s energy business, it’s not involved in the U.S.-led anti-ISIS coalition in Iraq and Syria. But experts say China entered the terrorist group’s crosshairs over its treatment of ethnic minority Muslims, the Uighurs, who are concentrated in the western Chinese province of Xinjiang.
Beijing is taking an increasingly hard line against unrest there. On Monday, thousands of police — backed by helicopters and armored vehicles — staged a mass rally, the fourth this year, as a show of force, Reuters reported. A Xinjiang Communist Party official pulled no punches as 1,500 cops were dispatched to problematic cities.
“Bury the corpses of terrorists and terror gangs in the vast sea of the people’s war,” Reuters reported the official saying.
Amnesty International slammed the Chinese government for its past crackdowns on the group, including repressing religious ceremonies and jailing Uighurs. China’s “anti-Islamic policies have pushed some even moderate Muslims to radical outlets,” said Dru Gladney, an expert on Western China at Pomona College.
A 2016 study from New America, a Washington-based think tank, found 114 Uighurs from Xinjiang joined ISIS. Xinjiang furnished the highest number of foreign ISIS fighters from any one province of the world outside of Saudi Arabia and Tunisia, the study found.
The video could garner ISIS more publicity in Western China and spark inspiration for new attacks, Gladney told Foreign Policy. But he cautioned it didn’t necessarily mean ISIS would begin directly coordinating terrorist assaults in China.
Ethnic Uighurs have carried out terrorist attacks already, including a May 2014 attack in the Xinjiang region’s capital of Urumqi that killed 43 and wounded 90. But for the most part, Uighur extremists carry out attacks on a much smaller and less coordinated scale. That likely won’t change, despite newfound ISIS-backing, Gladney said.
But the Chinese government’s heavy-handed tactics to root out extremism, including military mobilizations and violent repression, could backfire and fuel the rise of more extremism, he added. “They have been trying to swat flies with baseball bats,” he said.
Photo credit: GOH CHAI HIN/AFP/Getty Images
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ISIS video shows radicalized militants from China's Uighur minority threatening to shed blood on home turf
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Ethnic Uighur fighters have pledged to return to China and “shed blood like rivers” in a video released by the Islamic State militant group (ISIS), in what is the first direct threat toward Chinese targets. The jihadist group released a 30-minute video Monday showing Uighur members of its ranks training in Iraq. The Uighurs are a Muslim separatist group in China that Beijing views as a significant threat to national security. “In retaliation for the tears that flow from the eyes of the oppressed we will make your blood flow in rivers, by the will of God,” an Uighur militant said in the video, as translated by U.S.-based jihadi monitoring group SITE Intelligence. Another fighter condemned the
Uighur IS fighters vow blood will 'flow in rivers' in China
By Michael Martina and Ben Blanchard
BEIJING (Reuters) - Vowing to plant their flag in China and that blood will "flow in rivers", a video released this week purportedly by the Islamic State group shows ethnic Uighur fighters training in Iraq, underscoring what Beijing sees as a serious threat.
China is worried that Uighurs, a mostly Muslim people from western China's Xinjiang region, have gone to Syria and Iraq to fight for militant groups there, having traveled illegally via Southeast Asia and Turkey.
Islamic State claimed responsibility for the killing of a Chinese hostage in 2015, highlighting China's concern about Uighurs it says are fighting in the Middle East.
Hundreds of people have been killed in Xinjiang in the past few years, most in unrest between Uighurs and ethnic majority Han Chinese. The government blames the unrest on Islamist militants.
The Iraqi arm of Islamic State has released a half-hour long video purportedly showing Uighurs training, as well as some images from inside Xinjiang, including Chinese police on the streets.
One shot that shows Chinese President Xi Jinping gives way to flames in front of a Chinese flag.
"Hey, brothers! Today, we are fighting with infidels across the world! I'm telling you this: Come and live here! Stay strong!," one of the fighters says, according to Uighur speakers who analyzed the video for Reuters but declined to be identified.
"We will certainly plant our flag over America, China, Russia, and all the infidels of the world," it says.
In another scene, a man chanting in Uighur says: "Our land of sharia has been constructed with spilt blood."
The video then shows pictures of people who were said to have become "martyrs", and identified as "al-Turkistānī", or men from Turkestan, the name many Uighurs use for Xinjiang.
Related:
One of the men speaking has an accent from Yarkand, close to the old Silk Road city of Kashgar in Xinjiang's southern Uighur heartland, one of the people who reviewed the video said.
Another fighter refers to the "evil Chinese Communist infidel lackeys".
"In retaliation for the tears that flow from the eyes of the oppressed, we will make your blood flow in rivers, by the will of God!" he says.
Reuters was not able to independently verify the authenticity of the video.
'SERIOUS THREAT'
The video, released this week by the U.S.-based SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors militant groups online, also showed two bloody executions of unidentified people.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said on Wednesday he was not aware of the video and had not seen it.
"But one point is very clear. We oppose any form of terrorism and proactively participate in international cooperation to crack down on terrorism," Geng told a daily news briefing.
"We have long said that East Turkestan forces are a serious threat to China's security and we are willing to work with the international community to jointly crack down on East Turkestan separatist and terrorist forces," he said.
The government says foreign militants have stirred up tensions in Xinjiang, where it says it faces a determined campaign by separatists who want to establish an independent state called East Turkestan.
However, many rights groups and exiles doubt the existence of a coherent militant group in Xinjiang and say Uighur anger at repressive Chinese policies is more to blame for the unrest.
China denies any repression in Xinjiang.
Rian Thum, a Uighur specialist at Loyola University New Orleans, said the Uighurs in the video were presented in the style of Islamic State propaganda.
"To me, the video says more about Islamic State tactics, propaganda, and ideology than it does about the relationship between Uighurs and the Chinese state," Thum said.
(Editing by Robert Birsel and Paul Tait)
