The United States has revoked the terror label for the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), an Islamic extremist organization that Beijing has blamed for the attacks in its western Xinjiang region. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo signed the order removing ETIM from the list of terrorist groups on October 20. The order, however, was made public on Thursday.
ETIM is a small Islamic separatist group believed to be active in Xinjiang province, home to China’s Uighur Muslim ethnic minority. It was founded by Hasan Mahsum, a Uyghur from the Kashgar region of Xinjiang, who was shot dead by Pakistani soldiers in 2003.
However, the group, which once allegedly had ties to al Qaeda and the Taliban, continues to be designated under United Nations Security Council resolution 1822.
Pompeo’s decision is seen in the context of the Donald Trump administration’s harsh criticism of China’s human rights abuses in Xinjiang, formally called the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.
Human rights groups say China uses the ETIM threat as an excuse to impose restrictions on Uighurs and discredit human rights activists outside of China.
People line up at what China calls a vocational education training service center at the Kunshan Industrial Park in Artux in China’s western Xinjiang region. (AP / File photo)
Beijing frequently blames the shadow group for inciting violence in the country’s far west, saying the group wants to create an independent East Turkestan state in Xinjiang.
When news of Pompeo’s order emerged on Thursday, China’s Foreign Ministry insisted that the ETIM had long been involved in terrorist and violent activities and posed serious threats to security and stability in China, the region and beyond. “China deplores and firmly opposes the US decision … The fight against ETIM is a consensus of the international community and an important part of the international effort against terrorism,” said Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin. .
Dolkun Isa, president of the Uighur World Congress, the international umbrella organization for the human rights of Uyghurs, said China justified the mass detention of between one and three million Uighurs in concentration camps as a counter-terrorism measure. “Today’s revocation removes any Chinese justification that it is fighting terrorism in eastern Turkestan,” he told Radio Free Asia.
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