Bureaus
Columnists
Features
Money Report
TribTech

Fashion
Food
Art
Music
Travel

Place a classified ad. or browse the Intermarket

International Funds
Global Stock Markets

Special Reports
Sponsored Sections

Reader's Services
Subscriptions

Ethnic Unrest Continuing in China, Despite Crackdown

Armed Uighur militants and Chinese security forces clashed this month in the isolated town of Aksu, sources said in Beijing. Several militants were killed in what sources described as a dramatic shoot-out when security forces in helicopters attacked militants who had kidnapped five police officers.

The state-run Xinjiang Daily reported last week that five militants have been sentenced to death for separatism, murder, robbery and illegal weapons and ammunition trade in connection with a two-year spate of separatist activities across the vast territory.

An additional eight separatists were given long jail terms, the paper said. One of those sentenced to death was found guilty of killing a police officer, the report said.

A classified circular issued in December by the Ministry of State Security indicated strongly that China believes that its problems with the Uighurs, a Muslim Turkic-speaking ethnic minority, will not go away.

The circular, according to sources, ordered security agents to report any attempts to infiltrate China by Islamic militants from Saudi Arabia, Iran, Gulf Arab states, Turkey and India. It further instructed Chinese agents to be vigilant about reporting any movement of weapons into China by militant bands or any plans for attacks against Chinese facilities.

The Aksu clash, the sentencing of the militants and the security circular were seen as indications that the Uighur struggle against Chinese rule has not been crushed despite a massive troop presence in Xinjiang and the movement of millions of Han Chinese into the region.

The developments also show that while the fight against Chinese rule over Tibet attracts more international attention, the violent nature of the Uighur separatist movement has become a headache for Beijing.

The persistence of the Uighur campaign, despite its lack of a charismatic leader like the Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, also partly explains China's staunch support of the Russian operation to crush Islamic rebels in the breakaway region of Chechnya.

Chinese officials said they had strong reason to suspect that Uighur separatists receive help from abroad. They cite, as an example, an attack on March 7, 1997, when a bomb planted on a Beijing bus killed two people and wounded eight others. The attack was the first known terrorist incident in Beijing since the Chinese revolution in 1949.

After the blast, an Istanbul-based group called the Eastern Turkestan Freedom Organization, whose members are exiled Uighurs, took responsibility for the attack.

Chinese government officials at the time denied that the blast was connected to a separatist organization.

But, subsequently, Chinese security officials asked for Israeli assistance in analyzing the explosives used in the bus bombing, a source said. The explosives turned out to be export-grade materials manufactured in China, he said. Further analysis indicated that the explosives had been exported to Pakistan and then re-exported to Afghanistan.

The source, a Middle Eastern businessman and an expert on security matters, said Chinese officials believed that Uighur separatists obtained the explosives from groups within Afghanistan who are interested in spreading Islamic fundamentalism in northwestern China.

Straddling the ancient Silk Road, Xinjiang was brought into the Chinese empire during the Qing Dynasty. It is populated by a mix of ethnic groups, including an estimated 8 million Uighurs.

In 1944, during the chaos of war with Japan, Uighur leaders declared the sovereign state of East Turkestan, but in 1950, the Communist People's Liberation Army crushed their independence.

In recent years, separatist sentiments in Xinjiang have been fueled by the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, the realignment of the newly independent Muslim states of Central Asia and the growing pull of Islam.

The biggest publicly known separatist uprising occurred in February 1997 in Yining, near the Kazakhstan border in China's far west. Hundreds of Uighurs shouting ''God is great'' and ''Independence for Xinjiang'' took to the streets before authorities cracked down.

By official count, 10 people were killed, but Uighur exile groups put the death toll at more than 100.

Like Yining, the isolated town of Aksu has been a hotbed of anti-Chinese sentiment.

Sources said the latest round of violence broke out there between Jan. 5 and Jan. 8, when rebels reportedly kidnapped five police officers.