China says terrorist group broken up in western Xinjiang region after unrest last year

China says terrorist group broken up in Xinjiang

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

Public Security Ministry spokesman Wu Heping said the “hard-core terrorists” had gathered pipe bombs, molotov cocktails, knives and other weapons to carry out attacks in southern Xinjiang cities between July and October 2009. He said the plot was discovered and more than 10 gang members were arrested, while others fled to different parts of China and overseas.

Wu claimed the group was linked to the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, a banned organization advocating independence for Xinjiang that China says is allied with al-Qaida.

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.

According to official count, nearly 200 people died in the violence, which Beijing claims was plotted by overseas Uighur activists.

Wu’s claims could not be independently verified and were questioned by Uighur activists overseas.

Though Wu did not identify what countries the suspects 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 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 told a media briefing.

Slides shown at the briefing showed knives and what appeared to be pipe bombs made from black powder and ball bearings. Another showed a minivan and a four-wheel drive vehicle allegedly used by the gang, while a third showed a kitchen-like room described as a bomb factory in Xinjiang.

Wu said the group was behind a pair of deadly attacks aimed at disrupting the 2008 Beijing Olympics. He said it swung into action again following last July’s rioting, the worst communal violence to hit Xinjiang in more than a decade. Resentment among Uighurs 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 riots, and the harsh crackdown that followed, inspired a new generation of terrorist cells with only rudimentary skills but a strong desire to carry out attacks, said Singapore-based terrorism expert Rohan Gunaratna.

“China faces an enduring medium to low-level threat from terror and extremism and that threat increased after the riots,” Gunaratna said in a telephone interview.

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 it extremely difficult to communicate and organize effectively and have no apparent access to firearms and military-grade explosives.

Overseas Uighur activist Dilxat Raxit said Beijing had made “unilateral accusations” and its lack of transparency raises questions about the investigation and purported evidence.

The Rev. 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.

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.”

Associated Press Writer Gillian Wong contributed to this report.