Beijing - China's ruling Communist Party has intensified its ideological battle with members of its Uighur minority who seek an independent state in the Central Asian region known by Beijing as Xinjiang. Uighur exiles, human rights groups and scholars say the global fight against terrorism following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States has allowed China to claim the moral right to crack down on political and religious dissent in Xinjiang.
The party closely monitors religious activities and wages a public war against what it terms the "three evil forces" of religious extremism, separatism and terrorism.
It has claimed to have evidence showing that Rebiya Kadeer, the exiled president of the World Uighur Congress and an advocate of Uighurs' political rights, has "conspired with separatists and religious extremists to plan terror attacks".
Kadeer on Tuesday accused China of enforcing "policies of cultural assimilation and political persecution in Tibet and East Turkestan", using the name still given to Xinjiang by many Uighurs.
"Because of our shared experience under the Chinese regime, Uighurs stand in solidarity with the Tibetan people and support their legitimate aspirations for genuine autonomy," she wrote in the Washington Post.
"To Beijing, any Tibetan or Uighur who is unhappy with China's harsh rule is a 'separatist'," Kadeer said.
"Uighurs are also labelled 'terrorists'," she added.
Kadeer was imprisoned in 1999 after she was convicted of "providing state secrets abroad."
Rights groups said she was convicted only of sending newspaper clippings from Xinjiang to her husband in the United States.
China released her on medical parole in March 2005 and allowed her to leave for the United States, later accusing her of plotting terrorist attacks in Xinjiang.
Xinjiang is a vast Muslim-majority region that borders Pakistan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and Kazakhstan. More than 60 per cent of its 20 million people are from the Uighur, Kazakh, Kirgiz, Hui, Mongol and other ethnic minorities, according to government statistics.
Some 7.5 million Uighurs, most of whom are Muslims, form the largest minority in Xinjiang. Millions of ethnically Chinese people have migrated to the region since it came under Communist Party control in 1949.
The World Uighur Congress accuses former Chinese communist leader Mao Zedong of colonising Xinjiang after reneging on a promise to allow self-determination for the region.
In parts of Xinjiang the hostility of Uighurs towards Chinese people is palpable. Many Uighurs complain of cultural and religious repression and claim ethnically Chinese migrants enjoy the main benefits of development in the oil-rich but economically backward region.
Some Uighurs favour independence from China and have staged small- scale terrorist attacks in the past. The government said terrorists were responsible for 200 incidents that killed 162 people in Xinjiang from 1990-2001, but almost no terrorism-related incidents have been reported there in recent years.
In January 2007, China said its forces killed 18 suspected terrorists and destroyed an East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) training camp in Xinjiang, claiming evidence that ETIM had more than 1,000 members trained by al-Qaeda.
International experts cast doubt on China's account of the incident.
"The organization [ETIM], if it exists at all, was never large and dropped out of sight with the death of its reputed leader, Hasan Mahsun, who died in 2003 at the hands of Pakistani troops," Dru Gladney, an expert on Xinjiang an president of the California-based Pacific Basin Institute, said last year.
Yet Wang Lequan, the Xinjiang regional secretary of China's ruling Communist Party, last month said another suspected ETIM terrorist group raided by special forces in Xinjiang in January had plotted an attack on the Beijing Olympics.
Amnesty International and other rights groups regularly accuse China of using the fight against global terrorism to justify "long- standing repression" of the rights of Uighurs.
Dilxat Rexit, the Munich-based spokesperson for the World Uighur Congress, last week said Chinese police had started a new crackdown on Uighur dissent in Xinjiang ahead of an Olympic torch parade there in July.
Dilxat Rexit urged global leaders to boycott the opening ceremony of the Olympics in Beijing on August 8 in protest against the crackdown.
"Uighurs oppose Beijing holding the Olympics because China didn't fulfil its promise of improving human rights, but Uighurs respect the Olympic spirit and will never sabotage the Olympics," he said.
