IS members caught in Xinjiang plot
Print Edition
THE Party chief of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region said yesterday that an undisclosed number of people from the northwest China region who had joined the militant Islamic State group had planned terror activities after their return.
Zhang Chunxian told a press conference during the annual session of the National People’s Congress in Beijing that the radicals were caught when a terror plot was recently uncovered.
He said they had returned to Xinjiang to take part in violent terror plots after fighting in Syria with the Islamic State group. “The militant group has big influence around the world and Xinjiang has also been affected,” Zhang said.
Xinjiang has seen a wave of deadly unrest blamed on terrorists and separatists, which has sometimes spread to other parts of the country.
Among the most shocking attacks was a deadly rampage by knife-wielding assailants at a train station in Kunming in China’s southwest in March last year, when 31 people were killed and four attackers died.
More than 30 people were killed in an assault on a market in Xinjiang’s regional capital of Urumqi in May last year.
Shohrat Zakir, chairman of the Xinjiang regional government, said yesterday that the overall situation in Xinjiang remained stable and controllable despite terror attacks.
“Violent terror attacks have provoked strong condemnation and opposition in the region,” Zakir said.
A crackdown on violent terrorist attacks has been resolute with the concerted efforts of people from all ethnic groups, he said.
“A number of violent terrorist attacks had been thwarted while they were still in embryonic stages,” he said. “There will be fewer and fewer, rather than more and more, violent terrorist cases.”
He said that even terrorists’ relatives had been assisting the authorities in their efforts to foil their activities, Xinhua news agency reported.
Stressing that terrorists were by nature anti-human and anti-society, he added: “They must be dealt with resolutely according to the law.”
He said that many people in southern Xinjiang, especially rural areas, still could not speak Mandarin and that made it difficult to find jobs and easier to be influenced by extremist thinking. Zakir said bilingual education was important.
Che Jun, Xinjiang’s deputy Party chief, said about 95 percent of potential attacks in Xinjiang had been prevented thanks to public tip-offs.
“This shows that terrorism is the enemy of all the people in Xinjiang,” Che said.
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