Azerbaijan, Baku, 3 May /corr. Trend E.Tanriverdiyeva, R.Hafizoglu / Community of Uighur Muslims of China hopes that the European Union may influence the Government of the Country and assist in restoring their right being violated. However, hardly the European Union will respond to the challenges of help in the near future.
"The assistance of Europe to the Muslims of China can not be topic of discussions because the United Nations, the EU and other bodies list the Uighur-based East Turkestan Islamic Movement as a terrorist group," American politician Richard Weitz said.
In mid April the Uighurs appealed to the European Union with a request to pursue a new policy with regards to China and raise the issue of protection of rights and freedoms of all religious and ethnic minorities in China.
Approximately half are non-Han Chinese Muslims with ethnic and religious links to neighboring Turkic populations in Central Asia. Many of its local Muslims, like Tibetan Buddhists, oppose the growing influx of Han Chinese into their traditional homeland, which enjoyed de facto independence before Beijing incorporated its territory into China in 1949.
"They also suffer from curbs on their religious freedom and government discrimination on behalf of ethnic Han Chinese," the Director of Programs on China of US Hudson Institute," Richard Weitz, reported to Trend via e-mail on 3 May. According to him, however, some of its members have employed violence against Chinese civilians in their campaign to secure Xinjiang's independence. Chinese officials accuse the organization of collaborating with al-Qaida, Weitz said.
The Chinese government has long been
concerned about Muslim-inspired ethnic separatism in the Xinjiang Uighur
Autonomous Region, the expert said. On April 10, Chinese authorities announced they
had exposed a plot by Muslim terrorists to kidnap foreigners and carry out
suicide attacks in Chinese cities during the Summer Olympics. An official from China's Ministry of Public Security revealed that authorities had detained 45 suspects
involved in two terrorist groups. The detainees allegedly planned to use
firearms, explosives, and other weapons to disrupt this August's Olympic Games
in Beijing.
Sooner or later the EU will support Uighur Muslims of China, said the Turkish
expert, human rights activist, Aykhan Kuchuk. "The problem of the Uighur
Muslims is not so religious as demographic because the Uighur Muslims face the
fact of extinction," the Director of the Istanbul department of Mezlumder
organization, Kuchuk, reported to Trend via e-mail on 3 May.
According to him, the Chinese Government always carries out repressions with regards to the Uighurs. The statements of the Chinese politicians that the Uighur terrorists have ties with the terrorist organizations are groundless because there are not any facts testifying their relations with the organizations such as Al-Qaida or Taliban, Kuchuk said. "The repressions of the Chinese Muslims did not begin one or two years ago. It has been happening since 1949 when nothing was known about Al-Qaida or Taliban," the expert said.
According to Kuchuk, the Uighur Muslims of China have been deprived of minimal human rights. "We will do all the best so that the world public supports the Muslims," Turkish expert added.
All minorities are parts of Chinese Big Family and enjoy equal status and right economically, politically, socially, and culturally and China Communist Party(CCP) is not a nationalist party, Chinese politician Zhang Jiadong said. "Of course, it doesn't mean there are no human right problems in China. It just means these problems are not caused by Beijing's domestic policy of nationalities and religions. Actually, these problems can be found in almost all developing countries worldwide," the Prof. of Shanghai University, politician Jiadong, reported to Trend via e-mail on 3 May.
"Not all Muslim Chinese appealed for support to Europe. There are just few Uigurs abroad did it. They can't represent all Chinese Muslims, even all Uigurs," he said.
According to Jiadong, China needs all supports from the rest of the world to improve its human right condition by faster social and economic development.
"But if Europe just
wants to support few parts of Chinese, it would harm China's efforts to improve
human right condition because it will make bigger gaps between different
nationalities and destabilizing China's economic development process," the
expert said.
According to him, Europeans should know more about what's going on in China and should think and rethink consequences of their 'sincere' concerns and supports to Chinese human right problems. If they know the reality of "human right problems" in China, they would hold more positive views on Chinese government and help Beijing improve all Chinese human right condition comprehensively, he said.
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