Weijian Shan

Opinion | Xinjiang: what the West doesn’t tell you about China’s war on terror

In 2002, the US and the UN both declared a Uygur militant group a terrorist organisation. The US then considered China a partner in the war on terror

When the Trump administration delisted the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, it allowed the West to frame China’s anti-terror measures as ethnic persecution

Reading Time:7 minutes

Why you can trust SCMP

Weijian Shan

Published: 1:30am, 14 Apr 2021Updated: 9:26pm, 4 Jun 2021

On March 22, the United States and the European Union imposed sanctions on China over alleged human rights violations against the Uygurs, the majority ethnic group in Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region.

It was the latest in a series of escalating moves against Beijing that began on January 19 when then US secretary of state Mike Pompeo, on his last day in office, declared that China was committing “ongoing” genocide against the Uygurs.

Pompeo offered no evidence. It was reported in Foreign Policy magazine that the State Department’s own lawyers had found “insufficient evidence to prove genocide”. When the Canadian parliament subsequently passed a motion declaring genocide in Xinjiang, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau abstained, calling the term “extremely loaded”.

China has retaliated in kind, launching sanctions against European lawmakers and accusing the West of hypocrisy and spreading lies.

What we do not read about in the West is that terrorism was spiralling out of control in Xinjiang and remains a serious threat today.

I used to visit Xinjiang from Hong Kong until a few years ago, for an American firm which had invested hundreds of millions of dollars in two private businesses there.