East Turkestan Independence Movement

There is little question that the East Turkestan Independence Movement is ethnically Uighur, predominantly Muslim, and has engaged in terrorist acts in its drive for making East Turkestan independent of China. It is less clear, however, if it is part of a worldwide jihadist movement and is making cause with Salafist and other extreme Muslim groups. One of the most challenging aspects is if it received support from al-Qaeda, which it probably did, but if it planned to use that support anywhere other than China.

The U.S. froze its assets in August 2002, and, in September 2002, the UN added it to the "list of terrorists and terrorist supporters associated with Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda network." In May 2002, according to the U.S. State Department, two ETIM members were deported to China from Kyrgyzstan for allegedly plotting attacks on the U.S. embassy in the Kyrgyz capital of Bishkek, as well as other U.S. interests abroad. Some critics have said that this was a U.S. initiative to gain Chinese support in Security Council negotiations to support the U.S. position on Iraq. Not long before this action, the U.S. "had accused China of using the war against terrorism as an excuse to clamp down on political dissent in the region, and castigated the Chinese military for human rights violations against Uighur nationalists."

Chinese position
Central Eurasian expert Gardner Bovingdon, of the Department of Central Eurasian Studies at Indiana University, said China's playing of the terrorist card is part of "its strategy for exploiting the 'global war on terror' to serve its particular political purposes in Xinjiang, and also abroad – wherever Uighurs exist in diaspora." Bovingdon commented that China was trying to depict "Uighur separatists, and even Uighur dissidents" who are nonviolent and do not explicitly advocate independence for Xinjiang, as "terrorists." He said China is concerned that humanitarian concerns could shield Uighur or Tibetan secession.

A group calling itself the Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP), in July 2008, claimed responsibility for attacks in China, including bus bombings in Shanghai and Kunming. "The group also threatened to target the Beijing Olympics. Some counterterrorism experts claim the TIP was the ETIM using another name." The Chinese also released a report, in 2002, showing ties to al-Qaeda, but, while "experts agree hundreds of Uighurs left China to join al-Qaeda and its Taliban hosts in Afghanistan, some China specialists doubt the ETIM currently has significant ties to bin Laden’s network. Beijing has a long history of falsifying data, they say, and since September 11 the Chinese have repeatedly tried to paint their own campaign against Uighur separatists in Xinjiang as a flank of the U.S.-led war on terrorism—and to get Washington to drop its long-standing protests over Chinese human rights abuses in its crackdowns in Xinjiang."

ETIM leader Hahsan Mahsum has denied any connections between al Qaeda and his group. He was, however, killed in ETIM leader Hahsan Mahsum was killed in raids on camps linked to al-Qaeda in 2003. "U.S. officials claim that the group has a "close financial relationship" with al Qaeda" based on prisoner interrogation..."Besides Xinjiang, ETIM cells are said to be operating in Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Pakistan." Mackay, who interrogated some Uighur prisoners captured in Afghanistan, said they agreed to taking al-Qaeda support, but wanted to use it only in China.

US imprisonment of Uighurs
The United States held, in Guantanamo Bay detention camp, 22 Uighurs who were captured in combat zones in Pakistan and Afghanistan. All 22 were suspected of membership in the ETIM. All but one have been cleared.

The question of release
Washington wants to release most of these detainees but will not return the detainees to China, which may treat them as anti-Chinese terrorists and Xinjiang separatists. Other nations, concerned about their own diplomatic relations with China, are unwilling to accept the detainees, and the United States faces a serious threat to its diplomatic relationship with China if it grants the detainees asylum in the US.

All but one prisoner in Guantanamo Bay detention camp have been found not to be enemy combatants. They are free to return to their homes in China, and China wants them, but they refuse to go and the U.S. has decided not to force them to return. There is a principle in international law, called nonrefoulement, reflect a core tenet in the area of human rights: "ensuring that individuals receive at least a baseline level of treatment matters to all states, not just to the individuals’ states of nationality." The principle derives from both the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and the Convention against Torture. "Although the Uighurs have been cleared of wrongdoing, China views them as domestic terrorists and wants to see them returned for trial."

Five of the detainees were released in 2006, and accepted by Albania. China denounced the transfer of custody.

On February 19, 2009, Adel Abdul Hakim, one of the five men sent to Albania in 2006, was accepted as a refugee by Sweden. The Swedish decision was based on Sweden having a Uyghur community that could support his integration into Swedish society, and the presence of his sister, who had already been accepted as a refugee. China pressured Sweden not to accept a Uighur whom the U.S. had determined to be innocent of terrorism.