CHINA, CHINA, AND MORE CHINA

Note: The above text was also a snippet.

Hey jihadis: I hear the Chinese laugh at your pathetic prophet Mohammed.

There, killed two birds with one stone.

Lawmakers Urge Congress to Condemn China's Crackdown on Uighurs

By Dan Robinson
Capitol Hill
July 10, 2009

Two U.S. lawmakers are urging Congress and the Obama administration to strongly condemn China's crackdown on Uighur Muslims in the northwestern region of Xinjiang, where violence in the city of Urumqi left more than 150 people dead. A Uighur activist responded again to Chinese government allegations that she helped fuel the violence.

Rabiya Kadeer, the Uighur activist who Chinese authorities alleged helped stir up demonstrations, appeared at a news conference with two lawmakers seeking to refocus congressional attention on the situation in Xinjiang.

Democrat William Delahunt's Subcommittee on Human Rights, International Organizations, and Oversight has held a series of hearings on the Uighur people.

He rejects Beijing's allegations against Kadeer, calling them part of an ongoing campaign by Chinese authorities to falsely portray Uighurs as terrorists.

"The regime has gone so far as to call her a terrorist and responsible for the violence in China, just as they did in the case of the Uighur men wrongfully imprisoned in Guantanamo," said Delahunt.

Speaking through an interpreter, Kadeer said she is against violence and denied playing a role in fueling protests. She said a crackdown on Uighurs is continuing, with authorities calling for severe punishment of protest leaders, including execution.

"The crackdown is still ongoing," said Kadeer. "Uighurs are being arrested, Chinese mobs are still after innocent Uighurs and we do not believe the statistics put out by the Chinese government. The actual number we believe is much higher."

The Chinese government said at least 156 people were killed and more than 1,000 wounded as a result of clashes or the crackdown by authorities.

Clashes in Xinjiang have largely been between the Han Chinese majority and the Uighur minority, a Turkic group sharing similarities with people in Central Asia.

Uighurs accuse Beijing of discrimination and repression, while China's government accuses Uighurs, who comprise nearly half of Xinjiang's 20 million people, of using terrorism in the pursuit of independence.

A resolution Congressman Delahunt is introducing condemns violent repression by the Chinese government of what it calls "peaceful Uighur protests."

The resolution notes the Chinese government's official campaign to encourage Han Chinese migration into the traditional Uighur homeland in Xinjiang, which it calls East Turkestan. But it also expresses sadness at the loss of both Han Chinese and Uighur life during recent upheavals.

The resolution also calls on Beijing to end what it calls "slander of Rebiya Kadeer, who lawmakers say supports democracy and a peaceful resolution of differences between Uighur people and the People's Republic of China.

Congressman Dana Rohrabacher [Republican] asserts that successive U.S. administrations have failed to adopt a strong enough stance against Chinese policies in Xinjiang, and says the resolution will put Congress on record on recent events.

"What's going on in East Turkestan and the slaughter of the Uighurs and the suppression of their efforts to obtain their own freedom is not just the business of the Uighurs, it is the business of free people everywhere and especially it's the business of the people of the U.S. who should be in alliance with those people everywhere who are struggling to make this a more peaceful and a more democratic world," he said.

The symbolic resolution urges Beijing to allow observers and journalists access to protest areas, and access to trials of those charged with protest-related crimes. It says any innocent individuals involved in protests should be released, and urges Beijing not to seek the death penalty for those engaged in peaceful dissent.

Rohrabacher and Delahunt also reiterated their anger at U.S. military authorities for allowing Chinese intelligence officials to interrogate Uighur detainees at the U.S. naval detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba in 2002.

Delahunt has raised the matter in successive congressional hearings dealing with U.S. detainee policy, noting that he and Congressman Rohrabacher were not permitted access to the 17 Uighurs held at Guantanamo for nearly seven years.

Delahunt said he met with four Uighurs who were sent to Bermuda in June, adding he is scheduling another hearing on the issue next week at which he hopes to hear a direct explanation from the Pentagon.

http://www.voanews.com/english/2009-07-10-voa47.cfm?renderforprint=1

Dana Tyron Rohrabacher (born June 21, 1947, in Coronado, California), is a Californian politician, who has been a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives since 1989 and currently represents California's 46th congressional district.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dana_Rohrabacher
________________________________________________

"Currently serving his eleventh term in Congress, Dana Rohrabacher represents California's scenic 46th District. Stretching along the Pacific coastline of Orange County and Los Angeles from Huntington Beach to the Palos Verdes Peninsula, the district includes Huntington Beach, Costa Mesa, Fountain Valley, Seal Beach, Santa Catalina Island, Midway City, Sunset Beach, Surfside, Rancho Palos Verdes, Rolling Hills, Palos Verdes Estates and Rolling Hills Estates as well as portions of Long Beach, Westminster, Santa Ana and San Pedro, and Newport Beach.

As Ranking Member of the International Organizations, Human Rights and Oversight Subcommittee of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rohrabacher is a most forceful spokesman for human rights and democracy around the world. For example, during the 111th Congress, Rep. Rohrabacher championed the effort to boycott the 2008 Beijing Olympics by introducing a resolution to that effect emphasizing China's litany of human rights violations. Rohrabacher is also committed to securing our borders and a staunch opponent of amnesty for illegal immigrants. During his tenure as Chairman, one of his first priorities was to investigate the U.N. Oil for Food program and potential foreign influence in the Oklahoma City Bombing. Rep. Rohrabacher will continue to look into technology transfer issues, visa policies practiced by the State Department, Chinese proliferation of nuclear weapons technology as well as other volatile areas of concern such as the massive cultivation of opium poppies in Afghanistan. As a senior member of the International Relations Committee, Rohrabacher led the effort to deny Most Favored Nation trading status to Communist China, citing the rogue nation's dismal human rights record and opposition to democracy.

Rohrabacher is a strong voice for lower government spending and taxes. His record of fiscal restraint and pro-growth policies has won him acclaim from the National Taxpayers Union, Citizens Against Government Waste, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Federation of Independent Business."

http://rohrabacher.house.gov/Biography/
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Rep. Dana Rohrabacher on the Uighurs

June 29, 2009

Editor's note: The following letter was submitted by Rep. Dana Rohrabacher [Republican], who serves as Ranking Member of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on International Organizations, Human Rights and Oversight, in response to this blog post by Thomas Joscelyn.

Despite the court rulings declaring the Uighurs continued detention in GITMO as unjust and the decision by the Obama administration to finally release them, there are still naysayers who refuse to believe the Uighurs pose no threat to the United States. They never have. Rather, the Uighurs are a Muslim ethnic minority from a remote section of China, who desired to learn how to protect themselves and their homeland against the persecution of the brutal Chinese communist regime. In that quest, they became a pawn in a bigger global chess game between the United States and China’s veto wielding power on the U.N. Security Council at a time when the U.S. needed China’s support for the impending invasion of Iraq. The naysayers, who continue to dismiss this correlation, seem to be more interested in politically expedient fear mongering than the actual facts.

The House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on International Organizations, Human Rights and Oversight, of which I am the Ranking Member, held two hearings on June 10 and June 16. The hearings respectively focused on the Uighurs historic persecution in the occupied East Turkestan region of China and the nature of Uighur nationalism versus terrorism. Several witnesses during those hearings took issue with the recent news reports and editorials accusing the Uighurs of being associated with al Qaeda affiliated groups, specifically the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), engaging in terrorist camp weapons training and allegedly posing a national security threat to the United States.

The oft-repeated accusation that the Uighurs held at Gitmo were members of the ETIM is patently false. Not only have the Uighurs themselves categorically denied this, according to their Combatant Status Review Tribunal (CSRT) statements, but every federal court that has reviewed the case has ruled in favor of the Uighurs. The U.S. District Court of Appeals issued a detailed opinion in Parhat v. Gates (2008) that found no evidence of Huzaifa Parhat’s membership in the ETIM. It rejected the government’s ETIM evidence as “wholly inadequate” on the grounds that it did not establish that ETIM was associated with al Qaeda, or the Taliban, or that they engaged in hostilities against the U.S. or its coalition partners.

Which brings up the curious decision by the United States to designate the ETIM a terrorist group in 2002. During the June 16 subcommittee hearing, Dr. Sean Roberts, associate professor of practice for the Elliot School of International Affairs at The George Washington University, testified that few scholars studying the Uighur people had ever heard of the ETIM in 2002. Dr. Dru C. Gladney, professor, Pomona College, also testified that “it came as a surprise at the conclusion of his August 2002 visit to Beijing, that Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage identified ETIM as the main coordinating Uighur group to be targeted as an international terrorist group. At the time, very few people including activists deeply engaged in working for an independent East Turkistan, had ever heard of the ETIM.”

A Defense Intelligence Agency analyst working on Chinese counterintelligence operations once said, “It’s the mother’s milk of counterintelligence to create phony political organizations.” He also stated that the Chinese are especially good at it and utilize this method in order to know who to watch and who to eventually eliminate.

More after the jump...

In August of 2002, the U.S. was urgently seeking U.N. consensus for military action in Iraq. According to court documents, Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri traveled to Beijing for “high-level meetings” around the same time as Deputy Secretary Richard Armitage, both seeking Chinese support. However, Mr. Armitage met with the Chinese first. At the conclusion of that meeting on August 26, 2002, Mr. Armitage acknowledged during a press briefing that talks had focused on Iraq and discussions of putting ETIM on the terrorist list did in fact take place. Several weeks later, ETIM was conveniently placed on the official State Department list of terrorist organizations.

It seems the United States offered another concession in exchange for Chinese acquiescence. In September 2002, Chinese intelligence agents were permitted to interrogate the Uighurs held at Gitmo. Amnesty International reported, “It is alleged that during the Chinese delegation’s visit, the detainees were subjected to intimidation and threats,” and “some of the interrogation techniques were alleged to have been on the instruction of the Chinese delegation.” Another Uighur detainee described in court documents a similar scene but also stated an American who identified himself as a “White House representative specifically threatened to send him back to China if he did not cooperate with interrogators.” A month later, President Bush welcomed Chinese President Jiang to Texas to discuss China’s position on potential military action in Iraq.

It’s also important to note that Rep. William Delahunt and I were both denied access to the Uighur detainees as part of our official Oversight Committee’s investigation into their incarceration at Gitmo. Pentagon Spokesman, Bryan Whitman, issued a statement acknowledging foreign nationals are permitted to come into Guantanamo but “Congressmen, the general public, media are not permitted to question detainees. It can only be done in an official capacity and no congressmen can interrogate or question detainees because it is not part of their oversight responsibilities.” Yet our government lays out the welcome mat for Communist Chinese intelligence officers.

Newt Gingrich recently alleged the Uighurs received “jihadist training in weapons, explosives and ideology of mass killing.” This claim is completely unfounded and nothing more than rhetorical exaggeration. The weapons training consisted of learning how to assemble, break down and clean a single Kalashnikov rifle and taking a few shots of target practice in a remote village where they helped build a house and performed odd jobs in exchange for food and shelter. Former detainee Parhat clearly stated that when he decided to leave China he sought training only to fight the Chinese government. As a matter of fact, all of the Uighur detainees say they abhor terrorism.

Abdul Helil Mamut, another detainee recently transferred to Bermuda, corroborated Parhat’s description of the “camp’s” activities. “There was no typical training,” he said. “Whoever volunteered, once in a while, people would run or exercise. One day they showed us an old rusty rifle for about a half hour. Then the second day we shot three to five bullets.” A far cry from any formal terrorist training camp folks like Mr. Gingrich or Thomas Joscelyn would have you believe.

Another repeated falsehood references an incident where a Uighur detainee supposedly threw a television set because women with bear arms appeared on the screen. Once again, untrue. In 2006 a detainee kicked a television set in protest of his continued wrongful imprisonment a year after his CSRT confirmed he was not an enemy combatant. The man who kicked the TV has since been released, attends college in Albania, has a Facebook page, and has been pictured hiking with several women in his group wearing tank tops and a guy wearing an American flag T-shirt.

The bottom line is all of the Uighurs were cleared for release by the U.S. military under the Bush administration, some as far back as 2003. The Bush administration conceded they were not enemy combatants, which translates into a tacit admission they were most likely picked up by mistake and never should have been at GITMO in the first place. The U.S. Court of Appeals examined both classified and unclassified evidence and determined the Uighurs not only posed no threat to the U.S. but also clearly hadn’t committed any acts of violence against anyone.

The truth of the matter is this; The Uighurs mean us no harm and want the communist Chinese out of their homeland in East Turkistan. They are caught up in a quid pro quo between the United States and China. The oppressive Chinese regime is their true enemy, not us.

Posted by Michael Goldfarb on June 29, 2009

http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2009/06/rep_dana_rohrabacher_on_the_ui.asp

Another repeated falsehood references an incident where a Uighur detainee supposedly threw a television set because women with bear arms appeared on the screen

I once dated a woman with bear arms.

Are you sure it was a woman? :)

Rather, the Uighurs are a Muslim ethnic minority from a remote section of China, who desired to learn how to protect themselves and their homeland against the persecution of the brutal Chinese communist regime.

BS. I'm not buyin' this load of horse apples. The Uighurs are Turkic, not Chinese, Muslims. They are attempting to separate their province into an autonomous state (read, Islamic state) much the same as Chechen Muslims have attempted to do there.

The Uighurs we captured were terror boys pure and simple and should never have been let go. Bermuda may someday feel the Sword of Allah in their country. Will they thank us?

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Send treats to the troops...
Great because you did it!
www.AnySoldier.com

[Dana] Rohrabacher's statement on Uighur Nationalism
Hearing, House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on International Organizations, Human Rights and Oversight

Washington, June 16, [2009]

A Defense Intelligence Agency expert on Chinese counterintelligence operations once said that “it is the mother’s milk of counterintelligence to create phony political organizations.” He stated also that the Chinese are especially good at it and utilize this method in order to know who to watch and who to eventually eliminate. Phony or “front” organizations can also be used to tarnish good causes by blaming them for violence against innocent people when in fact government agencies committed it themselves. We have good reason to believe that this may have been the case with some so-called Uighurs organizations.

Much to my dismay some pundits in the Republican Party have fallen for the bait and lump the Uighurs in with Islamic extremists.

The Bush Administration did not help matters. It held Uighurs in Guantanamo and labeled them as terrorists to appease the Chinese government in a pathetic attempt to gain its support at the beginning of the war against Iraq and to assure China’s continued purchases of U.S. treasuries. Many if not all of the negative allegations against the Uighurs can be traced back to Chinese intelligence, whose purpose is to snuff out an independence movement that challenges the communist bosses in Beijing. No patriot, especially no Reagan Republican, should fall for this manipulation which has us doing Beijing’s bidding.

In the Hall of Shame is Newt Gingrich. His positioning on this should be of no surprise to those of us who during Newt’s leadership in the House opposed his active support for Clinton era trade policies with Communist China, policies that have now had a disastrous impact on our economy while bolstering China’s economic and military prowess. Most Favored Nation’s trading status should never have been granted to this vicious dictatorship. Newt and the big corporations that persuaded members of congress in the 1990s to go along with President Bill Clinton’s economic embrace of Communist China did no favor to our country or to the people of the United States. Our current economic vulnerability to a dictatorship, the world’s worst human rights abuser, can be traced back to that morally flawed policy in the 1990s.

Within the span of 20 years we have gone from having a trade deficit with Communist China of $1.7 billion to over $300 billion today. We are losing about 650,000 jobs a month and it is obvious to anyone who bothers to read labels that almost everyone of those jobs are going to Communist China. The Chinese Communist Party has accumulated a $2 trillion dollar sovereign wealth fund by producing and selling American brand products to Americans who once produced those same products here on American soil. Moving derivatives, stocks and bonds or paper from one side of the table to the other doesn’t create wealth. Manufacturing jobs do. This basic fact has not been lost on the Communist bosses. Now our leaders beg the Chinese to buy our treasuries. Thanks to our so-called leaders, Republican and Democrat, America was set on a path to economic oblivion.

Have we sunk so low and drifted so far away from our principles and that we accept our leaders doing the bidding of the Chinese Communist Party by attacking people who protest against Beijing’s repressive rule? Newt should explain to this committee how occupied East Turkestan is any different from present day occupied Tibet or Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia during the Cold War. He should explain why he has been doing the bidding of the communist Chinese dictatorship, using Chinese intelligence as a source of information against people seeking democracy and self determination.

Many conservatives knowledgeable about the facts have come out in opposition to such cheap short term political posturing. Those who support the release of the Uighurs from GTMO includes: Stephen A. Abraham, Lieutenant Colonel, Military Intelligence, United States Army Reserve (Ret.); Mickey Edwards, President, Aspen Institute, Lecturer at the Woodrow Wilson School of Princeton University; former Member of Congress (R-OK) and Chairman of the House Republican Policy Committee; Richard A. Epstein, Professor, University of Chicago; Thomas B. Evans, Jr., Former Member of Congress (R-Del.) and former co-chairman of Republican National Committee, Bruce Fein, former Associate Deputy Attorney General to Ronald Reagan, David Keene, Chairman American Conservative Union, William S. Sessions, former director of the FBI, former Chief Judge of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas; Don Wallace, Jr., Georgetown University Professor of Law; Chairman, International Law Institute; John W. Whitehead, President, The Rutherford Institute; Lawrence B. Wilkerson, former Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell. The list is long and varied, including not only well respected politicians, but important and influential academics and members of civil society.

An ongoing attempt to appease Communist China has been behind the detention of the Uighurs currently being held in Guantanamo. By detaining the Uighurs, the United States was and still is an accomplice in China’s continued brutal occupation of East Turkestan and discrimination against the Uighur people. Both Republican and Democratic parties need to recognize this mistake and correct it, we certainly should not cower and kow tow to Beijing.

It is my hope that this hearing will help to dispel some of the serious confusion and propaganda about the Uighurs.

http://rohrabacher.house.gov/News/DocumentSingle.aspx?DocumentID=132587

ON THE INTERNET:

http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/tip/index
http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/etip/index

An ongoing attempt to appease Communist China has been behind the detention of the Uighurs currently being held in Guantanamo.

Sorry, I ain't buyin' it. The Uighurs are Turkic Islamics who were captured in Tora Bora. Just a bunch of harmless backpackers on a hike, I guess? Not!

Rohrabacher is a longtime critic of China and longtime friend of Jihadis -- Abdurahman Alamoudi, Khaled Saffuri and Abdulwahab Alkebsi to name three of them. (Alamoudi is serving 20 years in the slammer right now.) He's also buddies with Islamophile, Grover Norquist.

As I said, I ain't buyin' it -- these Uighur peckerwoods were up to no good.

---

Send treats to the troops...
Great because you did it!
www.AnySoldier.com

Note: Photo included.

http://www.memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=subjects&Area=jihad&ID=SP245009

Special Dispatch - No. 2450
July 17, 2009 No. 2450

“Uighur Jihadist Group Threatens China over Xinjiang Clashes: ‘Allah’s Cavalry Will Soon Fall Upon You’; ‘Oh Brave Mujahideen… Kill the Communist Chinese Wherever You Find Them’”

SNIPPET: “The Islamic Party of Turkestan (IPT) has released a four-minute audio statement in the Uighur language in response to the recent deadly clashes in Xinjiang province in Western China. The voice is that of Sayf Allah, a military commander in the group who was last seen in a video released earlier this year titled “Steadfastness and Preparation for Jihad for the Sake of Allah”; the recording is played over a still photo. The statement was posted on jihadist forums on July 16, 2009; the communiqué itself is dated July 7.

The Islamic Party of Turkestan, formerly known as the Islamic Party of East Turkestan, is a small Uighur jihadist group believed currently to be based in the tribal regions of western Pakistan.”

www.nefafoundation.org/documents-area-pakistan.html#tip0709

www.nefafoundation.org/miscellaneous/FeaturedDocs/nefatip0709.pdf

#

http://counterterrorismblog.org/2009/07/the_turkestan_islamic_party_ti.php

“The Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP) Finally Reacts to Urumqi Riots, Threatens Revenge on China”
By Evan Kohlmann

(July 20, 2009)

http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/papers34/paper3329.html

Paper no. 3329

04-Aug-2009

“Pro-Al Qaeda Elements Regrouping For Fresh Strikes - International Terrorism Monitor—Paper No. 545”
By B. Raman

Looking back...

www.nefafoundation.org/documents-area-pakistan.html#tip0809

www.nefafoundation.org/miscellaneous/nefa_tipenemyterrified0809.pdf

#

http://counterterrorismblog.org/2009/08/nefa_foundation_turkestan_isla.php

“NEFA Foundation: Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP) Claims China “Terrified by Our Operations””
By Evan Kohlmann

SNIPPET: “The NEFA Foundation has obtained and translated an article from the Turkestan Islamic Party’s (TIP) official magazine, “Islamic Turkestan”, titled, “The Enemy Is Terrified by Our Operations” by Abdullah Mansur. In this article first published last November, Mansur described the wave of TIP attacks in the lead up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics and the Chinese government’s response.”

(August 12, 2009)

Note: Photos included.

http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=subjects&Area=jihad&ID=SP251409

Special Dispatch - No. 2514
August 31, 2009 No. 2514

“New from the MEMRI Jihad & Terrorism Threat Monitor: Reports on Uighur Jihad”