LAHORE: Groaning under rising pressure from China, the Pakistani
authorities have extradited to Beijing ten arrested militants of the
pro-independence Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM) despite
serious apprehensions expressed by the Amnesty International (AI) that
they could be at risk of serious human rights violations in china,
including unfair trial, torture and execution.
According to well placed interior ministry sources in Islamabad, the
ten Chinese militants, who had been arrested from the country’s tribal
areas, were extradited to Beijing following the Chinese President Hu
Jintao’s request to Islamabad for taking stern steps against the
fugitive Chinese militants hiding in Pakistani tribal areas and
running terrorist activities in China. While using diplomatic channels
to approach President Zardari, the sources said, President Hu had
expressed his concerns over the presence of the ETIM in the Pakistani
tribal areas, saying they might threaten the security of over 5,000
Chinese nationals working on different development projects in
Pakistan.
An interior ministry spokesman in Islamabad confirmed the extradition
of the ETIM militants, saying they had actually been arrested after
they attacked the Pakistani security forces in the tribal areas. Ten
of the over two dozen arrested Chinese were handed over to Beijing
after it was established that they belong to the ETIM, which Beijing
describes as an armed secessionist group with bases in the Xinjiang
Uighur Autonomous Region (XUAR) in the northwest China, and in
Pakistan. The extradition of the Chinese militants came about as a
result of three agreements made between Pakistan and China to curb
militancy and extremism. During interrogations by the Pakistani
authorities, most of the ETIM militants had refuted terrorism charges,
saying they were members of a Chinese separatist movement founded by
Turkish speaking ethnic majority of over eight million people whose
traditional homeland lies in Xingjian Uighur Autonomous Region in
north-west China.
East Turkistan had maintained a measure of independence until the
early 1950s, when Mao’s victorious rebel armies turned to the
peripheries and began securing Chinese borders, capturing Manchuria,
Mongolia, Tibet and East Turkistan. The native Uighurs resisted the
Chinese occupation until 1960s, but failed to win support from
neighboring Muslim states due to their fractured tribal nature. Since
the mid-1980s, however, an active pan-Islamic movement has been trying
to cement the opposing groups together against Chinese occupation of
their homeland, pressing for an independent East Turkistan state. Yet
Beijing, which views Xingjian as an invaluable asset due to its
crucial strategic location near Central Asia and its large oil and gas
reserves, is using all possible methods to quell the separatist
movement.
The Chinese authorities had been blaming the Uighur separatists for
sporadic bombings and shoot outs in the past, causing an atmosphere of
insecurity and fear in China. Due to intense Chinese lobbying against
the ETIM, it was listed as a terrorist organization by the United
States as well as the United Nations in 2002 after repeated lobbying
from China. But a subsequent 2003 report by Amnesty International had
observed that the evidence that formed the basis for the UN decision
remains unclear. The report further said that China continues to make
little distinction between the Uighurs involved in peaceful or violent
nationalist activities, branding them as ‘separatists’ or
‘terrorists’.
According to diplomatic sources in Islamabad, ten Chinese militants of
the ETIM were recently extradited to Beijing despite opposition by
Amnesty International. They were extradited despite the March 2009
observation by Tim Parritt, Deputy Director of Amnesty International’s
Asia-Pacific Programme that whatever these EMIT militants are accused
of, the risks posed to them are extremely grave, if forcibly returned
to China. He maintained that under international law, states are
obliged not to expel, return or extradite any person to a country
where they risk torture or other ill-treatment.
However, the Pakistani authorities insist that all those who had been
extradited to Beijing were involved in terrorist activities both in
China and in Pakistan and have also developed links with al-Qaeda
network in the tribal areas of Pakistan. They added, the fact that the
ETIM militants have extended their network of terrorist activities to
Pakistan is evident from a threat they had conveyed to the Chinese
embassy in Islamabad, saying they intend to kidnap Chinese diplomats
and consular officers stationed in the Pakistani federal capital with
a view to highlight their cause.
The Chinese mission subsequently informed the Pakistani authorities in
a letter that that some members of the ETIM have already reached
Islamabad and plan to kidnap their staffers from the federal capital.
The letter reportedly pointed out that terrorist groups located in
Pakistan, including al-Qaeda, had been providing support to ETIM
activists for the likely kidnappings. Subsequent investigations had
established that the anonymous threat was issued by none other than
the East Turkistan Islamic Movement and that the would-be kidnappers
had first traveled to Jalalabad in Afghanistan to finalise their
plans.
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