US REMOVES GROUP TARGETED BY CHINA FROM TERROR LIST

Sat 07 November 2020:

The United States said it would no longer designate a Chinese Uighur separatist group as a “terrorist organization” on Friday, sparking sharp condemnation from Beijing.

“ETIM was removed from the list because, for more than a decade, there has been no credible evidence that ETIM continues to exist,” a State Department spokesperson said.

The administration of George W Bush in 2004 added ETIM, also sometimes called the Turkestan Islamic Party, to a blacklist as it found common cause with China in the so-called US-led “war on terror”.

Beijing has regularly blamed ETIM for attacks as it justifies its measures in Xinjiang, where rights groups say one million or more Uighurs or other Turkic-speaking, mostly Muslim people are held in camps.

But analysts say China has produced little evidence that ETIM is an organised group, or that it is to blame for attacks in Xinjiang, which separatists call East Turkestan.

China’s foreign ministry spokesman on Friday urged the US to “stop backpedaling on international counter-terrorism cooperation” and voiced China’s “strong dissatisfaction and firm opposition to the US decision.”

The Washington-based Uighur Human Rights Project said Pompeo’s decision was “long overdue” and a “definitive rejection of China’s claims.”

📝 PRESS RELEASE 📝@UyghurProject welcomes @StateDept decision to revoke flawed terrorism designation

“This long-overdue decision is a definitive rejection of China’s claims,” says Omer Kanat.https://t.co/xrDVojfpqN

— Uyghur Human Rights Project (@UyghurProject) November 6, 2020

“The harmful effects of China’s exploitation of the imagined ‘ETIM’ threat are real – 20 years of state terror directed at Uighurs,” said the group’s executive director, Omer Kanat.

Rights groups say that over 1 million Uighurs have been forced into camps in China’s northwestern Xinjiang region in a bid to root out the community’s Islamic heritage.