The Real Roots of Xinjiang Terror -- Subtitles (Raw TXT)

♪ (Intro Music) ♪

(James Corbett): On October 28, 2013,

an SUV carrying three passengers
crashed into a crowd

of people waiting outside the gate
of the Forbidden City,

across from the infamous Tiananmen
Square in the heart of Beijing.

All three inside the car
were killed in the subsequent fire,

along with two bystanders in the crowd.

38 others were injured.

Although not the most spectacular terror
attack in the world in recent years,

the scene of flames and carnage under
the watchful gaze of Chairman Mao,

in the shadow of the
heavily-guarded Tiananmen Square,

was as unmistakable to the
Chinese population

as the smoking ruins of the Pentagon
was to the America population.

This was,

or was intended to be taken as,

an attack on the Chinese homeland.

It was not long before the incident
was blamed on Muslim separatists

from the country's northwestern
Xinjiang province,

China's largest administrative district,

and a geostrategic area
that shares 2,800 kilometers of border

with Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and
Kazakhstan.

As such, the government was quick to
claim that the incident represented

a bold new escalation in China's
ongoing struggle

with its restive Muslim population,

part of the ethnic Uyghur minority.

Since then, two mass murder incidents
involving knife-wielding masked men,

later identified as members of the
East Turkestan Islamic Movement,

have drawn further attention to the issue.

(Male Reporter): A group of men

-- perhaps even one woman --

went into this train station

late into the evening here in Kunming

and started hacking at people
waiting in the line to get tickets

and in other parts of the station.

The police were deployed to the area.

Four people, they say, were killed:

four suspects killed,
one suspect injured,

who is the woman I describe.

There really were these horrific images

coming out on social media
late into the night

-- and some of them deleted
subsequently --

of pools of blood and dead bodies

lying strewn across the Kunming
train station,

this large train station here
in the far southwest of China, John.

A blast has occurred at a railway
station in Ürümqi,

the capital of northwest China's
Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.

Government sources said details

about the blast and casualties

are unclear at this moment.

Now ambulances and police cars
have rushed to the scene.

Police have cordoned off all entrances
to the square of the station,

and a police source said that
train services

have been suspended at the station.

As Pepe Escobar,

geopolitical analyst and frequent
BoilingFrogsPost.com contributor,

explained last week on
The Corbett Report,

the Uyghurs are a persecuted minority in
the country's untamed west, who find

few opportunities for advancement in
China's mainstream society,

dominated by the ethnic majority
Han Chinese.

The problem is,
there's no political process

-- logic --
behind all this.

They are... they feel that they are being

-- which is, I would say,
90 percent true --

they are being invaded, decimated.

And there's a sort of slow-motion
cultural genocide

of the Uyghurs all over Xinjiang.

And not only in those Silk Road

-- Northern Silk Road, Southern
Silk Road --

routes in the desert,

around the Taklamakan Desert:
in the big cities, as well.

In Kashgar, where the Chinese have a
very controversial project

to raze the old Kashgar,
old downtown Kashgar

-- which is amazing.

It's one of the most extraordinary places
all over Eurasia,

where they have that famous
Sunday market,

where you have not only Uyghurs

but Tajiks, Kyrgyz, Kazakhs:
people from all over the region,

from the Hindu Kush, from the Pamirs,
from the Tian Shan Mountains;

you name it: they go there
to sell their wares.

It is... Uyghurs, of course,
it is a heavily Muslim population,

but it's not a Wahhabi-style Islam at all.

They are relatively tolerant

compared to the Wahhabis, for instance.

There is not a heavy infiltration

of Wahhabi-style missionaries
in that region.

It is an economic, political, and
cultural problem

which the Chinese don't know
how to solve.

First of all, because they consider
the Uyghurs

-- let's put it bluntly --

an inferior race;

so they should be ruled by the
Han Chinese,

and they should be incorporated
into this great

western migration and
development project in China.

Uyghur disenfranchisement is
played upon

to foment Islamic radicalism
and political separatist sentiment.

The East Turkestan Islamic Movement,

seeking to wrest Xinjiang from
China's control,

offers a number of parallels to the
shadowy al-Qaeda terrorist organization,

including a mysterious leader
living in a secret mountain base

in Pakistan's lawless border region, and

-- as FBI whistleblower and
Boiling Frogs Post founder

Sibel Edmonds revealed
in last year's series on Gladio B --

direct support from NATO-associated
Gladio operatives

seeking to destabilize a
geostrategic region

in an ongoing, under-the-radar war

for control of Central Asia.

This is extremely important.

Again, Xinjiang: Muslim population.

And they are referred to...

-- in Turkey, they don't call them
Xinjiang.

It's "[East] Turkestan,"

[East] Turkestan.
They speak Turkic dialect.

Guess what?

"Up there? A great place!"

"Imagine, they get their independence: "

"We can have our little mini base there!"

"You know how close we are to China?"

I mean, on one hand you can say
"Yeah, there's Taiwan out there."

Well, this is going to be even
more important than Taiwan!

And then, look again: the other important
strategic location for Xinjiang,

-- for [East] Turkestan,
a.k.a. Uyghuristan --

You look out there: you see Pakistan;
you see Afghanistan.

This is a very important region.

This has been a very important
region, prize,

for the United States, for the West.

We've been...
We've been doing a lot of things there.

Every time you hear...

-- at least when I was working there,

during this period that
FBI was investigating these...

-- not operations there, but people here:
the criminals in the US

who carried out the operations there.

Those terrorist attacks:

they were orchestrated

from a long distance.

You go to Turkey;

Then, from Turkey, you go to Brussels;

to England;

and then you go to the United States.
So, all the orchestration:

it's not some minorities or some Muslims
get together, suddenly they go and...

It doesn't happen.

It didn't happen that way,

at least during that period.

(James): Western support for the
Xinjiang terrorists is not difficult to spot,

and includes the fact that the East
Turkestan government-in-exile,

led by Anwar Yusuf Turani,

is based in Washington, DC;

has spoken at the National Press Club;

met with President Clinton during
his administration;

and received explicit offers of support
from President Bush

and the National Endowment for
Democracy-funded

Uyghur World Congress:

a German-based organization
with a Sweden-based spokesman,

Dilxat Raxit, that Central Asia
analyst Christoph Germann

told The Corbett Report last week

asks as the Western media's go-to man

for any and all stories about the region.

He's probably the most-quoted person

when it comes to any incident in Xinjiang

which involves the Uyghur minority.

I mentioned earlier

the Radio Free Europe/
 Radio Liberty CIA propaganda organ;

and there's also the
Radio Free Asia

-- which is the equivalent for the
Uyghurs, you could call it.

And they report...
a lot of their reports are a lot of...

often sourced on the
World Uyghur Congress

and statements by Dilxat Raxit.

But he's also cited by our
mainstream media.

If you look at Reuters or AP,
doesn't matter:

almost all reports about terrorist attacks
in China, in Xinjiang,

have the same structure.

They start by mentioning the attack
and what happened.

Then, they try to frame it within
a certain context,

which seems...

which tries to paint, to portray
the attacks

as inevitable consequences
of government repression.

And then they have this guy, Dilxat Raxit,

who confirms this by bringing
in his expertise about the subject

-- although he's based in Sweden,
and he usually doesn't even know

what happened in Xinjiang earlier
today, when he's asked.

And after the latest terrorist attack
in Ürümqi,

the capital of Xinjiang,

he talked to Reuters within hours
of the attack,

before any details had become known
out of China.

And he told them basically,

"Yes, this was the consequence
of government repression,"

"and such incidents could happen
again at any time."

That was his statement;

and that was picked up by the
Chinese media,

and they were very outraged
about this statement.

The incidents so far are by no means

massive or spectacular enough

to fundamentally change the
course of Chinese society

or bring about Xinjiang's independence,

but they are serving
a number of purposes.

For the West, the attacks help take
the battle for control of Central Asia

directly into the Chinese homeland,

and help destabilize a region that,
as part of President Xi's

New Silk Road Corridor
of pipelines and trade routes,

is of increasing economic
importance to Beijing.

But Beijing, too, gains from the attacks
in the same way that

authoritarian power structures always
benefit from attacks and atrocities:

by making the formerly impossible
appear probable.

As Li Wei,

a terrorism expert at the China Institutes
of Contemporary International Relations,

told the Chinese government
mouthpiece Global Times last week,

Beijing is now openly mulling new
anti-terror legislation

that some are calling China's Patriot Act,

and many analysts are expecting
to openly target the Uyghur population.

Given that the government is
already increasing

its network of informants
in the region,

with such programs as offering
cash rewards

for those who inform on neighbors
with too much facial hair,

it is questionable whether formal
terror legislation is even needed at all.

In the end, as with so many of
these contrived geopolitical conflicts,

the only people who clearly lose
are the Uyghur people themselves,

whose economic and political
marginalization seem set

to increase from here.

In the great irony of global geopolitics,

this will itself create a greater pool
of disenfranchised youth

to draw upon for future terror attacks,

thus perpetuating a descending cycle
of chaos and violence.

And sadly, the only plausible way out
of this,

a plan for bringing about greater
opportunities

for the Uyghur people to engage
in China's ongoing economic miracle,

is so far off the political radar

that it can't be found on anyone's map.

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