The United States announced Friday, November 6 that it had removed from its blacklist of terrorist organizations a Chinese Muslim group regularly cited by Beijing to justify the massive repression underway in western China.
In an opinion published in the American equivalent of the Official Journal, the head of diplomacy Mike Pompeo announces that the United States no longer considers the Islamic Movement of East Turkestan (Etim) as a "
terrorist organization
".
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"
Etim was taken off the list because it's been over ten years since there's no credible evidence that he still exists
," a State Department spokesperson said.
The administration of President George W. Bush added this group to its blacklist in 2004, at a time when it was trying to associate China with its "
war on terror
".
Beijing regularly accuses the Etim movement of attacks in the autonomous region of Xinjiang, populated mainly by Uyghurs, a Turkish-speaking Muslim ethnic group.
According to human rights organizations, a million Muslims are or have been detained in so-called political re-education camps in Xinjiang.
Beijing disputes this figure and speaks of "
vocational training centers
" intended to distance the local population from the temptation of extremism.
According to experts, China has never proven that the Etim movement is an organized group or that it is responsible for the attacks in this region that the separatists call East Turkestan.
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The human rights group Uighur Human Rights Project, headquartered in Washington, welcomed the US decision, saying it was "
too late
".
"
The negative effects of China's exploitation of the imaginary threat that Etim would pose are real: it is 20 years of state terrorism directed against the Uyghurs,
" commented its director, Omer Kanat.
A group of American senators, Republicans and Democrats, proposes to declare China guilty of "
genocide
" of Uyghurs and other Turkish-speaking Muslim communities victims of massive repression in western China.
At the end of October, they tabled a bill to this effect, which is awaiting the resumption of parliamentary debates to be discussed.
