US lawmakers on Tuesday sought a review of the US listing of a Uighur Muslim group in northwestern China as “terrorist,” accusing US authorities of relying on intelligence from Beijing.
The call came after the US, defying China, freed four Uighurs held for years at the controversial “war on terror” camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The Atlantic island of Bermuda took them in.
Thirteen more Uighurs — all cleared of wrongdoing by US authorities — are awaiting release from Guantanamo. China demands them, saying they belong to the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), charges the Uighurs and US officials deny.
Congressman Bill Delahunt called a hearing to examine why the US classified ETIM as a terrorist group. He said the US official blacklisting blamed ETIM for 162 deaths in 200 incidents — the same figures given by China for an array of attacks pinned on Uighur militants.
“It appears to me that we took substantial intelligence information from the communist Chinese regime and then used that questionable evidence as our own,” said Delahunt, a member of US President Barack Obama’s Democratic Party.
He called for a review of how the US blacklists groups, saying: “We should never forget that flawed intelligence played a key role in the decision to invade Iraq.”
Uighurs are a largely Muslim ethnic group in China’s vast northwestern region of Xinjiang. The US State Department said in its latest rights report that China has intensified religious and political repression of the minority.
China said ETIM was behind an attack days before last year’s Beijing Olympics in which two men in the city of Kashgar plowed a truck into a group of jogging police officers, killing 16.
Washington announced it was listing ETIM as a terrorist group during a high-profile 2002 visit to China by then deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage.
“They did this in a pathetic attempt to appease the Chinese government,” said Representative Dana Rohrabacher, an outspoken critic of China’s human rights record.
Rohrabacher accused the administration of former US president George W. Bush, a fellow Republican, of attempting to win China’s favor ahead of the Iraq invasion and to ensure Beijing kept buying bonds to finance the giant US debt.
Randy Schriver, a top State Department official on China under Bush and a close associate of Armitage, strongly rejected the accusations.
Schriver testified that China had pressed the US unsuccessfully to blacklist other groups and that Bush rebuffed a personal request by Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) to give him the men in Guantanamo.
“It doesn’t look like a policy to me to ingratiate ourselves with China. If anything, they were upset with our policy toward Xinjiang,” he said.
While voicing sympathy for Uighurs complaining of human rights abuses, Schriver said the US had to keep an objective definition of terrorism, noting that 2.5 million Americans visit China each year.
But experts testifying before the committee questioned the nature of ETIM, accusing China of lumping together all critics under the name.
The non-partisan Congressional Research Service said ETIM was first mentioned in 2000, but China later blamed it for attacks in the 1990s.
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