Pishan County as the official romanized name,also transliterated from Uyghur as Guma County,is a county within the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region and is under the administration of the Hotan Prefecture. It contains an area of 39,412 km2 (15,217 sq mi). According to the 2002 census,it has a population of 220,000. The county borders Maralbexi County and Makit County to the north,Karakax County,Hotan County and Kunyu to the east and Kargilik County to the west. The county includes lands near the Karakoram Pass which are part of the Aksai Chin area that is disputed between China and India.
Terrorism in China refers to the use of terrorism to cause a political or ideological change in the People's Republic of China. The definition of terrorism differs among scholars,between international and national bodies and across time and there is no legally binding definition internationally. In the cultural setting of China,the term is relatively new and ambiguous.
The 2008 Uyghur unrest is a loose name for incidents of communal violence by Uyghur people in Hotan and Qaraqash county of Western China,with incidents in March,April,and August 2008. The protests were spurred by the death in police custody of Mutallip Hajim.
The 2008 Kashgar attack occurred on the morning of 4 August 2008,in the city of Kashgar in the Western Chinese province of Xinjiang. According to Chinese government sources,it was a terrorist attack perpetrated by two men with suspected ties to the Uyghur separatist movement. The men reportedly drove a truck into a group of jogging police officers,and proceeded to attack them with grenades and machetes,resulting in the death of sixteen officers.
A series of violent riots over several days broke out on 5 July 2009 in Ürümqi,the capital city of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR),in northwestern China. The first day's rioting,which involved at least 1,000 Uyghurs,began as a protest,but escalated into violent attacks that mainly targeted Han people. According to Chinese state media,a total of 197 people died,most of whom were Han people or non-Muslim minorities,with 1,721 others injured and many vehicles and buildings destroyed. Many Uyghurs disappeared during wide-scale police sweeps in the days following the riots;Human Rights Watch (HRW) documented 43 cases and said figures for real disappearances were likely to be much higher.
The Shaoguan incident was a civil disturbance which took place overnight on 25–26 June 2009 in Guangdong,China. A violent dispute erupted between migrant Uyghurs and Han Chinese workers at a toy factory in Shaoguan as a result of false allegations of the sexual assault of a Han Chinese woman. Groups of Han Chinese set upon Uyghur co-workers,leading to at least two Uyghurs being violently killed by angry Han Chinese men,and some 118 people injured,most of them Uyghurs.
Ilham Tohti is a Uyghur economist serving a life sentence in China,on separatism-related charges. He is a vocal advocate for the implementation of regional autonomy laws in China,was the host of Uyghur Online,a website founded in 2006 that discusses Uyghur issues,and is known for his research on Uyghur-Han relations. Ilham was summoned from his Beijing home and detained shortly after the July 2009 Ürümqi riots by the authorities because of his criticism of the Chinese government's policies toward Uyghurs in Xinjiang. Ilham was released on August 23 after international pressure and condemnation. He was arrested again in January 2014 and imprisoned after a two-day trial. For his work in the face of adversity he was awarded the PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award (2014),the Martin Ennals Award (2016),the Václav Havel Human Rights Prize (2019),and the Sakharov Prize (2019). Ilham is viewed as a moderate and believes that Xinjiang should be granted autonomy according to democratic principles.
The 2010 Aksu bombing was a bombing in Aksu,Xinjiang,People's Republic of China that resulted in at least seven deaths and fourteen injuries when a Uyghur man detonated explosives in a crowd of police and paramilitary guards at about 10:30 on 19 August,using a three-wheeled vehicle. The assailant targeted police officers in the area,and most of the victims were also Uyghurs. Xinhua news agency reported that six people were involved in the attack,and two had died;the other four were detained by police.
The 2011 Hotan attack was a bomb-and-knife attack that occurred in Hotan,Xinjiang,China on 18 July 2011. According to witnesses,the assailants were a group of 18 young Uyghur men who opposed the local government's campaign against the burqa,which had grown popular among older Hotan women in 2009 but were also used in a series of violent crimes. The men occupied a police station on Nuerbage Street at noon,killing two security guards with knives and bombs and taking eight hostages. The attackers then yelled religious slogans,including ones associated with Jihadism,as they replaced the Chinese flag on top of a police station with another flag,the identity of which is disputed.
The 2011 Kashgar attacks were a series of knife and bomb attacks in Kashgar,Xinjiang,China on July 30 and 31,2011. On July 30,two Uyghur men hijacked a truck,killed its driver,and drove into a crowd of pedestrians. They got out of the truck and stabbed six people to death and injured 27 others. One of the attackers was killed by the crowd;the other was brought into custody. On July 31,a chain of two explosions started a fire at a downtown restaurant. A group of armed Uyghur men killed two people inside of the restaurant and four people outside,injuring 15 other people. Police shot five suspects dead,detained four,and killed two others who initially escaped arrest.
Tianjin Airlines Flight 7554 was a scheduled domestic passenger flight between Hotan and Ürümqi in China's Xinjiang Autonomous Region. On 29 June 2012,an Embraer E190 operating the flight,took off from Hotan at 12:25 pm;within ten minutes,six ethnic Uyghur men,one of whom allegedly professed his motivation as jihad,announced their intent to hijack the aircraft,according to multiple witnesses. In response,passengers and crew resisted and successfully restrained the hijackers,who were armed with aluminium crutches and explosives.
The 2012 Yecheng attack was a terrorist attack by Uyghur separatist extremists that occurred on February 28,2012,in Yecheng,Xinjiang,a remote town situated about 150 miles from China's border with Pakistan. Details of the attack are disputed:according to Chinese government reports and court documents,at around 6 p.m. that day,a group of eight Uyghur men led by religious extremist Abudukeremu Mamuti attacked pedestrians with axes and knives on Happiness Road. Local police fought with the attackers,ultimately killing all and capturing Mamuti. State-run media reported that one police officer died and four police were injured,while 15 pedestrians died from Mamuti's assault and 14 more civilians were injured. Chinese officials characterized the event as a "terrorist attack."
On 24 April 2013,ethnic clashes occurred in Marelbeshi (Bachu),Xinjiang,China. The violence left at least 21 people dead,including 15 police and officials.
The Xinjiang conflict,also known as the East Turkistan conflict,Uyghur–Chinese conflict or Sino-East Turkistan conflict,is an ethnic geopolitical conflict in what is now China's far-northwest autonomous region of Xinjiang,also known as East Turkistan. It is centred around the Uyghurs,a Turkic ethnic group who constitute a plurality of the region's population.
On 26 June 2013,rioting broke out in Shanshan County,in the autonomous region of Xinjiang,China. 35 people died in the riots,including 22 civilians,two police officers and eleven attackers.
On the early morning of Wednesday,30 July 2014,Juma Tahir,the imam of China's largest mosque,the Id Kah Mosque in northwestern Kashgar,was stabbed to death by three young male Uyghur extremists. Religious leaders across denominations condemned the attack.
The Xinjiang internment camps,officially called vocational education and training centers by the government of China,are internment camps operated by the government of Xinjiang and the Chinese Communist Party Provincial Standing Committee. Human Rights Watch says that they have been used to indoctrinate Uyghurs and other Muslims since 2017 as part of a "people's war on terror",a policy announced in 2014. Thirty-seven countries have expressed support for China's government for "counter-terrorism and deradicalization measures",including countries such as Russia,Saudi Arabia,Cuba,and Venezuela;meanwhile 22 or 43 countries,depending on source,have called on China to respect the human rights of the Uyghur community,including countries such as Canada,Germany,Turkey and Japan. Xinjiang internment camps have been described as "the most extreme example of China's inhumane policies against Uighurs". The camps have been criticized by the subcommittee of the Canadian House of Commons Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development for persecution of Uyghurs in China,including mistreatment,rape,torture,and genocide.
In May 2014,the Government of the People's Republic of China (PRC) launched the "Strike Hard Campaign against Violent Terrorism" in the far west province of Xinjiang. It is an aspect of the Xinjiang conflict,the ongoing struggle by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Chinese government to manage the ethnically diverse and tumultuous province. According to critics,the CCP and the Chinese government have used the global "war on terrorism" of the 2000s to frame separatist and ethnic unrest as acts of Islamist terrorism to legitimize its counter-insurgency policies in Xinjiang. Chinese officials have maintained that the campaign is essential for national security purposes.
Since 2014,the Chinese government has committed a series of ongoing human rights abuses against Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslim minorities in Xinjiang which has often been characterized as persecution or as genocide. There have been reports of mass arbitrary arrests and detention,torture,mass surveillance,cultural and religious persecution,family separation,forced labor,sexual violence,and violations of reproductive rights.
The 2015 Aksu colliery attack,also known as the Baicheng incident took place on 18 September 2015,when a group of separatists,suspected to be Uyghurs,attacked workers and security guards at a coal mine in Baicheng County in Aksu,Xinjiang,leaving at least 16 dead and 18 wounded according to government sources,with other estimates reaching as high as 50 dead and 50 wounded. When local police arrived at the scene,the attackers rammed the police's vehicles with stolen trucks before fleeing into the mountains. The majority of the victims of the attack were members of the Han ethnic group.
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