CIAO DATE: 05/2014
April 2014
Norwegian Peacebuilding Resource Centre
On March 1st 2014 a knife-wielding group of ten people attacked passengers and passers-by in the railway station in Kunming, capital of China’s south-western Yunnan province. Twenty-eight were killed and 113 injured. By the following day the government was describing the incident as a “separatist” attack perpetrated by “terrorists from Xinjiang”. The attack in Kunming is the latest in a series of violent incidents in China that the government attributes to radical Islamist organisations that aim to promote what it calls the “Three Evils” of “terrorism, separatism and religious extremism”. These acts have predominantly occurred in China’s far western Xinjiang region, most recently in January and February 2014. Incidents in other parts of China have been attributed to the same forces. However, a number of accounts from academic and non-Chinese media sources, as well as human rights organisations, have questioned the official explanation of many such incidents. Critics accuse the government of lacking transparency and failing to offer reliable evidence, and claim that it is failing to acknowledge the widespread and diverse grievances of people in Xinjiang. This report aims to reconcile these different narratives of dissent in a region of growing significance for China’s economy and energy security.
Resource link: Islam and instability in China's Xinjiang [PDF] - 285K