| China tells PM Erdoğan to withdraw Uighur genocide remark China on Tuesday dismissed Turkey's accusation of genocide in its northwestern Muslim region of Xinjiang, where rioting killed 184 people, and a Chinese official daily told Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to take back his remarks describing the violence as genocide. Today's interactive toolbox Video Photo Audio Send to print Send to my friend Post your comments Read comments Erdoğan said last week something “tantamount to genocide” was being committed in Xinjiang and called on Chinese authorities to intervene. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said on Tuesday the accusation of genocide simply did not make sense. Most people who died in the riots were Han Chinese, and over the past few decades the Uighur population in Xinjiang had shot up, he said. "In which country could this be called genocide?" Qin asked in a regular news briefing. "We hope that our Muslim brothers can realize the truth of the July 5 incident in Urumqi. Once they know the truth, they would support our ethnic and religious policies and the measures the Chinese government has taken to deal with the incident." Chinese officials say most of the people killed were Han, not Uighurs. In an editorial headlined "Don't twist facts," the English-language China Daily said the fact that 137 of the 184 victims were Han "speaks volumes for the nature of the event." The death toll included 46 Uighurs, a Turkic people who are largely Muslim and share linguistic and cultural bonds with Central Asia. The newspaper urged Erdoğan to "take back his remarks ... which constitute interference in China's internal affairs." Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi told his Turkish counterpart, Ahmet Davutoğlu, by telephone on Sunday that the Urumqi riots were a grave crime orchestrated by the "three evil forces," Xinhua news agency said, referring to extremism, separatism and terrorism. Turkey has sought to boost ties with China, the world's third-biggest economy. President Abdullah Gül last month became the first Turkish president to visit China in 15 years, signing $1.5 billion worth of trade deals. Gül also visited Xinjiang during his trip. Turkish nationalists see Xinjiang as the easternmost frontier of Turkic ethnicity. Thousands of Uighurs live in Turkey. Devlet Bahçeli, who heads the opposition Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), has been leveling harsh criticism against Erdoğan for not speaking up strongly enough against the massacre of Uighurs by China. In almost daily protests across Turkey, Erdoğan is accused of remaining silent on the Uighur massacre and of not standing up against China as he did against Israel during an Israeli operation in Gaza that killed about 1,400 Palestinians. Xinjiang has long been a tightly controlled hotbed of ethnic tensions, fostered by an economic gap between Uighurs and Han, government controls on religion and culture and an influx of Han migrants. Uighurs make up almost half of Xinjiang's 20 million people, but are a minority in the regional capital Urumqi. More than 1,600 people were wounded and 1,000 detained in the ensuing crackdown. On Monday, police shot dead two knife-wielding Uighurs and wounded a third to stop them from attacking a fourth Uighur, a security guard at a mosque in Urumqi. Also on Monday, officials in Yining, a city about 700 kilometers (435 miles) west of Urumqi, announced that more than 70 members of two "violent gangs" had been rounded up, the semi-official China News portal (www.chinanews.com.cn) reported. Beijing does not want to lose its grip on Xinjiang, a vast desert territory that borders Russia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, has abundant oil reserves and is China's largest natural gas-producing region. China has blamed the ethnic unrest on exiled Uighur separatists. They deny the charges. 15 July 2009, Wednesday TODAY'S ZAMAN WITH REUTERS İSTANBUL |
发表于 2009-7-13 21:58
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发表于 2009-7-13 22:18
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发表于 2009-7-13 22:20
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