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Chinese government controlled website "Zhong Shen" reported that the Chinese authorities, in the wake of the "strike hard" campaign, are conducting a special campaign in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region from December 2000 to October 2001 which specifically targets "inner and outer separatists".
It was reported that the ministry of internal affairs organized a special meeting via teleconferencing which emphasized the Chinese communist party's directive to strengthen the "strike hard" campaign.
At the meeting, the Chinese minister of internal affairs said that, taking the opportunity of favorable conditions in the country, the strike hard campaign has to destroy all small and large separatist organizations and forces.
The meeting required that policemen of all ranks must unite efforts to speed up and improve case investigations, to speed up arrests and trials, and to punish all those policemen who secretly maintained contacts with "national separatists" and provided them with the information.
A few years old "strike hard" campaign has been directed against "criminals" all over China. In the Xinjiang Uighur autonomous region, it was mainly targeted against activists and sympathizers of the Uighur liberation movement. Strengthening of the "strike hard" campaign in Kashgar, Hotan, Aksu, and other cities with dense Uighur population caused discontent among Uighurs. Numerous Uighurs were put to jails and send to labor camps accused in "national separatism, unlawful religious activities, and terrorism".
In his secret report made in Hotan in December 1999, the first secretary of the Chinese communist party of the Xinjiang Uighur autonomous region, Wang Lequan, requested sending of special groups of cadres to villages to watch ideological situation in the country side, to reveal the "national separatist mood", and to inform security organs about any disturbing facts.
According to Xinjiang Economic Newspaper's report from February 23, the Ili prefecture communist party committee decided to send cadres of various ranks to carry out "strike hard" in villages of East Turkistan. The main task of these cadres is to promote, within a week, "the ideas, orders, and regulations of the Chinese communist party" among Uighur farmers and workers and to examine their ideological positions. The Ili party committee ordered its cadres of all ranks higher than a secretary of a unit to prepare reports on the ideological situation in their districts. |
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