The different ways in which the issue of foreign fighters is framed in Chinese and Western media demonstrate the different assumptions that underpin these frames. Some critics describe the journey to flee China as the result of a “political awakening” and the backfiring of the CCP’s repression against religious freedom (Page and Peker 2015; Sulaiman 2015). In the eyes of the CCP, the fact that the terrorist networks were able to assist the Uyghur who fled China is evidence to support its claim that domestic terror attacks are remotely controlled by “external hostile forces”. The following analysis will demonstrate the framing of the issue of foreign fighters in the Chinese political discourse.
As discussed in Section 3.2, the official media dictate the discourse of counter- terrorism and ensure that alternative “wrong” accounts of terrorist incidents cannot spread via the Chinese media. The discussion over the issue of foreign fighters relies heavily on the investigation conducted by a war correspondent Qiu Yongzheng, the chief correspondent of the Global Times. Based on his investigation, Qiu has identified the routes of foreign fighters from Xinjiang into Syria. According to Qiu and his
collegues (2014), those who wanted to join the self-proclaimed ISIS saved money for the journey by doing business themselves, and through donations. Most of them chose to sneak out of Yunnan, Guangdong or Guangxi, three border provinces in the south. Qiu and Xing quote intelligence from Indonesia, showing that the 4 suspects first sneaked out into Cambodia, and then into Thailand, where they each spent 1,000 USD to purchase fake Turkish passports. They flew to Kuala Lumpur, and then to West Java, before transferring to the Makassar port of South Sulawesi (Qiu and Xing 2014).
They were taken care of all the way to Turkey, which shows that the IS has already established their networks in Indonesia… they were offered free accommodation in Palou, and were assigned the next task. At the
Makassar airport, a 29-year-old local teacher brought the 4 suspects to the terrorist camp led by Santoso [also known as Abu Wardah, author’s note], the highest leader of Mujahidin Indonesia Timur, who publicly pledged allegiance to the IS in July [in 2016, author’s note] (Qiu and Xing 2014). After entering Turkey, they flew to airports near Hatay, Gaziantep and Antalya and were picked up by an “intermediary” (Qiu and Xing 2014). The counter-terrorism operations in Turkey forced them to alter their routes towards Syria (Qiu and Xing 2014).
As discussed in previous chapters, some organisations abroad, especially a number of East Turkistan groups based in Turkey, are on China’s watch list. The CCP is vigilant
about the support for “East Turkistan forces” received from the Turks, as they share a similar Turkic language and culture. Xu Jianying (2014), a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, believes that the shelter and even support that the Turks have provided make Turkey the “base camp” of the “East Turkistan forces”. Indeed, the East Turkistan Education and Solidarity Association (ETESA) has publicly praised militant attacks and the assassination of a pro-Communist imam in Kashgar (Jacob 2014; Qiu 2014c). Political elites and intellectuals also question the role that the Turkish government has played in the growth of “East Turkistan forces”. Qiu and his colleague accuse the Turkish government of deliberately loosening up the border control to allow pro-opponent journalists and militant opponents to enter via the Syrian border, as evidenced by an interview with a local in Syria: “it is not hard at all to cross the border” (Qiu and Xing 2014; Qiu 2014c). The official report on the visit of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan repeatedly emphasises that Erdoğan does respect China’s independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity, and that Xinjiang is an integral part of China (Tianshanwang 2012). The CCP wanted to have the support of the Turkish government, especially considering Erdoğan’s framing of the 2009 Urumqi Riot as “genocide”. However, the resemblance of Erdoğan’s alleged remarks to the Chinese official position suggests that this statement might have been no more than a self-deceiving propaganda, particularly in the light of the reports on Turkish support for Uyghur refugees (Pamuk 2015; Xinhua 2015d).
Official media link the far-right groups, politicians and Western anti-China forces in Turkey with the East Turkistan separatists, aiming at containing China’s rise by undermining the Belt and Road Initiative and creating disturbances in Xinjiang (Heiniyati 2015; Global Times 2013b). The following quote fleshes out China’s response to the Turkish support for Uyghur separatists.
The so-called “support for Xinjiang Muslim” farce in Turkey… shows the attempts by some Turkish far-right politicians with ulterior motives to relive the dream of the “dual-pan” [pan-Islamism and pan-Turkism, 双泛,
shuangfan, author’s note] which had been cast aside… For many years,
these “East Turkistan” separatists have taken advantage of the far-right organisations in Turkey to carry out activities to split China (Heiniyati 2015). In relation to the number of foreign fighters, there is no agreement on the number of Uyghurs who have joined the IS. The estimation of the scale of foreign fighters differs according to the source and the political agenda of the source. China’s official
estimation of the number of foreign fighters from Xinjiang is based on Qiu Yongzheng’s investigation. His interview with senior officers from Iraq, Syria and Lebanon reveals that there are around 300 combatants in the “ETIM battalion”, in addition to their families (Qiu 2014b). This estimation has been questioned by Uyghur
dissidents and some scholars. Alim Seytoff, the President of Uyghur American Association, has stated that this is a “baseless propaganda”, designed to “justify China’s cruel suppression of Uyghurs” (Si 2015a). Dru Gladney says that the intent is “to make the Uighurs look as if they’re a threat, an Islamist terrorist organization” (Drennan 2015). Nicholas Bequelin, who works with Human Rights Watch, comments that the number is “implausibly high” (Drennan 2015). Sean Roberts said “I assume there are Uighurs joining IS, but I also assume the numbers are quite small in
comparison to other groups throughout the world. We’re probably talking about 20 to 30 people max.” (Drennan 2015)
Other sources outside China show that the number is likely to be much higher than Sean Roberts’ estimation. A Reuters report (Blanchard 2017) quote Syria’s ambassador to China Imad Moustapha, who stated that there were up to 5,000 Uyghurs fighting in Syria. A report by the Israeli Intelligence Heritage and Commemoration Center (2014, 49) estimates that there are around 100 Uyghurs fighting alongside the rebels in Syria. Nata Rosenblatt’s (2016, 23) research on foreign fighters found that from mid-2013 to mid-2014, there were 118 combatants from China, 114 of which were from Xinjiang, who joined IS, almost entirely via the Turkish-Syrian border. Clint Watts used four data sets from 2014 to 2015, and estimated that between 0.6 to 4.3 percent of the foreign fighters in Iraq and Syria were Chinese nationals (Watts 2016). The estimation of 114 fighters based on Nate Rosenblatt’s analysis makes Xinjiang “the fifth highest source of foreign fighters in the Muslim world” on a provincial basis (Rosenblatt 2016, 26). The difficulty in reaching an accurate estimation of the number of foreign fighters from Xinjiang highlights the political element in the discourse of the Xinjiang issue, not only regarding the Chinese government, but also its critics. The number helps the speaker to justify counter-measures (the Chinese government), and accusations (Uyghur dissidents). The latter is evident from the fact that regardless of the actual number, Uyghur dissidents have linked the number to the same conclusion about the suppression of the Chinese government. On the one hand, Dilixiati Rexiti,
spokesperson of the World Uyghur Congress, has criticised the CCP for exaggerating the number to justify the suppression of Uyghurs (The News Lens 2017). On the other hand, The Uyghur Human Rights Project posted an article citing Imad Moustapha’s estimation of around 5,000 foreign fighters to argue that such a large number of Uyghurs were trying to escape to Turkey from the CCP’s suppression (Uyghur Human Rights Project 2017). Given that none of the other observers gives an estimation that is over 500, Moustapha’s estimation still needs to be verified. Considering that his statement highlights the shared interests between China and Syria and that China “should be extremely concerned”, it is likely that the number of Uyghurs in Syria has
been exaggerated in order to drag China into the conflict to counteract the influence of the West (Blanchard 2017).
China’s counter-terrorism propaganda on the issue of foreign fighters can better understood by considering it as an example of de-glamorisation. Gordon Clubb (2016, 851) discussed de-glamorisation as a tactic of de-radicalisation. The concept of
glamorisation refers to the ways in which violence is “glorified” and the perpetrators are constructed as heroes in the terrorist narrative (Clubb 2016, 851). In the context of terrorism in China, extremists use a distorted and glorified interpretation of the
hijrat to incite “religious revenge” (Zang 2016b, 77). They used the Uyghur word hijrat,
which originated from the Arabic “hegira” or “hijrah”, to refer to the migration from China to a place where they joined the jihad. In attempting to de-glamorise terrorism, the state media provide competing narratives to counteract extremist propaganda. To this end, the state media retold the story of how innocent people were deceived by terrorists and bankrupted because of the journey, showing the disillusion of those who chose to join the hijrat. The counter-narrative serves to de-glamorise the story of heroic acts of hijrat. Framing those who joined hijrat as innocent people who only committed the crime because they were deceived also helps the CCP to highlight the importance of the correct guidance from the CCP. The following section provides a summary of the counter-narrative provided by the state media and intellectuals. Such a narrative also allows the state media to manipulate the concept of the enemy, and justifies that the capturing of these individuals does not end the war on terror, and thus further counter-terrorism measures are needed to deal with the real enemies.