BEIJING: Criticising US drone strikes on militant targets in Pakistan that killed Pakistani Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud, China today said Pakistan should be allowed to work out its own strategy to counter terrorism as per its "national conditions".
"China believes that the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Pakistan should be respected in earnest manner and relevant action should strictly abide by the UN charter on international law and conflict," Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei said without directly referring to US drone strike that killed Mehsud last week.
"We sincerely hope that Pakistan can achieve stability and development and we support the Pakistani government in formulating and applying strategies on counter terrorism and security in accordance with national conditions," he told a media briefing here on a question as to whether Mehsud's killing was aimed at scuttling Pakistan's planned peace talks with Tehrik-e-Taliban.
Hong also attacked the US media for casting doubts about China's assertions that the October 28 car crash at Tiananmen Square was a suicide attack by the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM) and criticism against China's policy towards Uyghur Muslims in the restive Xinjiang region.
"We oppose the adoption of double standards on this issue. Some people link the terrorist act against innocent civilians and tourists with China's policy on ethnic groups and even use this as excuse to attack China's policies on ethnic groups and religions," he said adding that this amounted to "connivance" with terrorists and expressed strong dissatisfaction with it.
Meanwhile, Chinese official media criticised CNN for carrying an article on its website that alleged "repression" against Uyghur people and raised doubts about the Tiananmen attack.
Chinese security experts also called for international cooperation to fight terrorism.
China urgently needs to enhance its cooperation with other countries to combat terrorism, Li Wei, anti-terrorism director at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations told state-run China Daily.
"The threat of terrorism is not yet contained, and regional cooperation needs to be more pragmatic," he said adding that global anti-terror efforts are "far from living up to the expectations of the international community".
After the US withdraws its troops from Afghanistan in 2014, China and its neighbours to the west may face a tougher security situation amid increased penetration of extremists, he said.
China replaces top general in volatile Xinjiang
BEIJING: China has replaced the top army general in the volatile northwestern region of Xinjiang following what the
government called a terrorist strike in the heart of the capital Beijing, state media reported.
Peng Yong was relieved of his position on the party's regional standing committee, the ruling Communist Party newspaper
People's Daily said in a report dated Sunday. The move effectively removes Peng's authority as military commander over
Xinjiang, an area of mountains and deserts twice the size of Texas.
While the paper did not give an explicit reason for the move, the timing appears to link it to the Oct. 28 attack in which
a man driving an SUV accompanied by his wife and mother plowed through crowds before crashing in front of Tiananmen Gate,
killing themselves and two tourists.
No one has claimed responsibility for the attack in Beijing's symbolic political heart. The government has blamed the
attack on Islamic extremists seeking independence for the Turkic Muslim Uighur minority in Xinjiang.
Police identified the three attackers and five alleged co-conspirators as members of the Turkic Muslim Uighur ethnic group
native to Xinjiang.
While counter-terrorism is mainly the responsibility of the police and paramilitary People's Armed Police, the military
plays an especially influential role in Xinjiang. Military units there operate as de facto governments over certain cities
and vast amounts of farmland and mining operations, maintaining their own police and courts.
Bordering on Pakistan, Afghanistan and several unstable Central Asian states, Xinjiang is prone to unrest and violence
blamed on radicals among the Uighur population who have been waging a low-intensity insurgency against the Chinese
government for decades.
While Beijing has released little information about the Beijing attack — the first in the Chinese capital in years — it
follows a string of violent incidents in Xinjiang this year.
Uighur activists say economic marginalization and cultural and religious restrictions are fueling the violence, while
Beijing blames overseas-based instigators.
China says will stamp out Dalai Lama's voice in Tibet
BEIJING: China aims to stamp out the voice of exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama in his restive and remote homeland by ensuring that his "propaganda" is not received by anyone on the internet, television or other means, a top official said.
China has tried, with varying degrees of success, to prevent Tibetans listening to or watching programmes broadcast from outside the country, or accessing any information about the Dalai Lama and the exiled government on the internet.
But many Tibetans are still able to access such news, either via illegal satellite televisions or by skirting Chinese internet restrictions. The Dalai Lama's picture and his teachings are also smuggled into Tibet, at great personal risk.
Writing in the ruling Communist Party's influential journal Qiushi, the latest issue of which was received by subscribers on Saturday, Tibet's party chief Chen Quanguo said that the government would ensure only its voice is heard.
"Strike hard against the reactionary propaganda of the splittists from entering Tibet," Chen wrote in the magazine, whose name means "seeking truth".
The government will achieve this by confiscating illegal satellite dishes, increasing monitoring of online content and making sure all telephone and internet users are registered using their real names, he added.
"Work hard to ensure that the voice and image of the party is heard and seen over the vast expanses (of Tibet) ... and that the voice and image of the enemy forces and the Dalai clique are neither seen nor heard," Chen wrote.
China calls the Nobel peace prize-winning Dalai Lama a "wolf in sheep's clothing" who seeks to use violent methods to establish an independent Tibet.
The Dalai Lama, who fled to India after a failed uprising in 1959, says he simply wants genuine autonomy for Tibet, and denies espousing violence.
Chen said the party would seek to expose the Dalai Lama's "hypocrisy and deception" and his "reactionary plots".
China has long defended its iron-fisted rule in Tibet, saying the region suffered from dire poverty, brutal exploitation and economic stagnation until 1950, when Communist troops "peacefully liberated" Tibet.
Tensions in China's Tibetan regions are at their highest in years after a spate of self-immolation protests by Tibetans, which have led to an intensified security crackdown.
"China believes that the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Pakistan should be respected in earnest manner and relevant action should strictly abide by the UN charter on international law and conflict," Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei said without directly referring to US drone strike that killed Mehsud last week.
"We sincerely hope that Pakistan can achieve stability and development and we support the Pakistani government in formulating and applying strategies on counter terrorism and security in accordance with national conditions," he told a media briefing here on a question as to whether Mehsud's killing was aimed at scuttling Pakistan's planned peace talks with Tehrik-e-Taliban.
Hong also attacked the US media for casting doubts about China's assertions that the October 28 car crash at Tiananmen Square was a suicide attack by the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM) and criticism against China's policy towards Uyghur Muslims in the restive Xinjiang region.
"We oppose the adoption of double standards on this issue. Some people link the terrorist act against innocent civilians and tourists with China's policy on ethnic groups and even use this as excuse to attack China's policies on ethnic groups and religions," he said adding that this amounted to "connivance" with terrorists and expressed strong dissatisfaction with it.
Meanwhile, Chinese official media criticised CNN for carrying an article on its website that alleged "repression" against Uyghur people and raised doubts about the Tiananmen attack.
Chinese security experts also called for international cooperation to fight terrorism.
China urgently needs to enhance its cooperation with other countries to combat terrorism, Li Wei, anti-terrorism director at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations told state-run China Daily.
"The threat of terrorism is not yet contained, and regional cooperation needs to be more pragmatic," he said adding that global anti-terror efforts are "far from living up to the expectations of the international community".
After the US withdraws its troops from Afghanistan in 2014, China and its neighbours to the west may face a tougher security situation amid increased penetration of extremists, he said.
China replaces top general in volatile Xinjiang
BEIJING: China has replaced the top army general in the volatile northwestern region of Xinjiang following what the
government called a terrorist strike in the heart of the capital Beijing, state media reported.
Peng Yong was relieved of his position on the party's regional standing committee, the ruling Communist Party newspaper
People's Daily said in a report dated Sunday. The move effectively removes Peng's authority as military commander over
Xinjiang, an area of mountains and deserts twice the size of Texas.
While the paper did not give an explicit reason for the move, the timing appears to link it to the Oct. 28 attack in which
a man driving an SUV accompanied by his wife and mother plowed through crowds before crashing in front of Tiananmen Gate,
killing themselves and two tourists.
No one has claimed responsibility for the attack in Beijing's symbolic political heart. The government has blamed the
attack on Islamic extremists seeking independence for the Turkic Muslim Uighur minority in Xinjiang.
Police identified the three attackers and five alleged co-conspirators as members of the Turkic Muslim Uighur ethnic group
native to Xinjiang.
While counter-terrorism is mainly the responsibility of the police and paramilitary People's Armed Police, the military
plays an especially influential role in Xinjiang. Military units there operate as de facto governments over certain cities
and vast amounts of farmland and mining operations, maintaining their own police and courts.
Bordering on Pakistan, Afghanistan and several unstable Central Asian states, Xinjiang is prone to unrest and violence
blamed on radicals among the Uighur population who have been waging a low-intensity insurgency against the Chinese
government for decades.
While Beijing has released little information about the Beijing attack — the first in the Chinese capital in years — it
follows a string of violent incidents in Xinjiang this year.
Uighur activists say economic marginalization and cultural and religious restrictions are fueling the violence, while
Beijing blames overseas-based instigators.
China says will stamp out Dalai Lama's voice in Tibet
BEIJING: China aims to stamp out the voice of exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama in his restive and remote homeland by ensuring that his "propaganda" is not received by anyone on the internet, television or other means, a top official said.
China has tried, with varying degrees of success, to prevent Tibetans listening to or watching programmes broadcast from outside the country, or accessing any information about the Dalai Lama and the exiled government on the internet.
But many Tibetans are still able to access such news, either via illegal satellite televisions or by skirting Chinese internet restrictions. The Dalai Lama's picture and his teachings are also smuggled into Tibet, at great personal risk.
Writing in the ruling Communist Party's influential journal Qiushi, the latest issue of which was received by subscribers on Saturday, Tibet's party chief Chen Quanguo said that the government would ensure only its voice is heard.
"Strike hard against the reactionary propaganda of the splittists from entering Tibet," Chen wrote in the magazine, whose name means "seeking truth".
The government will achieve this by confiscating illegal satellite dishes, increasing monitoring of online content and making sure all telephone and internet users are registered using their real names, he added.
"Work hard to ensure that the voice and image of the party is heard and seen over the vast expanses (of Tibet) ... and that the voice and image of the enemy forces and the Dalai clique are neither seen nor heard," Chen wrote.
China calls the Nobel peace prize-winning Dalai Lama a "wolf in sheep's clothing" who seeks to use violent methods to establish an independent Tibet.
The Dalai Lama, who fled to India after a failed uprising in 1959, says he simply wants genuine autonomy for Tibet, and denies espousing violence.
Chen said the party would seek to expose the Dalai Lama's "hypocrisy and deception" and his "reactionary plots".
China has long defended its iron-fisted rule in Tibet, saying the region suffered from dire poverty, brutal exploitation and economic stagnation until 1950, when Communist troops "peacefully liberated" Tibet.
Tensions in China's Tibetan regions are at their highest in years after a spate of self-immolation protests by Tibetans, which have led to an intensified security crackdown.
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