(Newswire.net — September 8, 2014) — According to a CNN source the Iraqi Army has detained a militant from China. Two pictures accompanied the report: one showed the captured militant in fatigue pants and a bloodied shirt, lying on the ground; another showed him escorted by an Iraqi soldier, his face seemingly swollen.
If true, he would be the first Chinese national to have been caught fighting with ISIS militants.
Chinese foreign ministry Spokesman Qin Gang, responding to a foreign reporter’s question, “I cannot confirm the information for you. We are not able to verify whether or not the information is true,” he said.”
It’s not clear how many Chinese nationals may be fighting with the ISIS. Wu Sike earlier stated that there could be about 100 of them, but Qin Gang said he had no specific numbers or estimates.
“If such reports are true,” said Chinese commentator Victor Gao, “this will be an additional evidence that terrorism in China has a strong international connection. Terrorism does not care about national borders ” he said.
It remains unclear if the captured Chinese national is actually Uighur, a Muslim minority group in Xinjiang, but Gao seems to assume so. For years, tensions have been simmering between the Han Chinese and the Uighur minority nationality.
Authorities blame separatists for fomenting violence, but critics of China’s policies say the root of the problem is widespread alienation among the region’s Muslim Uighur population who resent strict controls on religion and local culture.
The ETIM (East Turkistan Islamic Movement), an Islamist group founded in 1993 by Uighur militants seeking an independent state in Xinjiang called East Turkistan, has been accused by the China and the US of having ties with al Qaeda, but security analysts disagree on whether such ties actually exist. Uighur exile groups claim that Beijing uses the ETIM as a red herring to rationalize its repressive policies against the Uighurs.
In 2006, the US captured 22 Uighur militants fighting in Afghanistan with suspected links to al Qaeda. They were imprisoned in Guantanamo for five to seven years and later released after they were reclassified as no longer enemy combatants. Instead of repatriating them to China, however, they were sent to Palau and Bermuda.