Fukang, which sits near regional capital Urumqi, decided to remove all matches from circulation to ensure they are not used by "terrorist groups or individual extremists to carry out criminal activities."
Police destroyed 20,223 boxes of matches, which will ensure that the city maintains its current peaceful environment, a local government spokesperson said. The county police made the original announcement last week but it was only picked up by state media on Tuesday.
The announcement didn't say how the matches are used for criminal activity. China has been toughening its response after a spate of bloody incidents nationwide centred on Xinjiang, the traditional home of the Muslim Uighurs. China has blamed attacks on Islamist separatists in the region, who, it says, want to establish an independent state there called East Turkestan.
1 comment:
Firstly, Xinjiang has always been East Turkestan. The Uighurs are the native people of Xinjiang / East Turkestan and they have been fighting what they consider as Chinese occupation of their homeland.
Their situation is the same as Tibet.
So why bring religion in it ?
Why are the Uighurs always described as Muslims and their separatists as Islamists ? The Tibetans are Buddhists - yet the western media almost always never mention this fact.
The same goes for the Basques and Catalonians - they are Roman Catholics yet the media never mentions this. The Russian separatists in Ukraine are Orthodox Christians yet the media never bother to describe them as such.
Why are only the Uighurs described as Muslims as if that is the most important factor in their struggle for the liberation of their homeland ?
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