Wednesday January 10, 2007 12:16 PM By ALEXA OLESEN Associated Press Writer http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-6335456,00.html BEIJING (AP) - An exiled Chinese Muslim activist living in the U.S. urged China on Wednesday to allow an independent probe of an anti-terror raid that officials say killed 18 militants. Police found a cache of hand grenades, guns and handmade explosives Friday in Akto, a county in the predominantly Muslim Xinjiang region, about 120 miles east of Kyrgyzstan. China said 18 terror suspects were killed and 17 arrested during the raid at an alleged training camp run by the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, or ETIM. Rebiya Kadeer, a Chinese Muslim from Xinjiang now living in exile in the U.S., said in a statement that scholars and analysts believe ETIM ``ceased to exist when its purported leader was killed in a skirmish with the Pakistani military in Pakistan in late 2003.'' She said Beijing has failed to produce any evidence proving the suspects were terrorists or backing up its long-standing claim that ETIM has links to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida terror network. ``If the Chinese authorities want to be taken seriously as a responsible member of the world community, then they must allow independent scrutiny of any evidence they have for the claims they are making,'' Kadeer said in the statement. China labels ETIM as a terrorist organization, as does the U.S. Before 2002, Washington rejected China's claim that Xinjiang's Muslim separatists were part of a global terror threat. Some speculated the U.S. reversal was a reward to Beijing for tightening its export controls on missile technology. Kadeer is an outspoken critic of China's treatment of Xinjiang's dominant ethnic group, the Uighurs - Turkic-speaking Muslims whose language and culture are distinct from the rest of the country. China has long said that Uighur militants are leading a violent Islamic separatist movement in Xinjiang. Critics accuse Beijing of using claims of terrorism as an excuse to crack down on peaceful pro-independence sentiment and expressions of Uighur identity. |