Third, the battle for peace. Islam is neither an indigenous belief of the Uygurs
and other ethnic groups, nor the sole one of the Uygur people, and in addition
to that, Islam is not a religion that advocates violence, hatred and terror.
Buddhism was introduced into Xinjiang a thousand years earlier than Islam,
and held its place as a major religion a thousand years earlier than Islam.
Around the first century BC Buddhism was introduced into Xinjiang and
gradually became a major religion. In the late ninth and early 10th century,
Islam was introduced into southern Xinjiang. Through the religious war and
other compulsory means, it replaced Buddhism as the major religion of
Xinjiang in the early 16th century.
Fourth, the battle for public opinion. The General Assembly of the United
Nations adopted The United Nations Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy on
September 8, 2006, and explicitly stated that “any person who participates in
the financing, planning, preparation or perpetration of terrorist acts or in
support of terrorist acts is brought to justice … and that such terrorist acts are
established as serious criminal offences in domestic laws and regulations.”
However, for a long time, some countries and media have worn “colored
spectacles” and pursued “double standards”.
On March 1, 2014, eight knife-wielding Xinjiang terrorists attacked passengers
at the Kunming Railway Station, southwest China’s Yunnan Province, leaving
31 dead and 141 injured. Some major international media declined to use
“terrorists”, “terrorism” and “terrorist attack” to define the nature of the case,
but collectively “went blind” and “lost hearing”, and they intentionally or
unintentionally obscured the bloodiness in the attack and sympathized the
terrorists, using words in their news reports like “radicals”, “simple weapons”,
“Uygur-Han conflicts”, “stabbed and wounded the people”.
The Western’s attention on Xinjiang has never weakened, and one of the
latest focuses is the “vocational education and training centers”. To bring
residents influenced by extremism back to normal life, France announced to
establish de-radicalization centers in 12 regions across the country; the
United Kingdom published its counter-terrorism strategy and emphasized
early intervention; and the United States also tried the way of rectification in
communities. China uses the experience of the Western countries in counter-
terrorism and establishes the vocational education and training centers with
the goal of educating and rehabilitating people guilty of minor crimes or law-