East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM)

Subject – IR

Context – China’s Foreign Minister meets Taliban in Doha, offers support

Concept –

An extremist group of native Uyghurs, a Muslim minority in China, the ETIM’s stated objective is to form a sovereign nation of East Turkestan, carved out from the Xinjiang province.
Almost 40 years after its founding, around the 1980s, the group’s co-founder Abdul Hakeem took radicalisation to the next level and began teaching fundamentalist interpretations of Islam to Uyghur students.
While the group identified itself as the ‘East Turkestan Islamic Movement’ only in 1997 under Hakeem’s leadership, China held the ETIM responsible for over 200 terrorist attacks in Xinjiang between 1990 and 2001, which have killed 162 people.
In 2002, the United Nations and the US also officially designated the ETIM as a terrorist group, citing China’s figures as well as the 9/11 attacks. This is because the ETIM was also affiliated to the al Qaeda, the group which had carried out the terror attacks on 11 September 2001 in the US.
However, by 2020, the US controversially removed the group from its terror list, stating that “there has been no credible evidence” of the group’s continued existence for over a decade.
- The US’ move was criticised by China but celebrated by members of the Uyghur diaspora.
ETIM has long been suspected of maintaining links with al Qaeda.