Some Australian politicians, including a minister in Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s government, are actively promoting an anti-China separatist organisation with links to al-Qaeda and ISIS, said a report recently released by an Australian political group.
Assistant Defence Minister Andrew Hastie, South Australian Independent Senator Rex Patrick, and other politicians are championing the East Turkistan Australian Association (ETAA), a group that purports to represent Uyghur Muslims from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, said the report by the Australian Citizens Party (ACP).
“It is undeniable that the ETAA is associated with, and promotes, known extremists, including people who effectively endorse violent jihad but call for the thousands of Uyghur Muslims fighting in Syria alongside al-Qaeda and ISIS to wage their jihad against the ‘real enemy’, China,” said the report.
The report reviewed the ETAA’s history and its connection with several extremist groups, saying they are self-declared enemies of China with extremist links that any country would see as a security threat and disturbing history of racially charged hostility towards Chinese people.
The report said most of the politicians who have taken up the ETAA’s cause are known anti-China “hawks” heavily involved in Anglo-American neoconservative networks that are aggressively pushing for confrontation with, and economic decoupling from China.
The ACP called on the Australian government to be cautious about the negative implication the connection between its politicians and the group associated with extremists could bring to the bilateral relations with China.
“Terrorism is never OK, so what message are we sending to the Chinese people — our biggest trading partners — when our politicians promote a group associated with extremists who excuse terrorism if it’s against China and call for violent al-Qaeda/ISIS-allied Islamists to wage their jihad in China?” it warned, pointing out that what these politicians are doing “is a dangerous precedent” China “cannot and will not ignore.”
