The exiled leader of China's Uighur Muslim minority called on Beijing to allow a UN probe to ascertain claims that Muslim extremists had infiltrated the country's western autonomous Xinjiang region.
The claims came after Chinese police killed 18 suspected terrorists in an attack last week on an alleged training camp in the Muslim-populated region that also left one policeman dead and another injured.
Just before the incident, Beijing accused Rebiya Kadeer, the World Uighur Congress president living in exile in the US, of seeking to overthrow the Chinese government through terrorist activities.
"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, a former political prisoner, said in a statement in Washington.
"We call on the Chinese government to facilitate an investigation into the scale and nature of alleged terrorist activities in East Turkestan by an independent commission, such as a body within the United Nations," she said.
East Turkestan refers to two short-lived independent republics that were established in the Xinjiang region by Uighurs between 1930 and 1949.
Beijing claimed that the alleged training camp belonged to the East Turkestan Islamic Movement. The US listed the movement as a terrorist organization in 2002, although critics have suggested Washington only did so to win China's support for the US-led invasion of Iraq.
"We oppose all forms of violence," Kadeer said. "The Uighur people's response to the continuing brutality of Chinese rule has been peaceful because the Uighur people do not want a future that is predicated on violence and bloodshed," she said.
The Uighur American Association, of which Kadeer is president, said in the statement that the Chinese authorities had long sought to equate all Uighur opposition to Chinese rule with "terrorism."
"East Turkistan remains the only part of the People's Republic of China where people are still executed for non-violent crimes of political opposition to the Chinese state," it said.
Referring to the recent incident, the group said: "The Chinese authorities never present any evidence whatsoever to support these claims."
"There is no video evidence -- there are no independent witness statements -- and there is no corroborating evidence from any other source whatsoever," it said.
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