East Turkestan Islamic Movement is a militant Islamic group which seeks to separate East Turkestan from the People's Republic of China. It is considered by both the governments of the PRC and the United States to be a terrorist group. Its designation as such by the United States has been controversial with critics arguing that the designation is unfair and intended mainly to improve U.S.-China relations. In 2002, the United Nations also announced that this is a terrorist group.
The government of China claims this group is responsible for several car bomb attacks in Xinjiang in the 1990s, as well as the death of a Chinese diplomat in Kyrgyzstan in 2002. But the group has neither admitted nor denied such accusations. Several arrested members of the group admitted, however, that they were trained by Al-Qaida in Afghanistan.
On October 2, 2003, one of the founding memembers and leaders of the group was shot dead by the Pakistan army in an counter terrorism operation on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
ETIM is the most militant of the various groups in the Xinjiang region that demand separation from China and the creation of an independent state called EastTurkestan.
China has long viewed the ETIM and similar groups as a threat to its territorial integrity, and after the attacks on America on Sept. 11, 2001, executed a harsh crackdown on the region by increasing its military presence, detaining suspected members, and limiting religious rights.
EastTurkestan maintained a measure of independence until the early 1950s, when Mao's victorious rebel armies turned to the peripheries and began securing Chinese borders, capturing Manchuria, Inner Mongolia, Tibet and EastTurkestan.
But the "East Turkistan" forces, not to be reconciled to their failure and in defiance of the will of the people of all ethnic groups, have been on the lookout for every opportunity to conduct splittist and sabotage activities with the backing of international anti-China forces.
In the 1990s, under the influence of extremism, separatism and international terrorism, part of the "East Turkistan" forces inside and outside Chinese territory turned to splittist and sabotage activities with terrorist violence as the main means, even brazenly declaring that terrorist violence is the only way to achieve their aims.
The "East Turkistan" terrorist organization plotted the assassination of Arunhan Aji, executive committee member of the Islamic Association of China, vice-chairman of the CPPCC Xinjiang Regional Committee and chairman of the Kashi Islamic Association, on May 12, 1996.
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