The Uyghurs, China’s Terrorist Narrative and CounterterrorismBjörn Alpermann

ASIEN – Nr. 156/157 (2020) pp. 222–25

Michael Clarke (ed.): Terrorism and Counterterrorism in China: Domestic and Foreign Dimensions
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. ISBN 978-0190922610

Sean S. Roberts: The War on the Uyghurs: China’s Internal Campaign against a Muslim Minority
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020. ISBN 978-0-69120218-1

What is terrorism? What constitutes a terrorist act? And who, then, can legitimately be labeled as terrorist? These questions are at the heart of two recent books on the unfolding human tragedy surrounding the Uyghurs, a mostly Muslim ethnic group, numbering about ten million and living in China’s far-northwest Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR). Both books start from the same definition of terrorism originally proposed by Israeli scholar Boaz Ganor. According to this, violence, a political aim and targeting civilians as victims are the three core characteristics which set a terrorist act apart…