AL QAEDA TELLS CHINA'S UYGHURS TO PREPARE FOR HOLY WAR

A high-ranking al Qaeda leader has called on China's minority Uyghurs to prepare for a holy war against the Chinese government.
"There is no way for salvation and to lift this oppression and tyranny unless you ... seriously prepare for jihad in the name of God and carry your weapons against the ruthless brutal invader thugs," Abu Yahia Al-Libi said Wednesday in a video on an Islamist Web site. He delivered his message in Arabic.

• The Uyghurs are Muslims in western China's Xinjiang province. Some Islamists refer to the region as East Turkistan.
• Al-Libi's proclamation was in reaction to the violence that has recently shaken Urumqi, Xinjiang's capital. There, long-simmering resentment between minority Uyghurs and majority Han Chinese erupted into riots and left more than 200 people dead in July.
• The following month, a series of stabbings -- with syringes used as weapons -- added to the unrest.
• "What we saw and heard in the recent events in Turkistan was not accidental and didn't happen overnight. This is an intifada (an uprising) and a usual response to the decades of oppression, the organized cleansing and the systematic repression until the people had enough," Al-Libi said.
• "This was not the first uprising that the oppressed Muslim people carried out, because they keep grieving and struggling to preserve their identity against the aggressors."
• Chinese officials could not immediately be reached for comment Thursday.

Source: CNN