Xinjiang Province : China's Unyielding Fight Against Terrorism

"Some wounds even time can't heal," Xia Yeling, an Urumqi-based psychologist said. For the past decade, she has been treating hundreds of patients suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) due to the July 5 riots in 2009 in the capital city of China's Xinjiang. 
The killing that resulted in 197 deaths and over 1,700 injured, plunged the city into shock and panic, and etched indelible scars in the hearts of survivors and witnesses. China Global Television wrote in June 2020 after releasing a documentary video on the country's war against terrorism in Xinjiang Province. CGTN has since produced several other documentaries on China's war against insurgency in Xinjiang.
The aim of the documentary is to shine light on the violence that has wracked the far-western region of China, and to remember both those who have lost their lives and the survivors in the continuing struggle against the dangerous ideologies that fuel death and despair.

Untold Orgy Of Violence
Entitled Memories of Fighting Terrorism in Xinjiang, the documentary recalls that between 1990 and 2016, thousands of terrorist attacks plagued the vast land of Xinjiang. Large numbers of innocent lives were lost in horrific stabbings, shootings and bombings. With survivors telling of the psychological toll of the attacks. Mirexmetjan Rozi, a survivor of the Id Kah Mosque assassination on July 30, 2014, has never returned to the mosque located in the city center of Kashgar. 
On that day, three terrorists appeared, pushed him away and hacked at Imam Jume Tayir's neck and head. He failed to save Jume Tayir after he was stabbed in the thigh and has been grieving ever since. "Just thinking about it makes me break out in a cold sweat and want to cry" told the CGTN documentary.

Helping People To Recover 
Over 800 kilometers away, Dilqemer Tursun, both a witness and survivor of the bomb attacks in Luntai County of September 2014, is helping people as a rehabilitation therapist. At 21 years old, she lost her leg to an explosion while shopping with her family. "I heard my nephew crying and my mom yelling for help. Then I found myself gazing at my severed leg," she recalled. For months after that, she couldn't sleep, besieged by nightmares.
Xinjiang, in the far western land of China, hosted one of the world's first and most important trade routes known as the Silk Road, which linked ancient Chinese civilization to the West through the Eurasian continent. The land of fortune, however, has not always enjoyed tranquility. Thousands of terrorist attacks from 1990 through 2016 killed large numbers of innocent people and hundreds of police officers. Horrific stabbings and bombings wrecked the land, leaving its people in shock, grief and panic. The damage was incalculable while stability in the region quickly deteriorated. Authorities have been trying hard to restore peace to this land.

Challenges Of Tackling Terrorism
CGTN's fourth documentary, "The war in the shadows: Challenges of fighting terrorism in Xinjiang" – the last of the tetralogy – exposes the extremist thinking and the challenges facing China's efforts to tackle terrorism inside and outside Xinjiang. It gives answers to these questions: Why has violent terrorism continued to plague Xinjiang? 
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