© Imaginechina/APChinese workers sew clothes at a garment factory in Wuqia town, Kuqa county, Aksu Prefecture, northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, 27 September 2016.
On March 1, 2014, eight men and women wielding knives
attacked passengers at a train station in southwest China's city of Kunming. The attackers, wielding long-bladed knives, killed 31 people and injured 143 others. Four of the attackers were killed by a SWAT team at the scene, while another
three were executed in March 2015 for their involvement in the attack.
According to Chinese state media reports, the attackers were from the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in northwest China and were linked to separatist groups. Xinjiang is home to China's Islamic Uyghur minority group. Many Uyghurs, not just in China but around the world, hold deep resentment against the Chinese government for what they believe to be anti-religious and anti-Islamic policies. One example is last year's
demolition of mosques in Xinjiang, which officials said was done to protect public safety, as many of the mosques were dilapidated and unsafe.
Following the 2014 attack, terrorist groups Al-Qaeda and Daesh both announced support for Uyghur separatists,
calling for them to escalate their violence, as well as advising Xinjiang to break away from China and become an independent state with a theocratic government. During roughly the same period, thousands of Uyghurs found their way to Syria and Iraq after receiving training in Afghanistan.
Comment: Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova further commented on the hysteria engulfing the mainstream media and the liberal left: Sputnik News adds... The Duran astutely points out:
Update: Video footage shows a CNN reporter who attended Zakharaova's weekly briefing in Moscow approaching the spokeswoman after the briefing, with Zakharova refusing to take the #fakenews reporter's questions seriously: