Uyghur Group Added To Kazakh Terror List

Uyghur women in China's Uyghur-populated Xinjiang province (epa) November 17, 2006 -- A court in Kazakhstan's capital has ordered two groups be added to the country's list of terrorist organizations.

The two are a Japanese religious sect, Aum Shinrikyo, and an ethnic Uyghur separatist group known as the Eastern Turkestan Liberation Organization.

Kazakhstan on October 12 released a fresh list of 12 designated terrorist groups that already included one Uyghur separatist group, the Islamic Party of Eastern Turkestan.

The Eastern Turkestan Liberation Organization, or Sharq azat Turkistan, was set up in Turkey in the late 1990s. Like all other ethnic Uyghur political groupings, it is banned in China.

Tens of thousands Muslim Uyghurs have sought refuge in Central Asia to escape persecution in China.

Aum Shinrikyo, which carried out deadly poison gas attacks in Japan in 1995, is believed to have some followers in Kazakhstan.

(Kazakhstan Today, Kazinform)