Europol report details Islamic State propaganda for women
https://apnews.com/d30861b1f7734f03aeb12cbb605076a3
RELEASE (AP): Islamic State’s recruitment and use of women to support its extremist cause could pave the way for more front-line roles for women in jihadi groups in the future, the European Union’s police agency said in a report published Friday. In the 34-page report entitled “Women in Islamic State Propaganda,” Europol said “female jihadis are as ideologically motivated as their male counterparts and their sense of empowerment lies in contributing to the building of an Islamic state.”
It concludes that “numerous examples” of women, who either carried out extremist attacks or were arrested preventively, “prove that women are willing to use violence if the ideology allows them to do so. For now, it is not yet their role, but this balance may easily shift according to the organization’s strategic needs and developments on the ground.” The report comes amid concerns about the risk posed by foreign fighters, including women, returning to their homes in Europe after the fall of the self-styled Islamic State caliphate in Syria and Iraq.
Europol Executive Director Catherine De Bolle said that 15% people convicted on “jihadi terrorism charges” in the EU in 2018 were women. The report’s authors studied propaganda targeting women, but also mentioned women who take active roles in Islamist combat, saying they were sometimes used to shame men into taking part in the group’s armed struggle. The report cited an example from an Islamic State publication that praised three women who attacked a police station in Mombasa, Kenya, in 2016 and asked what was wrong with men who had “laid down their swords.”
US objects to UN counterterrorism chief's visit to Xinjiang
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/j...o-xinjiang
EXCERPT: . . . Vladimir Voronkov, a veteran Russian diplomat who heads the UN Counterterrorism Office, is in China at the invitation of Beijing and is due to visit Xinjiang’s capital Urumqi [...] The United States and other western countries have objected to a visit ... to China’s remote Xinjiang, where UN experts say some 1 million ethnic Uighurs and other Muslims are held in detention centres. [...] China has been condemned internationally for setting up ... detention complexes, which it describes as “education training centres” helping to stamp out extremism and give people new skills.
[...] US deputy secretary of state John Sullivan spoke with UN secretary-general António Guterres on Friday “to convey deep concerns” about Voronkov’s trip because “Beijing continues to paint its repressive campaign against Uighurs and other Muslims as legitimate counterterrorism efforts when it is not”.
“The deputy secretary expressed that such a visit is highly inappropriate in view of the unprecedented repression campaign underway in Xinjiang against Uighurs, ethnic Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and other Muslims,” the US State Department said in a statement. “The UN’s topmost counterterrorism official is putting at risk the UN’s reputation and credibility on counterterrorism and human rights by lending credence to these false claims,” the statement said.
“China will, and is, actively saying that what they’re doing in Xinjiang is good terrorism prevention,” said a UN security council diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity. “The visit by Voronkov validates their narrative that this is a counterterrorism issue, when we would see it more as a human rights issue,” said the diplomat, adding that if Voronkov did not speak out after visiting Xinjiang then “silence could be seen as implicit acceptance, at worst UN complicity”. (MORE - details)
https://apnews.com/d30861b1f7734f03aeb12cbb605076a3
RELEASE (AP): Islamic State’s recruitment and use of women to support its extremist cause could pave the way for more front-line roles for women in jihadi groups in the future, the European Union’s police agency said in a report published Friday. In the 34-page report entitled “Women in Islamic State Propaganda,” Europol said “female jihadis are as ideologically motivated as their male counterparts and their sense of empowerment lies in contributing to the building of an Islamic state.”
It concludes that “numerous examples” of women, who either carried out extremist attacks or were arrested preventively, “prove that women are willing to use violence if the ideology allows them to do so. For now, it is not yet their role, but this balance may easily shift according to the organization’s strategic needs and developments on the ground.” The report comes amid concerns about the risk posed by foreign fighters, including women, returning to their homes in Europe after the fall of the self-styled Islamic State caliphate in Syria and Iraq.
Europol Executive Director Catherine De Bolle said that 15% people convicted on “jihadi terrorism charges” in the EU in 2018 were women. The report’s authors studied propaganda targeting women, but also mentioned women who take active roles in Islamist combat, saying they were sometimes used to shame men into taking part in the group’s armed struggle. The report cited an example from an Islamic State publication that praised three women who attacked a police station in Mombasa, Kenya, in 2016 and asked what was wrong with men who had “laid down their swords.”
US objects to UN counterterrorism chief's visit to Xinjiang
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/j...o-xinjiang
EXCERPT: . . . Vladimir Voronkov, a veteran Russian diplomat who heads the UN Counterterrorism Office, is in China at the invitation of Beijing and is due to visit Xinjiang’s capital Urumqi [...] The United States and other western countries have objected to a visit ... to China’s remote Xinjiang, where UN experts say some 1 million ethnic Uighurs and other Muslims are held in detention centres. [...] China has been condemned internationally for setting up ... detention complexes, which it describes as “education training centres” helping to stamp out extremism and give people new skills.
[...] US deputy secretary of state John Sullivan spoke with UN secretary-general António Guterres on Friday “to convey deep concerns” about Voronkov’s trip because “Beijing continues to paint its repressive campaign against Uighurs and other Muslims as legitimate counterterrorism efforts when it is not”.
“The deputy secretary expressed that such a visit is highly inappropriate in view of the unprecedented repression campaign underway in Xinjiang against Uighurs, ethnic Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and other Muslims,” the US State Department said in a statement. “The UN’s topmost counterterrorism official is putting at risk the UN’s reputation and credibility on counterterrorism and human rights by lending credence to these false claims,” the statement said.
“China will, and is, actively saying that what they’re doing in Xinjiang is good terrorism prevention,” said a UN security council diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity. “The visit by Voronkov validates their narrative that this is a counterterrorism issue, when we would see it more as a human rights issue,” said the diplomat, adding that if Voronkov did not speak out after visiting Xinjiang then “silence could be seen as implicit acceptance, at worst UN complicity”. (MORE - details)