China is home to two ethnically separate Muslim groups – the Hui and the Uighur. And it is the Uighur people who Chinese authorities have in recent years labelled terrorists and separatists.

China has been using the US-led 'war on terror' to justify the harsh repression of the Uighur people – who live in the country's western Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region – which has resulted in serious human rights violations.

Authorities have called the Uighur terrorists, separatists and religious extremists. They are the only group of people in China known to have been executed for political crimes, such as separatism.

For years the Uighur have been the target of systematic human rights violations, including imprisonment, arbitrary detention and violence, according to Amnesty International's research. They have also faced severe restrictions on their religious freedom and their social and cultural rights.

Al Jazeera English has put out a new short documentary about the Hui and Uighur. It includes interviews with exiled Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer, as well as Professor Charles Burton, a former Canadian diplomat who had several postings in China.

About the Uighur people he says:

" …. The Chinese Government got the United States to recognise the East Turkestan Independence Movement – which is a movement of Uighurs in Xinjiang who would like to have there own independent state – classified as a terrorist organisation.

" The Chinese want the global community to believe that indigenous, independence movements are actually allied to trans-national Muslim terrorism organisations. But we don’t have evidence that this is genuinely the case …"

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