Anti-terrorism school to be set up in ‘restive’ region

China will launch its first anti-terrorism school in a university in the northwest, where the restive Xinjiang region is located, following the counter-terrorism law that took effect on the first day of the year, writes Zhen Liu for South China Morning Post.

The Northwest University of Political Science and Law in Xian, Shaanxi province, said that the university was working on setting up an independent institution that would take in law graduates and teach them the latest anti-terrorism theories and practices. Shaanxi province is in China’s northwest, where Gansu, Ningxia and Xinjiang are also located. Xinjiang has a large Muslim Uyghur population. The Chinese government has blamed occasional violent incidents in Xinjiang on religious extremists and separatists in the region, calling them terrorists.

The institute would award masters degrees and doctorates in anti-terrorism studies, the university said. “The purpose is to develop specialised talents for anti-terrorism,” the university’s president Jia Yu told a conference recently. The institute would be the country’s first organisation dedicated to studying and teaching anti-terrorism, according to a report on the conference.
Full report on the South China Morning Post site