SWC Urges Shanghai Cooperation Organization To Endorse Campaign to Make Suicide Terrorism A Crime Against Humanity

June 15, 2006

SIMON WIESENTHAL CENTER
European Office, registered as Non-profit organization in France under the law of 1901
64, avenue Marceau
75008 Paris
Tel: 33 (0) 1 47 23 76 37
Fax: 33 (0) 1 47 20 84 01

Wiesenthal Centre to Shanghai Cooperation Organization: "Endorse Our Campaign to Make Suicide Terrorism A Crime against Humanity"

PRC

In China on the occasion of the fifth anniversary Summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), the Wiesenthal Centre's Director for International Relations, Dr Shimon Samuels, presented the six member states with a "Call to Action on Global Terrorism."

Headquartered in China and "established to improve security in Central Asia," the Summit is attended by the Heads of State of its members (China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan), the leaders of five observer states (Afghanistan, India, Iran, Mongolia, Pakistan), and the representatives of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and the United Nations.

Samuels addressed Vyacheslav Kasimov, Director of the SCO's Regional Anti-Terrorism Structure (RATS), who is "preparing a compendium for SCO's fight on terror in the 2007 - 2009 period, in the context of the Shanghai Convention Against Terrorism, Separatism and Extremism."

Samuels offered RATS the Centre's new CD-ROM "Digital Terrorism and Hate 2006" - based on its monitoring of over 6,000 Internet websites - for the SCO's joint data bank on terrorists and extremists in this strategic region covering 1.5 billion people in the 30 million square kilometers of the Eurasian landmass. RATS is organizing an anti-terrorism exercise in Russia for 2007.

The Centre urged the SCO to:
"- monitor and combat incitement to hate and xenophobia, disseminated by terrorist groups especially through Internet websites and satellite television"
- promote the prosecution of those involved in activities that incite, recruit, finance, provide arms and explosives, train, furnish cover for terrorists or glorify acts of terrorism
- endorse the Wiesenthal Centre's global campaign to characterize suicide terrorism as a crime against humanity"

Samuels also appealed to the Chairman of the SCO's Bank Consortium, currently China Development Bank Governor, Chen Yuan, as also the Consortium's incoming Chairman, Vladimir Dmitriyev, President of the Russian Vnesheconombank, "to coordinate with their regional Central Banks in:
- investigating terrorism's links to organized crime (in particular money laundering, drug production and trafficking, arms smuggling, counterfeiting) and to share findings with the Financial Advisory Task Force in Paris.
- closing down ostensible 'charitable' fundraising campaigns that reportedly misappropriate and redirect 'donations' to financing international terrorism".

The Simon Wiesenthal Centre stressed to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization that "the threat of terrorism within, and emanating from, its region demands an urgent and concerted response."

For further information, please contact Dr. Samuels at +33 6 09 77 01 58.