Replying to the debate on the budgetary demands of the Ministry of the Interior in the National Assembly on June24, 2009, Rehman Malik, Pakistan's Interior Minister, said: "Due to the efforts of the President and the Prime Minister, the Chinese Government has provided $290 million for capacity building of our security forces." Even though he did not specifically say so, the capacity-building he was referring to is in the field of counter-terrorism. This would be in addition to continuing Chinese assistance to the Pakistani Armed Forces to strengthen theircapability against their Indian counterparts.
The decision of the Chinese authorities to assist Pakistani capacity-building in counter-terrorism was officially conveyed to Malik when he visited Beijing and Shanghai from June 9 to 12,2009. The visit was preceded by the Pakistan Government’s handing over to the Chinese of 10 members of the Uighur diaspora in Pakistan despite objections from the Amnesty International, which feared that these Uighurs might be executed by China without proper trial, The Pakistani authorities, who officially revealed the handing-over on June 5,2009, as reported by theNews of June 6, claimed that these Uighurs, who were rounded up during the Pakistan Army's counter-insurgency operations in the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), belonged to the Eastern Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM). They have not indicated when they were rounded up. However, it is understood that the Amnesty International has been taking up their case since March. This would mean that they must have been rounded up in or before March,2009.
The News of June 6 reported as follows: