MCLC: 21 dead in Xinjiang

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: 21 dead in Xinjiang
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Source: NYT (4/14/13):
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/25/world/asia/violence-in-western-china.html

21 Dead in Clash with ‘Gangsters’ in Western China
By EDWARD WONG 

BEIJING – At least 21 people were killed on Tuesday in fighting in far
western China between security officers and “gangsters,” according to a
propaganda bureau spokeswoman for the regional government of Xinjiang,
where the conflict took place.

Six of those killed were gangsters, and eight more people in the gang were
detained during the violence, according to accounts from the bureau and a
report Wednesday on a regional news Web site, Tianshan
<http://news.ts.cn/content/2013-04/24/content_8081089.htm>. The other 15
killed were police officers and community watch workers or volunteers.
They died after the large gang herded them at knifepoint into a house and
set the building on fire, said the propaganda spokeswoman, who gave only
her surname, Ms. Hou.

The death toll was the highest reported in violence in Xinjiang in many
many months. Xinjiang is a vast western region that encompasses many
ethnicities and landscapes, and violence flares on occasion in the
regional capital, Urumqi, or along a belt of southern oases towns that are
inhabited mostly by Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking people who often complain
about governance and discrimination by the ethnic Han, who rule China.
Sometimes the violence is clearly rooted in ethnic conflict, and other
times it involves criminal gangs or attacks by individuals or groups
against state organizations.

Ms. Hou said all 14 of the assailants were of Uighur ethnicity, most of
them from a village administered by the township of Selibuya. She said
they had been influenced by “religious extremism” and had been plotting a
“jihad” since the end of last year, though there was no evidence they were
working with foreign forces.

Uighurs generally practice Sunni Islam, and Uighur exiles often criticize
Chinese officials for saying violence in Xinjiang arises from religious
extremism. In the past, officials in Xinjiang and Beijing have tried to
blame a group called the East Turkestan Islamic Movement for some acts of
violence in the region, though several foreign scholars say the officials
have presented little evidence to support their claims.

As with many such events in Xinjiang, details of the fighting on Tuesday
remained murky even a full day after the violence had transpired. Some
elements of the official accounts were bizarre.

The accounts called the assailants both “violent gangsters” and “suspected
terrorists.” The violence took place in a village in Selibuya township
under Bachu County, near the historic Silk Road oasis town of Kashgar,
which is near the borders of Central Asian nations and Pakistan. The
conflict began on Tuesday when a person called a local government office
saying there was suspicious activity in a neighboring house. Three
community watch workers went to check the house at around 1:30 p.m. and
found people there with a large stockpile of knives measuring about 1.2
meters each, Ms. Hou said.

The workers called the police, but were then captured by the gang. Several
police officers arrived with another group of community watch workers;
only one of the officers was carrying a gun, Ms. Hou said. Those 12 people
were unaware that the gangsters had already killed the three community
workers who had initially arrived at the house, and they were in turn
cornered in the building. The attackers then set the house on fire.

On the law enforcement side, six police officers and nine community watch
workers died, Ms. Hou said. The Tianshan report said they were made up of
10 Uighurs, three Han and two Mongolians.

More security forces arrived at the scene and shot at the attackers, which
resulted in the deaths of six of the gang members and the detention of
another eight. None appeared to have fled.

Violence has occurred more frequently in Xinjiang ever since an eruption
of rioting by Uighurs in Urumqi in 2009. Official news reports said nearly
200 people were killed, most of them Han, and many more were injured.
Uighurs in the area say Han-dominated security forces then began a brutal
crackdown, and Han went into the streets to seek revenge.