MCLC: deadly shootout in Xinjiang

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: deadly shootout in Xinjiang
***********************************************************

Source: NYT (12/30/11):
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/31/world/asia/reports-describe-deadly-shooto
ut-in-restive-region-of-china.html

Reports Describe Deadly Shootout in Restive Region of China
By EDWARD WONG 

BEIJING ‹ Police officers killed seven people they judged to be
³kidnappers² in a remote mountainous area in the turbulent western
frontier region of Xinjiang on Wednesday night, according to reports by
state-run news organizations on Friday. One police officer was killed in
the shootout.

Like the neighboring Tibetan plateau, parts of Xinjiang, particularly in
its southern reaches, go through regular waves of protest and violence
because of what many members of ethnic minorities there call oppressive
and discriminatory rule by ethnic Han, the dominant group in most of
China. The Chinese government has said it is battling ³separatists² in
Tibet and Xinjiang.

A spokesman for the Xinjiang government told the state news agency Xinhua
that a group of ³violent terrorists²
<http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2011-12/29/c_131333014.htm>
abducted two people in Pishan County. The area falls within restive Hotan
Prefecture that is dominated by the ethnic Uighurs, a Turkic people who
practice a relatively moderate form of Islam. In Pishan, the Han make up
less than two percent of the population. Xinhua did not give details on
the ethnicity of the people shot dead by the police.

Radio Free Asia, which has a Uighur-language service, reported on Thursday
that local residents said in interviews that all the people killed were
Uighurs. A spokesman for the World Uyghur Congress, an exile group based
in Germany, told Radio Free Asia that he doubted the official version of
events.

³It¹s not really credible to say the clashes were entirely caused by the
actions of one party,² the spokesman, Dilxat Raxit said. ³There are
various accounts on the ground of the number of people who died.²

Mr. Raxit said the authorities had sealed off all roads into Pishan County
and had put security forces around the hospital were the dead and injured
were taken.

A spokesman for the foreign affairs office of Xinjiang, Xu Chao, declined
to comment when reached by telephone. He said more details were available
in an article printed Friday in Global Times
<http://www.globaltimes.cn/NEWS/tabid/99/ID/690525/Police-shoot-dead-7-terr
orists-in-Xinjiang.aspx>.
That article had a complicated narrative of the events, with elements
rarely seen in China, even in the troubled Xinjiang region. The reporter,
Yang Jinghao, cited a local official saying that a group of 15 men were
trying to cross into Central Asia to receive ³jihadist training² when they
lost their way near Pishan. The men then seized two herdsmen who were
looking for lost sheep and forced them to lead the way. The herdsmen
escaped and contacted local police. In the shootout, the police killed
seven of the so-called kidnappers, injured four and detained another four.

Global Times said Hou Hanmin, a spokesman for the Xinjiang government,
confirmed the story and said the men attacked by the police were all from
ethnic minorities, though he declined to identify their ethnicities.

The newspaper also reported that police officers had looked into another
kidnapping earlier this month in Pishan in which a Uighur man was abducted
and murdered because he was found to be drinking alcohol.

The Xinhua report, which appeared Thursday, said there were signs that
religious extremism was on the rise in the area. It reported that
storeowners and vendors in some rural areas of Pishan had said they were
afraid to sell alcohol or cigarettes for fear of retaliation.

Doubts have been raised in recent years over the official versions of
events that have unfolded in Xinjiang. In 2008, officials said two Uighur
men were responsible for killing 16 paramilitary officers in the city of
Kashgar by hitting them with a truck, setting off homemade explosives and
attacking with machetes. But foreign tourists who witnessed the event and
took photographs of it
<http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/29/world/asia/29kashgar.html> told The New
York Times that there were no explosions and that the men wielding
machetes appeared to be wearing uniforms.

This July, at least 18 people were killed when rioters, some armed with
homemade explosives, attacked a police station in the city of Hotan,
Xinhua reported at the time. Fourteen of those killed were rioters. In
late July, at least 13 people were killed and 44 injured in two separate
incidents in Kashgar involving violence among attackers, civilians and the
police, Xinhua reported. Officials in Kashgar said a leader of one of the
assault groups had trained in Pakistan
<http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/02/world/asia/02china.html>.

The greatest eruption of violence in Xinjiang in recent years took place
in July 2009, when Uighurs rioted in Urumqi, the regional capital, after
the police broke up a protest rally. At least 197 people were killed and
more than 1,700 were injured, most of them Han, according to Chinese
officials. Uighur exile groups said an unknown number of Uighurs were
killed by Han civilians and the police.

This year has been one of unrest in Tibetan areas, too, as a dozen monks
and nuns have burned themselves to protest Chinese policies. Six of the
protestors have died. A senior official who helps oversee the Tibet issue,
Zhu Weiqun, of the United Front Work Department, said that the
self-immolations will not lead to any policy changes, Reuters reported on
Friday. Mr. Zhu¹s remarks on the self-immolations, which included a swipe
at the Dalai Lama, were posted on the Web site tibet.cn <http://tibet.cn/>.

³I can honestly say to our friends that even if such a thing happens
again,² he said, ³the direction of the Chinese government¹s policies in
Tibet and our attitude toward the Dalai clique¹s struggle will not change
in any way.²