Three more death sentences in Chinaethnic riot trials

CHINA sentenced three more people to death yesterday for murders committed during riots in the far western Xinjiang region in July, bringing to nine the number of people facing execution for the unrest.

Nearly 200 people were killed when Muslim Uighurs and members of China’s dominant Han ethnicity turned on one another in the streets of the regional capital, Urumqi. First, Uighurs assaulted random people in the overwhelmingly Han city. Days later, Han vigilantes retaliated in Uighur neighbourhoods, in the country’s worst communal violence in decades.

The official Xinhua News Agency said three new defendants were sentenced to death by the Urumqi Intermediate People’s Court and three more were sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve – a penalty usually commuted to life in prison.

The condemned men were all Uighur except for one Han Chinese man who was convicted of beating a Uighur man to death with a steel bar during the revenge attacks.

The Uighurs sentenced to death were convicted of murder for the beating deaths of two people.

In all, 14 people were sentenced yesterday, including three who got life sentences for attacking people, setting fires and destroying property.

Dilxat Raxit, spokesman for the Germany-based World Uighur Congress, condemned the rulings. He said local sources told him defendants were not allowed to pick their own lawyers and spent just 10 minutes with the lawyers before the trial began.