Chinese authorities brand violent clashes 'terrorist attacks'

Violent incidents have spread this week in a tense minority region of western China.

The violence comes just days before the anniversary of a bloody clash between minority Uighurs and the ethnic Han majority which left almost 200 dead and resulted in a major security clampdown.

China’s communist authorities have labelled some of the incidents – including one which left 35 people dead – as terrorist attacks, and President Xi Jinping has ordered that they be promptly dealt with to safeguard overall social stability, state media reported.

The latest violent incidents were reported in southern Xinjiang’s Hotan area. In one, more than 100 knife-wielding people mounted motorcycles in an attempt to storm the police station for Karakax county, the state-run Global Times reported.

Another was an attack mob in the township of Hanairike yesterday afternoon, according to the news portal of the Xinjiang regional government. It said the mob was armed, but did not say with what sort of weapons.

The official Xinhua News Agency reported a “violent attack” in a pedestrian street in Hotan city yesterday afternoon.

No casualties were reported in any of the incidents, which state media said were quickly brought under control. The government’s news portal, Tianshan Net, said there was no civilian casualty in Hanairike.

An exiled Uighur activist disputed those accounts. Instead, Dilxat Raxit, spokesman for the Germany-based World Uyghur Congress, said there were several protests in the Hotan area against what Uighurs see as China’s suppressive policies in Xinjiang.

“It’s a crisis of survival,” said Dilxat Raxit, who called for international observers to be sent to the region to help curb excessive violence against Uighurs by the Chinese government. He said 48 people have been arrested.

It was not possible to independently verify the reports because of tight controls over information in the region.

Yesterday’s incidents in Xinjiang came after what the government described as attacks on police and other government buildings in eastern Xinjiang’s Turpan prefecture’s Lukqun township on Wednesday killed 35 people.

That was one of the bloodiest incidents since the July 5 2009 unrest in the region’s capital city, Urumqi, killed nearly 200.

Xinjiang is home to a large population of minority Muslim Uighurs in a region which borders Central Asia, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and has been the scene of numerous violent acts in recent years.

Critics often attribute the violence in Xinjiang to what they say is Beijing’s oppressive and discriminatory ethnicity policies. Many Uighurs complain that authorities impose tight restrictions on their religious and cultural life.

The Chinese government said it has invested billions of dollars in modernising the oil- and gas-rich region and that it treats all ethnic groups equally.

State-run media reported that Wednesday’s incident started when knife-wielding assailants targeted police stations, a government building and a construction site – all symbols of Han authority in the region.

Photos released in state media show scorched police cars and government buildings and victims lying on the ground, presumably dead.

Dilxat Raxit also disputed that account, saying the violence started when police forcefully raided homes at night. It was impossible to independently confirm the conflicting accounts.

Xinhua said 11 assailants were shot dead, and that two police officers were among the 24 people they killed.

“This is a terrorist attack, there’s no question about that,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said at a regular news briefing yesterday. “As to who masterminded it, local people are still investigating.”

State news reports did not identify the ethnicity of the attackers, nor say what may have caused the conflict in the Turkic-speaking region. The reports said police captured four injured assailants.

The Global Times newspaper said today that police had stepped up security measures, deploying more forces to public areas, governmental institutes and compounds for police and military police.

It said a suspect was captured in Urumqi yesterday afternoon.