Two policemen were killed during a clash with knife-wielding assailants in a restive northwestern Chinese territory that has been the scene of mounting violence between local Muslims and government authorities, a local official said.
The police were attacked Wednesday outside Kashgar, an ancient Silk Road city in China's Xinjiang region, where militants killed 16 border-patrol police in an early August assault. Two weeks ago, three volunteers manning a security checkpoint in the area were also killed.
China has faced mounting unrest this year in Xinjiang, home to a large population of Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking, largely Muslim people with a culture distinct from that of China's majority Han ethnic group. Uighur groups have for decades waged sporadic and sometimes violent campaigns for independence from Beijing's rule.
China's government said that Uighur separatists posed the most serious terrorist threat to the Beijing Olympics. During the first weekend of the Games, police say Uighur militants used bombs to attack shopping centers and government buildings in another Xinjiang city, Kuqa, killing two people. Ten more died in an ensuing battle between the assailants and police.
Many Uighurs complain about restrictions on their civil liberties and religious practices as well as what they see as social and economic discrimination by Han Chinese, echoing complaints of other ethnic minorities in China, such as Tibetans.
Ahead of the Games, Chinese authorities progressively tightened security measures in Xinjiang, restricting the ability of Uighur people to travel, among other things. Uighur organizations and human-rights groups say those moves sparked resentment among locals.
On Wednesday, according to a village-government official in Jiashi County, about 65 kilometers from Kashgar, police patrolling along a road near the county's No. 4 Village spotted a group of suspicious people trying to hide in a cotton field.
When the police, who were Uighurs, attempted to question the group, who were also Uighurs, the police were attacked with knives, said the official, who declined to give his name. The official said that the motive for the attack was unclear and an investigation was under way.
A local Communist Party official said that police and government officials had arrived in Jiashi County to search for the suspects. But a county police official reached by phone denied that any attack had taken place.
Chinese officials said that the attack on the security checkpoint was also a case of Uighurs working with the government being attacked by other Uighurs. Some experts have said this could be a sign that militants are targeting people they see as 'collaborators.'
Some in the Uighur exile community, however, doubt the veracity of the Chinese officials' accounts and say that the Uighurs manning the road block may in fact have been the victims of a revenge attack by ethnic Han Chinese.
Gordon Fairclough |
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