FOUR MONTHS after ethnic riots in restive Xinjiang brought China’s worst violence in decades, security forces have launched a “strike hard” campaign in the far western region and vowed to wipe out lawlessness.
Using tough language but without specifying what tactics would be used, a security spokesman said the campaign would “change the face” of the public security situation and involve a fresh manhunt for suspects who took part in July riots that killed nearly 200 people, most of them ethnic Han Chinese.
Local Uighurs turned on Han Chinese in the regional capital Urumqi after a protest against attacks on Uighur workers at a factory in southern China in June that left two Uighurs dead.
There were further protests in September after a series of reported needle stabbings by Uighurs angered local Han Chinese, who felt the government wasn’t doing enough to protect them.
“From the start of November until the end of the year public security bodies in Xinjiang will start a thorough ‘strike hard and punish’ campaign to further consolidate the fruits of maintaining stability and eliminate security dangers,” the spokesman said, quoted in the government’s official newspaper The People’s Daily.
Hundreds have already been arrested and last month, 21 were convicted for their roles in the unrest, with 12 sentenced to death. Those sentences were upheld in appeal hearings last week.
The robust “strike hard” language is tough police talk, although it is hard to see how security forces can step up their efforts in the province, which remains on high alert – cut off from the rest of China by controls with thousands of police on the streets. Internet access, text-messaging services and long-distance telephone services remain closed to most residents.
Security forces would “root out places where criminals breed, and change the face of the public security situation in these areas”, the report noted.
“Local police will continue a manhunt to nab suspects in connection with the July 5th riot in Urumqi. Meanwhile, police will keep a close eye on clues and cases involving terrorism and explosions,” said the spokesman. “We must strictly prevent violent acts of terrorism and ensure stability.”
China’s roughly eight million Turkic-speaking Uighurs are a Turkic Muslim ethnic group linguistically and culturally distinct from China’s majority Han. They have much more in common with Central Asians. Uighurs see Xinjiang as their homeland and resent the millions of Han Chinese who have poured into the region in recent decades, seeing their presence as a form of colonialism.
A simmering separatist campaign in the energy-rich region has occasionally boiled over into violence in the past 20 years.
The Han Chinese see Xinjiang as an inalienable part of the territory of China, ruled from Beijing, and do not see any way to agree to China’s demands.
Rights activists say Beijing exaggerates the threat from militants to justify harsh controls and Human Rights Watch said last month that they had documented at least 43 Uighurs, including children as young as 14, who remain unaccounted for after earlier round-ups by security forces following the clashes. Security officials are accused of illegally detaining dozens of alleged rioters for months without telling families of their whereabouts.