China to execute four Uighurs in western region Jihad in China’s Far West

'Jasmine' became the watchword for Chinese authorities on Sunday as an innocuous post online led to gatherings in Beijing and Shanghai, and protests that took after the wave of rebellion sweeping north Africa and the Arab world.

In a swift crackdown underlining the Chinese government's anxiety, officials questioned or detained scores of activists and warned others, while blocking posts on Chinese websites calling on people to join in protests. The police stepped up vigilance across 13 cities in China in response to persistent posts over the internet exhorting the Chinese to join the Jasmine Revolution that began in Tunisia, to secure their democratic rights from the government in Beijing.

Censors blocked posts on Chinese websites to the extent possible. Weibo, the country's Twitter-like microblog, produced no results for "Jasmine Revolution". The popular Baidu search engine reported candidly that search results were unavailable due to regulations. Some Chinese internet search pages listed "jasmine" postings but links to them were blocked.

In Beijing, security officers attempted to detain one man holding jasmine flowers at the planned protest site, but let him go after he was swarmed by journalists. The Associated Press identified him as 25-year-old Liu Xiaobai, who told them: "I just put down some white flowers, what`s wrong with that? I'm just a normal citizen and I just want peace."

Unusually, Xinhua reported that police had detained three people after crowds gathered at the People's Square in Shanghai.

"We want food, we want work, we want housing, we want fairness," is one of the slogans suggested by writers in Chinese micro blogs, who urged people to hold demonstrations.

It was not clear if there was an organization behind the dozens of posts on different internet sites and micro-blogs. The move did not seem to spark large-scale protests as witnessed in Tunis and Cairo, but the authorities went out of their way to ensure there was no trouble.

There were signs that several overseas Chinese, including some in the United States, were posting appeals for carrying out demonstrations in specific places across 13 cities, including Beijing and Shanghai. The posts, which began on Saturday, even specified places where people should gather, and suggested slogans they could shout.

A report from Hong Kong, which has emerged as a centre for monitoring human rights activities, said at least 100 dissidents have been rounded up by the police in different parts of China. Another report from Shanghai said suspected dissidents were picked up by the police on Saturday. On Sunday, protesters were shoved around and scattered by the police. But there was no indication of a large demonstration.

Beijing's colourful Wang Fu Jing plaza was full of armed policemen in riot gear and police vehicles with cameras and other equipment. A groups of foreign journalists, tipped off by the internet postings, also waited, but no demonstrator turned up.

The Supreme People's Court has approved the execution of four Uighurs convicted of terrorism and murder in China's far western region of Xinjiang, state media said on Wednesday. 

The court approved death sentences against Abudula Tueryacun and Tuerhong Tuerdi after they were convicted of taking part in a bomb attack targeting local police in Xinjiang's Aksu city in August, the Xinjiang Daily reported.

They were among six people who threw explosives at a 15-member police patrol on a main road in Aksu.

The attack killed eight people, including two of the bombers, and injured 15 others, earlier reports said.

China's highest court also approved the execution of Akeneyacun Nuer, who was found guilty of stabbing to death a police officer in Khotan city in November.

The fourth man facing execution, Abudukaiyoumu Abudureheman, was convicted of killing two people with a homemade gun in the Hami area in September, the newspaper said.

China has reported several terrorist attacks and other violent incidents between Uighurs and the country's majority Han Chinese in Xinjiang in recent years.

Many of the region's 8 million Uighurs, a minority among the Xinjiang's population of nearly 20 million, complain of cultural and religious repression.

The Uighurs claim that ethnic Chinese migrants enjoy the main benefits of development in the oil-rich but economically backward region.

The Munich-based World Uighur Congress earlier this week said Chinese authorities were "targeting Uighur publications throughout Xinjiang" following the recent uprisings in the Middle East.

"The government is worried that there will be a new round of large-scale protests (in Xinjiang)," Dilxat Raxit, a spokesman for the group, told US-based Radio Free Asia.

Open letters circulated online by Chinese democracy activists Wednesday called for weekly anti-government protests from Sunday in the regional capital Urumqi and 17 other cities.

At least 26 people were sentenced to death, most of them Uighurs, after ethnic riots in July 2009 left some 200 people dead in Urumqi.

Several of those 26 people were reportedly executed but the fate of others remains unclear.

China executes more people annually than the rest of the world put together, according to rights groups.

But the government lists statistics on death sentences and executions as state secrets. 

Jihad in China’s Far West

TIME MAGAZINE

By Austin Ramzy / Kashgar

Kashgar is about as far as one can get from the Chinese capital of Beijing and still be in China. In fact, there is little to indicate one is still in China. Most of the people in this desert town are Uighurs, an Islamic minority group that has clashed again and again with rule of China’s majority Han ethnicity. The land surround the city is brown and bare save for irrigated orchards and fruit fields. The white caps of the Pamirs loom in the distance. Women walk through the streets in headscarves, sometimes fully covered from the hot sun and blowing sand. Men wearing skull caps greet one another with handshakes and the phrase “As-Salamu ‘Alaykum,” Arabic for “Peace be upon you.” The language of the Uighurs is closer to Turkish than Chinese, and the architecture — Islamic domes, decorative Arabic script, grape trellises — looks more to the oasis cities of Central Asia than to the east.

But the signs of Beijing’s power are all around. Kashgar and the huge province of Xinjiang to which it belongs to are, by decree of the Chinese Communist Party, on Beijing time, even though geographically the city should be two hours behind the national capital. Han Chinese make up about a quarter of Kashgar’s population, and markers announcing the route of the Olympic flame, which passed through here in June, line the streets. Banners hang that read, “All ethnicities hand in hand welcome the Olympics.” This week, however, some locals may have decided they wanted none of Beijing’s Games.

Chinese authorities say two Kashgar men, taxi driver Kurbanjan Hemit, 28, and vegetable vendor Abdurahman Azat, 33, carried out an attack on security forces in the city. The local government says the pair, who are Uighur, were driven by religious extremism to attack a group of Chinese border police, killing 16 and injuring 16 more. “They said that religious beliefs are more important than life, more important than the prosperity of their familes, even their mothers,” said Shi Dagang, the Communist Party secretary for Kashgar prefecture. “They were trying their best to perform jihad.” The scene of the incident: the entrance of the Yijin Hotel, a dingy yellow three-story building with reflective windows. A visit to the site a day after saw a few police milling around but nothing to give the impression that the spot was more significant than others in this highly-guarded city.

Shi told a press conference that the pair planned their attack for a month. He said that on early Monday morning the two suspects stole a large Dongfeng delivery truck. Shortly after 8 a.m. Beijing time (or 6 a.m., in the unofficial local time) one of the suspects telephoned the other to say that a group of Chinese border police was on a training jog outside their compound. The driver accelerated the truck to a high speed and plowed it into a group of 70 from behind. The truck hit a pole and turned over, and the driver lost an arm in the accident. They attacked the police with two homemade bombs, Shi said. Authorities recovered nine more bombs, a homemade gun, two long knives and two daggers.

One day after the assault the scene outside the Yijin Hotel roughly matched the description given by authorities. Three saplings that had stood outside the hotel the day before were gone, a neighbor said, and detached electrical wires dangled from above. The front entrance of the hotel was covered with a red, white and blue plastic tarp, and some of the windows were broken. But there were no signs of blood or explosive detonations on the sidewalk outside the three-story yellow building, which is backed by the old city wall.

Neighbors say that the road around the hotel was closed for two hours after the attack. Residents say they knew of the attack, but none acknowledged witnessing it. “I don’t really know the situation,” said a Chinese Muslim man of the Hui ethnicity, who owns a drink store near the Yijin. “I’m not afraid. The truth is it’s pretty safe here. It’s not like this sort of thing happens every day.”

That’s true, but Chinese authorities claim the attack is part of a long-running effort by Uighur separatists to tarnish the Beijing Olympics. Without giving details, Shi said that a preliminary investigation found similarities between this week’s attack and evidence uncovered from a raid on a Uighur separatist training camp in January 2007. “Starting from last year the East Turkestan forces at home and abroad tried sabotage and violent activities targeting the Beijing Games,” Shi said, using the historic name of an independent Uighur state which some groups have hopes of restoring through violent struggle. “The East Turkestan Islamic Movement and the East Turkestan Liberation Organization are the two most active ones.” Shi cited online postings that describe how to make bombs and poisons, the attempted attack on a flight from the Xinjiang capital of Urumqi in March, and unrest in Hetian (or Khotan in the Uighur language) in March. He quoted the leader of the East Turkestan Liberation Organization as saying, “The Beijing Games are our one last golden opportunity to inflict such attacks on China. Even though we know we are weak like an egg on a stone, they will try to smear the stone.”

Shi said that he believed Kashgar residents were united in opposition to such violence. “Kashgar people of all ethnic groups are a strong foundation to combat East Turkestan forces,” he said. He promised “a severe battle” against terrorism, and said the area’s recent economic growth was a sign that the region was stable and prosperous. “We have a unitary ethnic environment and a very stable society,” he said. “Even a midnight, people still have no problem strolling or jogging on the streets.”

Indeed, Kashgar seemed remarkably calm after the attack. Residents strolled past the Yijin Hotel as if nothing happened there. Children rode bicycles on sidewalks, and donkey carts pulled loads of fruit. Police checkpoints dotted some of the city’s backroads, and airports and some hotels in the region had security checks at their outside entrances. Kashgar police detained and roughed up two Japanese reporters who arrived the day of the attack, according to wire reports, but by Tuesday they merely tape recorded journalists from a distance.

Despite the relative calm, signs of dissent were apparent. “There’s a lot of things we keep in here,” one Uighur shopkeeper said, tapping on my chest. He said that decades of Chinese rule had changed the mentality of his people. “We’ve been under a lot of pressure” he says. “For some minorities the conditions have been good, but not for us.”

An old man sitting near a sign that said “Unauthorized pilgrimages are illegal religious activity,” complained that the city’s Han residents were given all the economic opportunities. “Do you think people are happy here? Do you see them smiling, dancing, singing? No, because they have no work,” he said. He argued that the influx of Han settlers, and the authoritarian control of the Communist Party were the sources of Uighur anger. “Why are people unhappy? Because power is in control of the Communist Party.”