China has appointed its first counter-terrorism chief, state media said on Monday, as it wages a controversial campaign to stamp out ethnic violence linked to the western Xinjiang region.
2015-12-21 HKT 15:17
China has appointed its first counter-terrorism chief, state media said on Monday, as it wages a controversial campaign to stamp out ethnic violence linked to the western Xinjiang region.
Liu Yuejin was appointed the commissioner of counter-terrorism, the China Daily reported.
He previously served as an assistant minister of public security and has worked on the country’s anti-narcotics efforts since the 1980s, the paper said.
Xinjiang, the homeland of the mostly Muslim Uighur ethnic minority, has been plagued by unrest in recent years, provoking China to launch a police crackdown on separatist “terrorists” it says are behind the violence.
With the rise of the Islamic State group, Beijing has increasingly attributed the attacks to foreign influence, while some experts see them as a reaction to discrimination and controls over the Uighurs’ culture and religion. Uighur attacks on civilians have claimed hundreds of lives and injured many more.
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