China has started using surveillance drones following Muslim minority riots in restive Xinjiang province at the end of July, state media said on Monday.<\/p>\n
Steve Finch
August 19, 2014<\/p>\n
China has started using surveillance drones following Muslim minority riots in restive Xinjiang province at the end of July, state media said on Monday.<\/p>\n
China Aerospace Science and Technology Cooperation personnel were sent to Xinjiang to help set up drone operations that beamed real-time images to security services, leading to the arrest of 215 suspects and surrender of nine more this month, the Global Times said.<\/p>\n
Monday\u2019s report is the first time China has admitted using drones in real life security operations amid a spate of terrorist attacks and riots that have left at least 250 dead in the past year.<\/p>\n
Alim Seytoff, president of the Uyghur Human Rights Project in Washington DC, warned that using surveillance drones would escalate tensions between Muslims and majority Han Chinese.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe use of drones over villages in East Turkestan [the pro-independence name for Xinjiang] shows that China treats all Uyghurs as state enemies,\u201d he said in a statement late on Monday. \u201cChina is not singling out alleged \u2018terrorists\u2019: it is intimidating entire communities, including the very people its purported anti-terror campaign is supposed to protect.\u201d<\/p>\n
Seytoff called on the international community to raise concerns about drones being deployed in western China over what he called a lack of transparency over security operations and in relation to the number of people who died in Yarkent last month. Some reports have claimed the toll could be as high as 1,000 people.<\/p>\n
At the end of May, authorities began a security crackdown in Xinjiang following an attack by separatists that left more than 40 people dead at a market in the provincial capital Urumqi.<\/p>\n
Since then, China has poured thousands of extra police and military personnel into the province.<\/p>\n
Authorities have also started holding mass trials in Xinjiang for the first time since the early 1990s, sentencing to death dozens of people on terrorism and other convictions after President Xi Jinping promised to \u201ccrack down on them with a heavy fist\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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