Local residents are roped into searching for four other suspects who fled.<\/p>\n
2015-05-28<\/p>\n
Authorities in northwestern China\u2019s troubled Xinjiang region shot and killed two young Uyghur minority men who launched a crude bomb attack on a police patrol, sources said Thursday, and have ordered local residents to join a search for four others who fled the scene.<\/p>\n
A young Uyghur woman who lives with her family in Zawa township, in Hotan (in Chinese, Hetian) prefecture\u2019s Qaraqash (Moyu) county, told RFA\u2019s Uyghur Service that the attack occurred \u201cfour or five days ago\u201d in Zawa.<\/p>\n
\u201cI heard that several young men attacked a police patrol and two of them were shot dead on the spot by police, but four others fled,\u201d she said, speaking on condition of anonymity.<\/p>\n
The young woman said that the Qaraqash county public security bureau had posted photos of the four others and notices of their arrest warrants on local streets, and that an announcement of the news had been made on the county radio station.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe streets are strictly controlled by the police. People still cannot move freely between the Qaraqash county bazaar and Zawa township,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are checkpoints everywhere, and most of the men in our township have been forced to help in searches for the four attackers who fled.\u201d<\/p>\n
A Uyghur man who runs a butcher shop at the Zawa bazaar confirmed the attack had taken place and that local men were being conscripted into search teams to find the suspects.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe attack occurred in Zawa around midnight between Monday night and Tuesday morning, and involved six young Uyghur men,\u201d said the butcher, who also declined to provide his name.<\/p>\n
\u201cPolice shot two of them dead on the spot and the other four attackers fled. They are hiding somewhere within Zawa township. I heard that two of them are from Igiz\u2019eriq village and the other two are from Bashaqchi and Toghiya villages.\u201d<\/p>\n
The butcher said that two of the suspects were named Abdurahman Abduhelil and Nebi Abdullah, according to notices posted by police, but said he was unable to remember the names of the other two. All four are between the ages of 20 and 26, the notices said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI heard that they used homemade bombs to attack the police patrol,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe authorities didn\u2019t inform us whether there were any police deaths or casualties.\u201d<\/p>\n
No information was provided about possible motives for the attack, he said, but exile groups have suggested that similar acts of violence are expressions of resistance to Beijing\u2019s policies in Xinjiang, where Uyghurs complain of pervasive ethnic discrimination, religious repression, and cultural suppression by China\u2019s communist government.<\/p>\n
RFA was unable to reach staff at the Zawa government office or township police station to confirm the incident.<\/p>\n
Search operation<\/strong><\/p>\n The butcher told RFA that after the attack, Qaraqash county and Zawa township authorities directed the police to search for the four suspects, while the Zawa township committee of China\u2019s ruling Communist Party had ordered all men between the ages of 18 and 60 to join the operation.<\/p>\n Of Zawa\u2019s 50,000-60,000 residents, township authorities had mobilized \u201cmost of the farmers and government staff\u201d to take part in the search.<\/p>\n \u201cThey organized a people\u2019s net to check everywhere, include farmland, forests, orchards, personal property and cornfields,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cThe farmers\u2019 wheat, corn and vegetables have been destroyed underfoot. The people don\u2019t have time to engage in their agricultural labor\u2014they have all been forced to take part in the hunt.\u201d<\/p>\n The butcher said he had just finished his forced guard duty at a checkpoint on the main road in Zawa, which he had performed for each of the past four nights.<\/p>\n \u201cIf anyone refuses to help, they will be arrested for political disloyalty to the party and government, so I have been forced to join in the search operation and serve my duty as a night guard,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cI heard that dozens of farmers from Igiz\u2019eriq village were detained because they refused to take part in the hunt,\u201d said the butcher, adding that the search had mainly focused on the three villages police believe the attackers come from.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know if the hiding suspects will be arrested or killed. Everyone knows that if the police discover any suspected attackers, they are authorized to shoot on sight.\u201d<\/p>\n Hotbed of violence<\/strong><\/p>\n Hotan prefecture in southwestern Xinjiang has been a hotbed of violent stabbing and shooting incidents between ethnic Uyghurs and Chinese security forces, with attacks coming amid a string of assaults and bombings across the region.<\/p>\n Two successive suicide bombings on May 11 and 12 at a security checkpoint station in Hotan\u2019s Lop (Luopu) county killed three attackers and three police officers, and wounded four other policemen, according to local authorities, who said the incidents were likely \u201cpolitically motivated.\u201d<\/p>\n And sources recently told RFA that the ethnic Han Chinese head of Hotan\u2019s Layqa township was stabbed to death earlier this month by a young Uyghur man, prompting a security clampdown in the area.<\/p>\n Rights groups accuse the Chinese authorities of heavy-handed rule in Hotan and elsewhere in Xinjiang, including violent police raids on Uyghur households, restrictions on Islamic practices, and curbs on the culture and language of the Uyghur people.<\/p>\n Reported by Eset Sulaiman for RFA\u2019s Uyghur Service. Translated by Eset Sulaiman. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Local residents are roped into searching for four other suspects who fled.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1854,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"topic":[],"class_list":["post-1855","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1855","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1855"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1855\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1855"},{"taxonomy":"topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic?post=1855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}