Local officials say authorities blew up the cave where they had hidden.<\/p>\n
2015-11-17<\/p>\n
Authorities in northwest China\u2019s troubled Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region have killed 17 suspects from three families, including women and children, they accused of carrying out an attack that left 50 people dead and injured 50 others at a coal mine, according to the government and local sources.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll terrorists were killed on the 56th day of a \u2018pursue and attack\u2019 operation\u201d in the region, China\u2019s Ministry of Public Security announced in a Nov. 14 statement published on its website, referring to the action as a \u201cgreat victory in the War on Terror.\u201d<\/p>\n
While the announcement, which was removed shortly after it was posted, did not link the \u201cterrorists\u201d to a specific act, the length of the operation it referred to suggested it had been launched in the aftermath of a Sept. 18 attack at the Sogan Colliery in Aksu (in Chinese, Akesu) prefecture\u2019s Bay (Baicheng) county.<\/p>\n
The attack, which was not reported in Chinese media, occurred when a group of knife-wielding suspects set upon security guards at the gate of the mine in Terek township before targeting the owner\u2019s residence and a dormitory for workers.<\/p>\n
When police arrived at the mine to control the situation, the attackers rammed their vehicles using trucks loaded down with coal, sources told RFA at the time, adding that at least five officers were killed in the incident, including a local police chief.<\/p>\n
In the aftermath of the attack, authorities launched a manhunt for 17 suspects, consisting of the three men believed to have been behind the incident\u2014Tursun Jume, 46, Musa Toxtiniyaz, 47, and Memet Eysa, 60, from Chokatal Meadow, in Bay\u2019s Kanchi township\u2014and their family members. Four of the suspects were women and three are children.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, police officers from Bay county confirmed to RFA\u2019s Uyghur Service that \u201call of the terrorists,\u201d including the seven women and children, had been killed in a raid.<\/p>\n
\u201cYes, I received a notice from my superiors informing us that all of the terrorists have been killed and warning us to remain vigilant against a possible revenge attack,\u201d said Exmet Abliz, police chief of Bay\u2019s Qeyir township, adding that a large number of officers had been kept on duty following the raid.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were also warned not to hold any kind of celebration to mark the victory, and even not to talk much about it until the operation has officially been made public.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ghalip Memet, a police officer in Terek township, told RFA that authorities had set off an explosion to kill the suspects where they lay in hiding.<\/p>\n
\u201cI heard from colleagues who participated in the operation that the military blew up the cave where the suspects were hiding,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat is why we were able to kill all of them with zero victims [from our side]. Seventeen corpses were gathered after the explosion.\u201d<\/p>\n
Classes resume<\/strong><\/p>\n Ekber, the director of the Terek township middle school, which had been used as a base of operations for the manhunt, said teachers and staff had finally returned to classes on Tuesday after nearly two months.<\/p>\n \u201cI received a call from the chief of the Bay county education department, who told me that the war had ended with a great victory\u2014that all the terrorists had been killed and that we could return to the middle school,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cBut I still have not received an official written notice, and the authorities have probably not decided yet whether to keep the raid secret or to disclose it.\u201d<\/p>\n According to Ekber, authorities had only informed the public that they were to assist in the manhunt and to maintain a lookout for the suspects since the attack on the mine, and residents of the county were forbidden from discussing the incident.<\/p>\n \u201cThat is why I could only tell the teachers and students in my school, \u2018The operation was completed, so we can resume work and study as usual,\u2019 but I was unable to answer their questions about what happened to the women and children in the group, which was a particularly sensitive topic,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cBased on the warrant list, we found out that the 17 suspects included four women and three children, one of which\u2014nine-year-old Munire [Memet, the adopted granddaughter of Memet Eysa]\u2014was one of our second grade students.\u201d<\/p>\n In addition to Memet, an unidentified six-year-old boy and an unidentified one-year-old boy\u2014both from Tursun Jume\u2019s family\u2014were also killed in the raid, according to information about the suspects provided to RFA by local officials last month.<\/p>\n The four women suspects killed by authorities were Memet Eysa\u2019s wife, 55-year-old Zorem Mamut; his daughter-in-law, 28-year-old Reyhan Musa; another daughter-in-law, 30-year-old Ayimnisa Rozi; and Tursun Jume\u2019s wife, 44-year-old Meryem Abdurehim.<\/p>\n The other 10 suspects killed in the raid included Tursun Jume, Musa Toxtiniyaz and Memet Eysa, as well as their sons and one nephew.<\/p>\n A local official who provided the names of the suspects to RFA in October said at the time that neither the women nor the children had been involved in the Sogan Colliery attack and had only followed the other suspects when they fled from Kanchi township.<\/p>\n Ekber said that not only the students and teachers, but \u201call the people of Bay county\u201d were wondering about the fate of the women and children on the suspect list.<\/p>\n \u201cAt this point, I don\u2019t know what the decision on publishing news of the victory will be,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s tough. The suspects [are believed to have] carried out the attack, but publishing details of the incident\u2014including the death toll and what happened at the coal mine attack\u2014could deepen hatred between the ethnic [majority] Hans and [minority] Uyghurs.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2018Can\u2019t convince the world\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n A teacher from the Terek township middle school, who spoke to RFA on condition of anonymity, said the Ministry of Public Security would not have published information about the raid if the terrorist attack in Paris had not taken place a day earlier.<\/p>\n \u201cThe central government authorities wouldn\u2019t have disclosed the killing of 17 so-called \u2018terrorists\u2019 on their website if the Paris attack had not occurred\u2014the quick removal of the post also suggests this is true,\u201d the teacher said.<\/p>\n China’s tightly controlled state media has covered the Paris attacks in detail, including commentary calling on the international community to avoid “double standards” and take Beijing’s anti-terror campaign at face value.<\/p>\n French President Francois Hollande on Monday vowed to eradicate terrorism, saying that “France is at war,” following the attacks, for which the Islamic State has claimed responsibility and that left at least 129 dead and 352 wounded.<\/p>\n The teacher questioned how China could convince the international community that the four women and three children were terrorists, how it could validate the detention of more than 1,000 people as part of raids following the September attack, and how authorities could claim that forcing farmers to take part in the manhunt had been part of professional police methodology.<\/p>\n \u201cThe authorities can force us to believe their claims through the power they wield, but they can\u2019t convince the rest of the world,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cThat is why they dare not disclose the details of the incident.\u201d<\/p>\n The \u2018three evils\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n China has vowed to crack down on the “three evils” of terrorism, separatism, and religious extremism in Xinjiang, but experts outside China say Beijing has exaggerated the threat from Uyghur “separatists” and that domestic policies are responsible for an upsurge in violence that has left hundreds dead since 2012.<\/p>\n Uyghur groups in exile say such attacks are likely 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 Rights groups accuse the Chinese authorities of heavy-handed rule 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 Shohret Hoshur for RFA\u2019s Uyghur Service. Translated by Shohret Hoshur. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Local officials say authorities blew up the cave where they had hidden.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2201,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"topic":[],"class_list":["post-2202","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\/2202","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=2202"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2202\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2201"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2202"},{"taxonomy":"topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic?post=2202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}