The authorities killed 17 people, including several women and children, in a raid last week in the volatile Chinese region of Xinjiang, a news report said Wednesday.<\/p>\n
By JAVIER C. HERN\u00c1NDEZ
NOV. 18, 2015<\/p>\n
BEIJING \u2014 The authorities killed 17 people, including several women and children, in a raid last week in the volatile Chinese region of Xinjiang, a news report said Wednesday.<\/p>\n
The people were said to have been involved in a knife attack<\/a> that left 50 people dead in September at a coal mine near the border with Kyrgyzstan, said Radio Free Asia<\/a>, a news agency financed by the United States government.<\/p>\n During the raid, the police killed three people whom the government had accused of leading the mine attack, one of the deadliest acts of violence in the region in recent years, Radio Free Asia reported. Their family members, including four women and three children, were also killed, the report said.<\/p>\n Chinese leaders have intensified their efforts to crack down on what they see as a budding separatist movement in Xinjiang led by Uighurs<\/a>, who constitute a Turkic-speaking minority and typically practice Islam. In recent years, religious worship has been restricted in Xinjiang, and Uighur dissidents have been arrested.<\/p>\n The Chinese Ministry of Public Security said in a statement that the raid was a \u201cgreat victory\u201d in the fight against terrorism and the culmination of a 56-day \u201cpursue and attack\u201d operation. The statement, which appeared online a few hours after news of the terrorist attacks in Paris<\/a> emerged here on Saturday, was later deleted without explanation.<\/p>\n In keeping with its practice of tightly controlling information about violence in Xinjiang, the government did not provide details about the people killed in the raid or the crimes they were accused of. Officials in Xinjiang declined to comment.<\/p>\n Human rights advocates criticized the government\u2019s handling of the episode, saying Chinese officials should be more forthcoming about those killed in the raid, especially since children were among the dead.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s long past time for Beijing to stop monopolizing the reporting on terrorism and its counterterrorism efforts,\u201d Maya Wang, a researcher for Human Rights Watch in Hong Kong, wrote in an email.<\/p>\n \u201cIf these operations are indeed lawful as China claims, then it should have nothing to hide.\u201d<\/p>\n Violence has escalated in Xinjiang in recent years amid rampant poverty, discrimination and government crackdowns on religion.<\/p>\n The attack on the coal mine in September heightened tensions betweenUighurs<\/a> and Han Chinese, who make up 90 percent of China\u2019s population and have moved in large numbers to Xinjiang in recent years. Most of the victims of the attack in September were Han Chinese, and the assailants were mostly Uighurs.<\/p>\n Li Wei, a counterterrorism researcher at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations in Beijing, said it was important for China to maintain strict security policies in Xinjiang. But he said the government should also tackle social problems as part of its strategy to reduce instability in the region.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople use the poverty problem and the inequality problem as excuses to commit terrorist acts,\u201d Mr. Li said. \u201cThey are the soil for terrorism to grow.\u201d<\/p>\n