A Uyghur village secretary for the ruling Chinese Communist Party has been murdered and a Uyghur man shot dead in a township in northwestern China\u2019s troubled Xinjiang province, adding to a spate of violence in recent months, according to local police and officials<\/p>\n
A Uyghur village secretary for the ruling Chinese Communist Party has been murdered and a Uyghur man shot dead in a township in northwestern China\u2019s troubled Xinjiang province, adding to a spate of violence in recent months, according to local police and officials.<\/p>\n
Jume Tohtiniyaz, the Communist Party\u2019s secretary for Ghaldir village in Aksu city\u2019s Karatal township, was stabbed to death on the night of Jan. 22 by \u201cseparatists\u201d acting on behalf of ethnic minority Uyghurs languishing in jail for unknown offenses, the authorities said.<\/p>\n
Two suspects have been arrested over the killing of the official, who was known for supporting strict pro-government policies.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey said that two suspects entered his house and murdered him,\u201d Enver Ghoji, party chief of Tohtiniyaz\u2019s neighboring No. 18 village in Karatal, told RFA\u2019s Uyghur Service.<\/p>\n
In a separate incident a week later in neighboring Dolan village, police conducting house-to-house security checks just before midnight of Jan. 29 shot and killed Qurban Tursun, a father of two, saying he refused to allow them into his home. <\/p>\n
Karatal police chief Wang Guochen said Tursun claimed his children would be \u201cscared\u201d if the police were allowed in and asked them to come the next day.<\/p>\n
Tursun was armed with a knife after the police team entered his home by breaking down his door, he said. <\/p>\n
Vice police chief Ghalipjan Emet, who shot and killed the suspect, said Tursun had recently been imprisoned for allegedly harboring a \u201cseparatist\u201d in his home and authorities had conducted regular searches on his home since his release.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe refused to cooperate, so we shot him,\u201d Emet said, adding that he was merely complying with standard orders for the raid.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey said if they do not cooperate then shoot, so we did.\u201d<\/p>\n
Toksu violence<\/strong><\/p>\n China has intensified a sweeping security crackdown against Uyghurs in recent months in Xinjiang, where according to official figures about 100 people are believed to have been killed since April\u2014many of them Uyghurs accused by the authorities of terrorism and separatism.<\/p>\n In recent violence in Xinjiang\u2014home to 10 million mostly Muslim, Turkic-speaking Uyghurs\u2014a set of explosions and a clash with police left 12 people dead in Aksu city\u2019s neighboring Toksu (in Chinese, Xinhe) county on Jan. 24.<\/p>\n Critics say such violence has been fueled by oppressive Chinese policies and strict religious controls. Rights groups claim authorities exaggerate the threat from separatists and terrorists in the region to justify heavy-handed raids.<\/p>\n Authorities had stepped up house-to-house checks on targeted families in Karatal following the Toksu blasts, police said.<\/p>\n Strict enforcer<\/strong><\/p>\n Communist Party village secretary Tohtiniyaz\u2019s behavior in strictly enforcing religious policies and security policies had earned him some enemies among residents in the area, said Ghoji, who was informed about investigations into the murder in a meeting with Karatal officials.<\/p>\n \u201cHe was resolute in administering religious gatherings. He also closely cooperated with police in the operations of arresting key people in the village,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cI think for these reasons he made some enemies.\u201d<\/p>\n Esqer Dawut, police chief of Ugen town in Toksu, said Tohtiniyaz\u2019s two suspected attackers had told authorities they had killed Tohtiniyaz out of revenge for friends who had been sent to jail.<\/p>\n \u201cDuring the interrogation they confessed that they killed him to take revenge for their jailed friends who suffered torture in prison,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n Tensions high in Dolan<\/strong><\/p>\n Tensions remained high in Dolan days after the raid in which Tursun was killed, Kartal township head Adiljan Turghun said.<\/p>\n \u201cSince this incident, the situation in the town is tense. The administrative measures have been increased,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Emet said police had previously carried out checks on Tursun\u2019s home once a week, but had started doing them more frequently following the violence in Toksu.<\/p>\n \u201cThe suspect [Tursun] had been jailed for hiding a separatist in his house. Since his release we were conducting to checks on him every week,\u201d according to Emet.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen we went to his house he did not open up, saying that we had searched it yesterday so we did not have to check it again.\u201d<\/p>\n Overseas Uyghur rights groups have decried heavy-handed security measures in Xinjiang and the use of community watch groups to police Uyghur neighborhoods, saying unlawful house searches conducted by the groups have led to arbitrary use of lethal force by security personnel.<\/p>\n Reported by Shohret Hoshur for RFA\u2019s Uyghur Service. Translated by Mamatjan Juma. Written in English by Rachel Vandenbrink. <\/i><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A Uyghur village secretary for the ruling Chinese Communist Party has been murdered and a Uyghur man shot dead in a township in northwestern China\u2019s troubled Xinjiang province, adding to a spate of violence in recent months, according to local police and officials<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":311,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"topic":[],"class_list":["post-312","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\/312","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=312"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/311"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=312"},{"taxonomy":"topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic?post=312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}