The police in the troubled far-western Chinese region of Xinjiang are seeking assailants who killed three government officials late last month, an act of violence that appears to have been timed to the visit of President Xi Jinping, Radio Free Asia reported on Thursday.<\/p>\n
By ANDREW JACOBS
May 15, 2014, 9:09 am<\/p>\n
The police in the troubled far-western Chinese region of Xinjiang are seeking assailants who killed three government officials late last month, an act of violence that appears to have been timed to the visit of President Xi Jinping, Radio Free Asia reported <\/a>on Thursday.<\/p>\n The three victims, all from China\u2019s dominant Han ethnic group who had gone fishing on a lake in Kashgar Prefecture, were slashed and stabbed to death on April 27, the same day that Mr. Xi arrived for a four-day tour of the region, the news service said.<\/p>\n During his highly publicized visit, Mr. Xi urged greater integration between Xinjiang\u2019s Han residents and its largely Muslim ethnic Uighurs. But many of his public appearances sought to underscore Beijing\u2019s resolve in the face of a recent spate of bloodshed across China that officials have attributed <\/a> to separatists and religious extremists from the region.<\/p>\n On the final day of his visit, in what was widely interpreted as a retort to his harsh words, a bomb exploded<\/a> at a train station in the regional capital, Urumqi, killing three people, two of whom the state news media described<\/a> as Islamic terrorists.<\/p>\n The attack on the three government officials has not been reported in the Chinese state news media, and references to the deadly violence on social media have been quickly deleted. In one posting<\/a>, three women who said they were widows of the slain men asserted that the local authorities had pressured them to bury the bodies quickly in an attempt to limit fallout from the incident.<\/p>\n Reached by telephone, public security employees in Kargilik County, where the men were reportedly killed, and the nearby city of Kashgar said they were unfamiliar with the case.<\/p>\n The Radio Free Asia account was based on phone interviews with several Uighur officials who described a frantic two-week manhunt for the suspects that included the interrogation of more than 150 people. Enver Tursun, a local deputy police chief, was quoted as saying that one of the victims had been stabbed 31 times; the throats of the other two had had been slashed. Speaking to the news service, he described the victims as senior officials 38 to 45 years old who had been working in the county.<\/p>\n The website of Radio Free Asia, which employs Uighur-speaking reporters, is financed by the United States government and is blocked in China.<\/p>\n In a phone interview on Thursday, a businessman in Kashgar who said one of the victims was a friend of a friend provided an account similar to that of Radio Free Asia.<\/p>\n \u201cThings like this are seldom made public,\u201d he said. \u201cViolence happens too often in this area so there is no use being scared.\u201d<\/p>\n