Nine people have been sentenced to death on terrorism charges in China’s north-western region of Xinjiang.<\/p>\n
5 June 2014 Last updated at 07:02 ET<\/p>\n
Nine people have been sentenced to death on terrorism charges in China’s north-western region of Xinjiang.<\/p>\n
State TV said they were among 81 people found guilty. Sentences were handed down at six different courts. The charges included murder and arson.<\/p>\n
Earlier 29 “terror suspects” were detained in Urumqi on charges including inciting separatism and ethnic hatred.<\/p>\n
Chinese officials have blamed militant Uighur groups for a growing number of violent attacks across the country.<\/p>\n
These include an attack in Beijing, where a car ploughed into pedestrians in Tiananmen Square, killing five people, and attacks at railway stations in Urumqi and Kunming.<\/p>\n
China’s state broadcaster described the main charges against those sentenced on Thursday as relating to organising, leading or participating in a terrorist organisation.<\/p>\n
Six courts in Xinjiang heard a total of 23 separate cases, it said, handing down nine death penalties and long custodial sentences.<\/p>\n
‘Year-long campaign’<\/strong><\/p>\n The latest convictions come amid a sweeping security crackdown in the region, reports the BBC’s John Sudworth in Shanghai.<\/p>\n Last month China launched what it called a “year-long campaign against terrorism” after 39 people were killed when five suicide bombers attacked a street market in Urumqi, Xinjiang’s capital.<\/p>\n Last week 55 people were sentenced for terrorism, separatism and murder at a show trial in Xinjiang.<\/p>\n Beijing has blamed an increasing number of attacks on civilian targets on Uighur separatists, who it says are inspired by extreme religious ideology from abroad, our correspondent says.<\/p>\n Critics of China’s policies in Xinjiang point to economic inequality and cultural and religious repression as other possible reasons for the growing radicalism and resentment.<\/p>\n China says it is pouring money into the Xinjiang region, but some Uighurs say their traditions and freedoms are being crushed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Nine people have been sentenced to death on terrorism charges in China’s north-western region of Xinjiang.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":747,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"topic":[],"class_list":["post-748","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\/748","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=748"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/748\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=748"},{"taxonomy":"topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic?post=748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}