Author: AFP
Publication: Yahoo.News
Date: August 1, 2011
URL: http://old.news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20110801/wl_afp/chinaunrestxinjianggovernment
A deadly weekend attack in China's restive
Xinjiang region was masterminded by "terrorists" trained in Pakistan,
the local government said Monday.
Fourteen people were killed in two attacks
at the weekend in the ancient Silk Road city of Kashgar, and five alleged
attackers were in turn shot dead by police in the wave of violence.
The Kashgar authorities said in a statement
on their website that initial investigations found that the perpetrators of
one attack learned explosive-making skills in terrorist-run camps in Pakistan.
"The heads of the group had learned
skills of making explosives and firearms in overseas camps of the terrorist
group East Turkistan Islamic Movement in Pakistan before entering Xinjiang,"
the online statement said.
Remote Xinjiang has seen several outbreaks
of ethnic violence in recent years as the mainly Muslim Uighur minority bridles
under what it sees as government oppression and the unwanted immigration of
ethnic Han Chinese.
Last month, more than 20 people were killed
in a clash with police in the remote city of Hotan.
Monday's statement appeared to refer only
to an on a restaurant in Kashgar that took place on Sunday.
That came less than 24 hours after an earlier
incident in which a truck that was waiting at a light at the food market in
Kashgar, not far from the border with Kyrgyzstan, was reportedly hijacked.
Tianshannet.com, a website run by the regional
government, reported that the attackers killed the driver, ploughed the vehicle
into passers-by on a nearby pavement, then got out of the truck and stabbed
people at random.
Six bystanders were killed before the crowd
turned on them and killed one attacker, the report said.
Many Uighurs are unhappy with what they say
has been decades of political and religious repression, and the unwanted immigration
of China's dominant Han ethnic group.
While standards of living have improved,
Uighurs complain that most of the gains go to the Han.
This tension has triggered sporadic bouts
of violence in Xinjiang -- a vast, arid but resource-rich region which is
home to more than eight million Turkic-speaking Uighurs.
State media quoted an official in Xinjiang
calling the Hotan clash in July a "terrorist" attack.
But Uighur activists called it an outburst
of anger by ordinary Uighurs and said security forces killed 20 people during
the unrest.
In the nation's worst ethnic violence in
decades, Uighurs savagely attacked Han Chinese in the regional capital Urumqi
in July 2009 -- an incident that led to retaliatory attacks by Han on Uighurs
several days later.
The government says around 200 people were
killed and 1,700 injured in the violence, which cast doubt on the authoritarian
Communist Party's claims of harmony among the country's dozens of ethnic groups.
