Three Uighurs from China’s western Muslim-majority Xinjiang region were on Monday sentenced to death over their role in last October’s >terror attack on Tiananmen Square here. The attack left at least five people dead.
Three people had driven an SUV through a crowd near the Tiananmen gate, in the heart of Beijing, killing two tourists and injuring at least 40 people. The three in the car died as the vehicle exploded.
The suicide attack on the heart of Beijing — and the symbol of the ruling Communist Party’s political power — rattled the capital, prompting an overhaul of security measures. The masterminds turned out to be Uighurs, the ethnic Turkic Muslim group native to Xinjiang region.
On Monday, a court in Urumqi, Xinjiang’s regional capital, sentenced three others to death for “leading a terrorist group” and organising the attack.
One woman was given a sentence of life in prison, while four others were given jail terms ranging from five to 20 years in jail for “endangering public security with dangerous methods,” the official Xinhua news agency reported.
The sentencing came amid reports of a knife attack on a public chess and card hall in Hotan, a southern Xinjiang city close to Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK), that left four people injured. Three assailants, armed with knives, on Sunday evening attacked a public card room, state media reported. Two attackers were killed by police.
A string of knife attacks in recent months has prompted a security clampdown in Xinjiang. Knife attacks and bomb blasts on >railway stations in Urumqi , the regional capital, in Kunming in Yunnan province and in southern Guangzhou have been blamed on extremist Uighur groups.
Last month, a mass trial held in Xinjiang >sentenced 55 people on terror and “splittism” charges . A further 81 people were jailed this month, of whom nine were given death sentences.
While the government has defended the security crackdown as a response to terror groups’ “momentum”, overseas Uighur groups have called on authorities to ensure transparency, as earlier “strike hard” campaigns have seen dozens of men jailed often without open trials, causing further resentment among many Uighurs.
