Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged to crack down hard on terrorism as he toured a military base in the western Muslim-majority Xinjiang region, where he described the challenge to maintain stability as “grim and complicated”.
Mr. Xi visited a People’s Liberation Army (PLA) military area command in Kashgar, the old Silk Road town in far-western Xinjiang near China’s borders with Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Kashgar, in Xinjiang’s deep south, is the heartland of the Uighurs, the Muslim minority group native to Xinjiang.
Mr. Xi described the Kashgar region as “the frontline in anti-terrorism and maintaining social stability”, the official PLA Daily quoted him as saying during a weekend visit.
Kashgar and Hotan – located further south near China's border with Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) – have seen intermittent violence, from bombs in market places to knife attacks on restaurants.
Attacks three years ago that left at least 40 people killed were blamed by local officials on Uighur terror groups with links to outfits in Pakistan. Many Uighurs have, however, said Chinese policies have helped fuel ethnic tensions with increasing migration of majority Han Chinese.
Most recently, 29 people were killed and more than a hundred injured in a knife attack on a railway station in south-western Yunnan, which was blamed on Uighur extremists.
Mr. Xi said the situation was “grim and complicated”, describing local paramilitary units and police stations as “fists and daggers”.
He also visited a PLA base of the Kashgar military command, which operates under the Lanzhou Military Area Command, which is also responsible for the Aksai Chin region disputed between India and China, falls.
The Communist Party General Secretary called on troops to “care for each other, help each other, study together, maintain national unity and guard the borderland of China”.
