A campaigner for independence in China’s heavily Muslim far west said yesterday that police have arrested 90 people and were torturing some following a series of bombings that left a dozen people dead — allegations a government official immediately denied.
In the second attack in the restive region of Xinjiang in a week, bombers hit 17 sites — including a police station, government building, bank and shops — in the mostly Muslim city of Kuqa early on Sunday.
Dilxat Raxit, a spokesman for the Germany-based and pro-independence World Uighur Congress, said ethnic Uighurs in Kuqa have called with reports of police torturing detainees. He said in an e-mail that more than 90 people have been detained, with others arrested in surrounding areas.
“I oppose the use of violence by both sides,” Raxit said.
“The international society should immediately get involved and demand that China stop the repression,” he said.
At a news conference yesterday, county chief Yusufujiang Maimaiti said “there was not an ounce of truth” to Raxit’s allegations, but he would not say whether any arrests had been made.
OFFICERS KILLED
Meanwhile, three security officers were killed in China’s remote northwest yesterday, state media reported, raising the death toll from over a week of unrest that has flared during the Olympics to 31.
Assailants jumped off a vehicle passing through a checkpoint in the Xinjiang region and stabbed to death four security officers, killing three of them and injuring the other, the Xinhua news agency reported.
The attack was the third in eight days in Xinjiang, a vast desert region bordering central Asia that is experiencing its biggest spike in violence in years.
Analysts attribute the surge to separatists from Xinjiang’s repressed Muslim Uighur ethnic minority region seeking to raise publicity for their cause while world attention is on China for the Beijing Olympics, which began last week.
Xinhua said yesterday’s killings happened in Yamanya town, about 30km from Kashgar, one of Xinjiang’s major cities where 16 policemen were murdered in the first attack on Aug. 4.
‘HOLY WAR’
China said terrorists seeking holy war carried out that attack, in which two assailants who were later captured drove a truck at a group of policemen, then attacked the officers with machetes and explosives.
The next flashpoint in Xinjiang was the city of Kuqa, where assailants targeted police and government offices, as well as public buildings, on Sunday.
It was not immediately clear how many people were involved in yesterday’s attack, according to Xinhua, which said the assailants remained at large.
Xinhua did not specify what organization the security staff killed in the attack belonged to.
“We are now gathering further information about this issue. It’s now under investigation,” a police officer in Kashgar said.
Various other authorities in Xinjiang could not immediately be reached for comment, hung up or said they did not know about the incident.
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