Tensions ran high in China’s remote Kashgar city yesterday after authorities shot dead two men suspected of fomenting deadly ethnic unrest and vowed a further crackdown on “religious extremists.”
Police killed the men, both from the mainly Muslim Uighur minority that makes up about half the population of China’s northwestern Xinjiang region, late on Monday as they were trying to capture the pair, Kashgar authorities said.
The deaths bring to 21 the number of people reported killed in Kashgar, a famed city on the ancient Silk Road in Xinjiang, since the weekend in the latest bout of unrest stemming from Uighur frustration at Chinese rule.
Thirteen civilians died in the two weekend attacks, one of which hit a busy restaurant.
Yesterday, pools of blood and overturned tables could still be seen at the restaurant, where diners were forced to flee in panic from attackers wielding knives.
The other six dead were alleged attackers, some of whom were trained in “terrorist” camps in Pakistan, according to Chinese authorities.
Armed police stood guard yesterday outside the main mosque in Kashgar — China’s biggest — as Muslim residents in the city observed the holy month of Ramadan.
There was a heavy police presence and the streets of the city remained quiet after the weekend attacks, but some shops and -businesses had reopened yesterday.
Xinjiang’s government has pledged to “firmly punish violent terrorists” and “crack down on religious extremists” in the wake of the attacks, which came just weeks after deadly clashes in Hotan, another city in the vast region.
Chinese authorities said on Monday that an attack on a restaurant on Sunday was the work of “terrorists” trained in neighboring Pakistan, but some experts have questioned the claim of foreign involvement.
‘ABUSE OF POWER’: Lee Chun-yi allegedly used a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a pet grooming salon and take his wife to restaurants, media reports said Control Yuan Secretary-General Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) resigned on Sunday night, admitting that he had misused a government vehicle, as reported by the media. Control Yuan Vice President Lee Hung-chun (李鴻鈞) yesterday apologized to the public over the issue. The watchdog body would follow up on similar accusations made by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and would investigate the alleged misuse of government vehicles by three other Control Yuan members: Su Li-chiung (蘇麗瓊), Lin Yu-jung (林郁容) and Wang Jung-chang (王榮璋), Lee Hung-chun said. Lee Chun-yi in a statement apologized for using a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a
Taiwan yesterday denied Chinese allegations that its military was behind a cyberattack on a technology company in Guangzhou, after city authorities issued warrants for 20 suspects. The Guangzhou Municipal Public Security Bureau earlier yesterday issued warrants for 20 people it identified as members of the Information, Communications and Electronic Force Command (ICEFCOM). The bureau alleged they were behind a May 20 cyberattack targeting the backend system of a self-service facility at the company. “ICEFCOM, under Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party, directed the illegal attack,” the warrant says. The bureau placed a bounty of 10,000 yuan (US$1,392) on each of the 20 people named in
The High Court yesterday found a New Taipei City woman guilty of charges related to helping Beijing secure surrender agreements from military service members. Lee Huei-hsin (李慧馨) was sentenced to six years and eight months in prison for breaching the National Security Act (國家安全法), making illegal compacts with government employees and bribery, the court said. The verdict is final. Lee, the manager of a temple in the city’s Lujhou District (蘆洲), was accused of arranging for eight service members to make surrender pledges to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in exchange for money, the court said. The pledges, which required them to provide identification
INDO-PACIFIC REGION: Royal Navy ships exercise the right of freedom of navigation, including in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea, the UK’s Tony Radakin told a summit Freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific region is as important as it is in the English Channel, British Chief of the Defence Staff Admiral Tony Radakin said at a summit in Singapore on Saturday. The remark came as the British Royal Navy’s flagship aircraft carrier, the HMS Prince of Wales, is on an eight-month deployment to the Indo-Pacific region as head of an international carrier strike group. “Upholding the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and with it, the principles of the freedom of navigation, in this part of the world matters to us just as it matters in the