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China's top law official orders new Xinjiang crackdown

China has ordered a renewed "Strike Hard" campaign against separatism in the Xinjiang region as it marks the 50th anniversary of Chinese rule this week, state press said yesterday.

"We hope all politics and law officials, the soldiers of the armed police and the People's Liberation Army ... can thoroughly safeguard social order, advance ethnic unity and maintain lasting political stability," the People's Daily quoted top law official Luo Gan (羅幹) as saying.

"We must continue to strike hard at all criminal activities and handle well the overall administration of social order," Luo said.

Luo, who heads the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP's) powerful politics and law committee, was speaking as the central government's top representative to meetings marking the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the CCP's rule over Xinjiang, which falls tomorrow, the paper said.

China's takeover of Xinjiang is widely seen as the modern day colonization of the restive region and has faced staunch opposition among Muslims of the Uighur ethnicity who continue to advocate the re-establishment of an independent East Turkestan, a short-lived nation that existed early last century.

Speaking to the political and legal authorities in the regional capital of Urumqi, Luo called for stepped up measures to crackdown on "terrorism, separatism and religious extremism," the paper said.

"The soldiers of the armed police must continue to raise their levels of deployment and capacity to intervene, continue to raise their powers in the fight against terrorism and their powers to safeguard the construction, development and stability of Xinjiang," he said.

"PLA soldiers ... must shoulder the tasks of safeguarding the stability of Xinjiang," he said.

Despite a lack of overt terrorist acts in Xinjiang in recent years, Luo said the police and military must not let down their guard in the "long and arduous struggle of safeguarding the motherland," the paper added.
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