China executed two people in restive far-west Xinjiang yesterday after a court convicted them over a deadly attack on police in the run-up to the Beijing Olympics last August, while a court in Tibet has condemned two people to die for their roles in violent riots in Lhasa last year, Xinhua news agency reported.
The brief report about Xinjiang did not give details of the executed, but they may have been two men sentenced to death in December. Xinhua said they were found guilty over a “terrorist attack on a frontier city’s border police that left 17 dead” and which came despite tightened security ahead of the Summer Games.
The attackers rammed a truck into police on a morning training run on Aug. 4 in the oasis city of Kashgar, following up their attack with explosives, a homemade gun and knives, state-run media reported at the time.
China had warned of unrest by groups seeking to exploit the world’s attention on China in the run-up to the Beijing Olympics.
In December, two Kashgar residents, Abdurahman Azat and Kurbanjan Hemit, were convicted of homicide and illegally producing guns, ammunition and explosives by a court which sentenced them to death, Xinhua reported at the time.
Chinese officials have said Uighur militants seeking an independent “East Turkestan” are among the biggest threats to the country’s stability, a key issue ahead of the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic on Oct 1.
But human rights groups and Uighur independence activists say Beijing grossly exaggerates the threat to justify harsh controls.
Meanwhile, a court in Tibet has sentenced two people to death for their roles in last year’s violent riots in Lhasa, China’s state media said on Wednesday, the first death sentences reported over the deadly unrest.
Two others were given suspended death sentences while another was given life in prison in three separate arson cases, said the report, which quoted a spokesman for the intermediate court in the Tibetan capital.
Fierce anti-China riots broke out in Lhasa in March last year and spread across Tibet and adjacent areas with Tibetan populations, deeply embarrassing the Chinese government as it was preparing to host the Beijing Summer Olympics.
The defendants all appeared to be Tibetans who carried out attacks that killed Han Chinese, according to names provided by Xinhua.
The Burmese junta has said that detained former leader Aung San Suu Kyi is “in good health,” a day after her son said he has received little information about the 80-year-old’s condition and fears she could die without him knowing. In an interview in Tokyo earlier this week, Kim Aris said he had not heard from his mother in years and believes she is being held incommunicado in the capital, Naypyidaw. Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, was detained after a 2021 military coup that ousted her elected civilian government and sparked a civil war. She is serving a
China yesterday held a low-key memorial ceremony for the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) not attending, despite a diplomatic crisis between Beijing and Tokyo over Taiwan. Beijing has raged at Tokyo since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last month said that a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger a military response from Japan. China and Japan have long sparred over their painful history. China consistently reminds its people of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, in which it says Japanese troops killed 300,000 people in what was then its capital. A post-World War II Allied tribunal put the death toll
‘NO AMNESTY’: Tens of thousands of people joined the rally against a bill that would slash the former president’s prison term; President Lula has said he would veto the bill Tens of thousands of Brazilians on Sunday demonstrated against a bill that advanced in Congress this week that would reduce the time former president Jair Bolsonaro spends behind bars following his sentence of more than 27 years for attempting a coup. Protests took place in the capital, Brasilia, and in other major cities across the nation, including Sao Paulo, Florianopolis, Salvador and Recife. On Copacabana’s boardwalk in Rio de Janeiro, crowds composed of left-wing voters chanted “No amnesty” and “Out with Hugo Motta,” a reference to the speaker of the lower house, which approved the bill on Wednesday last week. It is
FALLEN: The nine soldiers who were killed while carrying out combat and engineering tasks in Russia were given the title of Hero of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea North Korean leader Kim Jong-un attended a welcoming ceremony for an army engineering unit that had returned home after carrying out duties in Russia, North Korean state media KCNA reported on Saturday. In a speech carried by KCNA, Kim praised officers and soldiers of the 528th Regiment of Engineers of the Korean People’s Army (KPA) for “heroic” conduct and “mass heroism” in fulfilling orders issued by the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea during a 120-day overseas deployment. Video footage released by North Korea showed uniformed soldiers disembarking from an aircraft, Kim hugging a soldier seated in a wheelchair, and soldiers and officials
RSS