Local officials in China’s western Xinjiang region held a public rally for the mass sentencing of criminals on Tuesday, handing out judgements for 55 people and at least three death sentences for crimes such as “violent terrorism,” state media said.
The public sentencing, reminiscent of China’s revolutionary era rallies, attracted a crowd of 7,000 at a sports stadium in Yining City in northern Yili Prefecture.
Photographs showed packed stadium bleachers and trucks parked on the sports field loaded with prisoners in orange vests being guarded by armed police.
The mass trial follows a similar event last week in the region where 39 people were sentenced to jail on terrorism charges.
China is waging a year-long anti-terrorism operation nationwide after a series of attacks, but has focused on Xinjiang, home to a large Muslim Uighur minority, following a series of bloody attacks that Beijing blames on Islamists and separatists from the region.
The latest prisoners were sentenced for a range of crimes, including intentional murder, separatism and leading or participating in terrorism groups, People.cn, the Web site associated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) mouthpiece the People’s Daily, said on Tuesday night.
The public sentencing made clear the determination of the CCP to strike hard at “violent terrorism, separatism and religious extremism,” the prefecture’s deputy party secretary Li Minghui (黎明輝) said at the rally.
“Must resolutely strike criminals ... and boost the confidence and will to fight for all ethnicities among the masses,” Li said.
The spectacle was originally reported by the Xinhua news agency, but links to the story appeared to have been taken down.
China has said five suicide bombers carried out an attack at a morning vegetable market in Xinjiang’s capital, Urumqi, on Thursday last week, which killed 39 people and injured 94.
It was the second attack in Urumqi in just over three weeks, after a bomb went off at a train station late last month, killing a bystander and wounding 79.
Beijing says separatist groups in Xinjiang are seeking to form their own state, though exiles and rights groups say the real cause is China’s repressive policies that put curbs on Islam and the Uighur culture.
Individuals named in the report on the latest sentencing rally all appeared to have Uighur names.
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