China has executed eight people for “terrorist attacks,” including three it described as the masterminds of a suicide car crash in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square last year, state media reported.
Xinhua news agency said early yesterday that the eight were involved in several cases connected to the northwestern region of Xinjiang, where Beijing says separatist forces are behind a string of attacks that have rocked China in recent months.
Three of the condemned, named by Xinhua as Husanjan Wuxur, Yusup Umarniyaz and Yusup Ahmat, were “deprived of political rights to life” for their role in the brazen assault in Tiananmen Square in October last year, the news agency said.
Photo: Reuters
Two tourists were killed in the attack, in which a car rammed into bystanders on the iconic square in the heart of Beijing before bursting into flames. Three attackers also died in the incident Beijing blamed on Xinjiang separatist forces.
Xinhua said five others were executed, including Rozi Eziz, who was convicted of an attack on police in Aksu last year.
Abdusalam Elim was executed on charges of “organizing and leading a terrorist organization,” Memet Tohtiyusup had “watched audiovisual materials on religious extremism” and “killed an innocent civilian” last year, and Abdumomin Imin was described as a “terrorist ringleader” who led Bilal Berdi in attacks on police in 2011 and last year.
Xinhua, which cited Xinjiang’s regional publicity department in its report, did not say when the executions were carried out.
The sentences underscore the tough approach Beijing is taking on the increasingly violent incidents. The Tiananmen attack was one of several to have rocked China since last year and which Beijing has blamed on Xinjiang separatists.
The far western region is the resource-rich homeland of Uighurs and other groups, where ethnic tensions and discontent with the government explode into violence.
In March, a knife assault at a railway station in the southern city of Kunming left 29 dead and 143 wounded. Two months later, 39 people were killed, along with four attackers, and more than 90 wounded when assailants threw explosives and drove two off-road vehicles through a crowd at an Urumqi market.
Chinese courts, which are controlled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and have a near-perfect conviction rate, frequently impose death sentences for terror offenses.
The executions and sentences are part of a crackdown that comes after Beijing vowed a year-long campaign against terrorism in the wake of the Urumqi market attack.
In June, 13 people were executed for Xinjiang linked terrorist attacks.
Beijing does not say how many people it executes each year. However, independent estimates put the total at about 3,000 in 2012, a figure higher than that of all other countries combined.
Exile groups say cultural oppression and intrusive security measures imposed by the Chinese government are the main causes of tension, along with immigration by China’s ethnic Han majority, which they say has led to decades of discrimination and economic inequality.
However, Beijing, stresses ethnic harmony in Xinjiang and says the government has helped improve living standards and developed its economy.
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