Funding for public security in Xinjiang will rise nearly 90 percent this year, state media said yesterday, following ethnic unrest that left nearly 200 people dead last year.
A budget proposal placed before Xinjiang’s legislature on Tuesday called for 2.89 billion yuan (US$423 million) to be spent on public security, up 88 percent, the China Daily reported.
“The July 5 riot in Urumqi … had an enormous impact on the Xinjiang people. It has severely damaged social stability in the region,” the paper quoted regional chairman Nur Bekri as telling the Xinjiang People’s Congress.
Bekri said the priority for Xinjiang security forces this year would be to crack down on the “three forces” of terrorism, separatism and religious extremism, which the government blamed for the unrest, the paper said.
China’s Turkic-speaking Uighurs have long complained of religious, political and cultural oppression by Chinese authorities — which China denies.
Tensions in the vast and remote region bordering on central Asia have simmered for years.
In July, 197 people were killed and more than 1,700 people were injured in violence between mainly Muslim Uighurs and Han Chinese in the regional capital of Urumqi, government figures showed.
So far 22 people, mostly ethnic Uighurs, have been sentenced to death for the violence, drawing sharp criticism from the West and rights groups concerned that the accused were denied fair trials.
Nine executions have so far been reported by state media.
New rules publicized in Xinjiang last week stipulated that governments down to the village level must step up identity checks on suspicious persons and monitor all religious activities, state press reports said.
Local governments must step up the registration of migrant workers and help set up a region-wide information-sharing network, it said.
The newly amended rules — which will come into effect on Feb. 1 — also stipulate that promotions of government leaders will be subject to their efforts to stamp out the “three forces.”
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