A Chinese policeman was killed in an “anti-terrorism” operation in the restive region of Xinjiang, Chinese state media reported yesterday — an incident last week in which overseas reports said that 22 Uighurs were shot dead.
The Global Times said the policeman “died in action against a violent terrorist group.”
The Kashgar Daily named the policeman as Yan Xiaofei, 32, and said his funeral was held at the weekend in Kashgar, near the border with Kyrgyzstan, after he “heroically gave his life” on Aug. 20.
No other casualties have been officially confirmed, the Global Times said.
However, according to Radio Free Asia (RFA), which is funded by the US government, 22 Uighurs were killed in the raid at the edge of a desert area in Yilkiqi.
RFA cited the deputy chief of Yilkiqi Township, Alim Hamid, as saying he had been at the scene of the shootout, following which “22 bodies in black bags were carried out by police to an unknown destination.”
“Police informed us that those who were killed were terrorists, but they didn’t specify what wrong they did,” RFA quoted him as saying.
The Munich-based World Uyghur Congress condemned what it called “extra-judicial killings” and said it was “deeply concerned” about the incident that left “a dark shadow over the actions of the Chinese authorities.”
“Police surrounded a group of Uighurs who were peacefully praying in the desert, following which they began to fire upon the Uighurs and swiftly burying the deceased in a hole dug up by a bulldozer,” it said.
Chinese media and government Web sites have largely only carried reports about the policeman’s death.
AFGHAN CHILD: A court battle is ongoing over if the toddler can stay with Joshua Mast and his wife, who wanted ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ for her Major Joshua Mast, a US Marine whose adoption of an Afghan war orphan has spurred a years-long legal battle, is to remain on active duty after a three-member panel of Marines on Tuesday found that while he acted in a way unbecoming of an officer to bring home the baby girl, it did not warrant his separation from the military. Lawyers for the Marine Corps argued that Mast abused his position, disregarded orders of his superiors, mishandled classified information and improperly used a government computer in his fight over the child who was found orphaned on the battlefield in rural Afghanistan
NEW STORM: investigators dubbed the attacks on US telecoms ‘Salt Typhoon,’ after authorities earlier this year disrupted China’s ‘Flax Typhoon’ hacking group Chinese hackers accessed the networks of US broadband providers and obtained information from systems that the federal government uses for court-authorized wiretapping, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on Saturday. The networks of Verizon Communications, AT&T and Lumen Technologies, along with other telecoms, were breached by the recently discovered intrusion, the newspaper said, citing people familiar with the matter. The hackers might have held access for months to network infrastructure used by the companies to cooperate with court-authorized US requests for communications data, the report said. The hackers had also accessed other tranches of Internet traffic, it said. The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs
EYEING THE US ELECTION: Analysts say that Pyongyang would likely leverage its enlarged nuclear arsenal for concessions after a new US administration is inaugurated North Korean leader Kim Jong-un warned again that he could use nuclear weapons in potential conflicts with South Korea and the US, as he accused them of provoking North Korea and raising animosities on the Korean Peninsula, state media reported yesterday. Kim has issued threats to use nuclear weapons pre-emptively numerous times, but his latest warning came as experts said that North Korea could ramp up hostilities ahead of next month’s US presidential election. In a Monday speech at a university named after him, the Kim Jong-un National Defense University, he said that North Korea “will without hesitation use all its attack
STOPOVERS: As organized crime groups in Asia and the Americas move drugs via places such as Tonga, methamphetamine use has reached levels called ‘epidemic’ A surge of drugs is engulfing the South Pacific as cartels and triads use far-flung island nations to channel narcotics across the globe, top police and UN officials told reporters. Pacific island nations such as Fiji and Tonga sit at the crossroads of largely unpatrolled ocean trafficking routes used to shift cocaine from Latin America, and methamphetamine and opioids from Asia. This illicit cargo is increasingly spilling over into local hands, feeding drug addiction in communities where serious crime had been rare. “We’re a victim of our geographical location. An ideal transit point for vessels crossing the Pacific,” Tonga Police Commissioner Shane McLennan
RSS