AUG. 3, 2014
Chinese soldiers last week in Xinjiang Province. Credit Kevin Frayer/Getty Images
BEIJING — It was a bloody week in China’s far west, with nearly 100 people killed in unrest that the authorities have characterized as terrorism but that Uighur advocacy groups have said is a consequence of a sweeping security crackdown aimed at silencing opposition to the government’s hard-line policies in the region.
The outbreak of violence in Xinjiang amid an overwhelming show of security appears to be the worst since 2009, when at least 200 people died during several days of ethnic rioting in the regional capital, Urumqi.
The state-run news media on Sunday provided new details of the most serious episode, a clash last Monday in Yarkand County. A report said that 35 ethnic Han Chinese had been killed and that 59 people described as terrorists had been shot dead by the police.
The report, published by Tianshan, a news portal run by the Xinjiang regional government, said two Uighurs had also been killed during what it described as a rampage by masked, knife-wielding assailants who attacked cars and passers-by in Yarkand. Yarkand, a predominantly Uighur municipality, sits astride the ancient Silk Road, which once connected China to Central Asia and beyond.
In a separate episode, security forces in the nearby city of Hotan killed nine “terrorists” on July 27, the official Xinhua news agency reported on Friday.
It was unclear why the authorities had waited nearly a week to disclose details of the confrontations in Hotan and Yarkand. The police have barred foreign journalists from the area, making it difficult to assess the government’s version of events.
