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China-Japan-Koreas
Eight Sentenced to Die for Attacks in China's Xinjiang
2014-12-09
[AnNahar] A Chinese court condemned eight people to death Monday for two deadly attacks in Xinjiang, as Beijing cracks down hard on violence in the homeland of the mostly Moslem Uighur minority.

Five others were given suspended death sentences, according to state broadcaster CCTV -- a penalty normally commuted to life in prison -- with another four tossed in the clink
Yez got nuttin' on me, coppers! Nuttin'!
for varying terms.

In one incident, assailants armed with knives and explosives attacked a train station in the regional capital Urumqi in April, killing one person and wounding 79 on the final day of a visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping. Two assailants also died.

The following month 39 people were killed, along with four attackers, and more than 90 maimed when assailants threw explosives and ploughed two vehicles through a market in Urumqi, state media said.

The sentences, handed down by the Intermediate People's Court in Urumqi, bring the number of death penalties or executions announced for Xinjiang-related violence to around 50 since June.

They are part of a harsh crackdown Beijing has imposed on violence in the vast resource-rich area, deep in China's far west.

Over the past year at least 200 people have died in a series of festivities and increasingly sophisticated attacks in the region and beyond it.

Beijing has blamed such incidents on "separatists" and "terrorists".

Rights groups say that harsh police treatment of Uighurs and government campaigns against religious practices such as the wearing of veils have led to violence.

China defends its policies, arguing that it has boosted economic development in the area and that it upholds minority and religious rights in a country with 56 recognized ethnic groups.

CCTV showed several of the defendants seated in a row at the front of a courtroom. The young men were clad in brightly-colored prison vests and had their heads shaven.

Nine of the defendants were identified by the Communist Party's flagship People's Daily newspaper on its official microblog, all of whose names sounded Uighur.

For the train station attack, it said, two defendants were condemned to die, three given suspended death sentences and one given five years in prison.

For the market incident, another six were given death sentences, two given suspended death sentences and one life in prison, it added. Two received 10-year terms.

The charges included "organizing, leading and taking part in terror organizations", "setting off explosives" and "endangering public security by dangerous means", according to the People's Daily. Calls by AFP to the Urumqi court went unanswered.

Hundreds of people have been tossed in the clink
Yez got nuttin' on me, coppers! Nuttin'!
or detained on terror-related offenses in Xinjiang following the May attack, and police have rubbed out dozens of locals in other festivities over the summer.

Authorities tightly restrict access to Xinjiang, and official reports on incidents in the region are difficult to independently verify.

Dilxat Raxit, front man for the exile World Uyghur Congress, said: "The cause of (these) incidents is that China basically won't look for the root problem within its own extreme policies."

Raxit also said in an emailed message to AFP that it was "fundamentally impossible" for those sentenced by China to "receive the right of a fair defense".

The crackdown in Xinjiang has extended to academics such as prominent Uighur scholar Ilham Tohti, who in September was sentenced to life in prison for "separatism". Several of his students were subsequently tried in secret for the same offense.

The targeting of Tohti and his students has been decried by the U.S. and European Union
...the successor to the Holy Roman Empire, only without the Hapsburgs and the nifty uniforms and the dancing...
as well as international rights groups as part of an effort to silence criticism of government policies in the region.
Posted by:trailing wife

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Posted by: JosephMendiola   2014-12-09 22:07  

#3  What? No Gitmo?
Posted by: Ebbang Uluque6305   2014-12-09 11:30  

#2  Big Boot is fully assembly modern item. Do not use Big Boot in microwave or cat.
Posted by: Shipman   2014-12-09 07:12  

#1  Muslim faces. Big boot. Assembly.
Posted by: g(r)omgoru   2014-12-09 04:01  

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