China vows swift and severe punishment of Tibetans accused of rioting last month
By Howard W. French

Friday, April 4, 2008
SHANGHAI: Amid signs of added unrest in Muslim areas of China, an official newspaper said Friday that courts would "use the weapon of the law" to "shock criminality and root out the base of the separatists."

China on Friday vowed swift and severe punishment of Tibetans accused of rioting and participation in anti-government protests last month, amid signs of spreading unrest in Muslim areas of western China.

Quoting the highest law enforcement official in Tibet, the official Tibet Daily newspaper said that courts would "use the weapon of the law to attack enemies, punish crime, protect the people and maintain stability," in what it called a drive to "shock criminality and root out the base of the separatists."

Tibet was shaken by protests last month by Buddhist monks demanding religious freedoms. Riots followed in the capital, Lhasa, on March 14, in which shops owned by members of the country’s ethnic Han majority were attacked and 19 people were killed, according to official reports.

The events in Lhasa quickly brought a wave of sympathy protests in parts of several neighboring provinces where Tibetans live in large numbers, in the biggest outbreak of unrest in the region in more than 50 years. In recent days, details have begun to emerge of protests by and meetings of Muslim separatists in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region and of police crackdowns in several areas of the province.

New violence was reported in the Garze Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, a volatile region of Sichuan Province in western China, wounding at least one government official Thursday, The Associated Press reported, quoting Xinhua, the official Chinese news agency.

Like Tibetans, Uighurs, who are the predominant ethnic group in Xinjiang, harbor memories of political independence and deep resentment of Chinese control, particularly with regard to the practice of their Islamic faith.

Residents of hamlets near Gulja, a city in northwestern Xinjiang, said that about 25 Uighurs were arrested Friday on a tip that people in the area were making bombs. The residents said that the police search had turned up three bombs in a cowshed, but that the police were still looking for more devices.

"Their goal is pretty simple: They want to overthrow the rule of the Communist Party," said Hong Xiuhua, a retired local party official who said that her husband had been briefed on the arrests by the local party secretary. "They claim that Xinjiang belongs to them and want to drive all the Han people out."

Hong said that the police were holding two couples and a local baker, but that they had released some of the other initial suspects. She said that unauthorized gatherings in the region had been banned, including weddings.

As in Tibet, religious freedom has been a constant source of tension in Xinjiang. The government bans students and party members from practicing Islam and tightly polices the Muslim clergy. Many Uighurs complain of discrimination, saying that they are rarely given jobs in the modern economy or allowed to study abroad with the same ease as the Han.

During a wave of protests in Gulja in 1997, Uighur rights activists say, dozens of protesters were killed by paramilitary forces, and many others executed later.

A Han resident of the area, a 63-year-old woman who gave her name as Huang, blamed leniency by China for the latest troubles. "If some of them are executed, then they’ll learn to be scared," she said.

Reports of the alleged bomb-making activity came as reports emerged from other parts of Xinjiang suggesting tensions were increasing throughout the province. As protests spread across Tibetan areas to the south and east, about 500 Uighurs gathered in the city of Khotan on March 23, reportedly hoisting banners and shouting pro-independence slogans before the police arrested many of the demonstrators.

On March 18, a rumor spread quickly through the streets of Urumqi that a Uighur woman had detonated a bomb on a city bus, escaping before the explosion. Officials have denied the incident, but during an interview by telephone, an American resident of Xinjiang’s bustling capital said that he had visited the scene hours after the rumor spread and found what looked like a heavily guarded impromptu construction site, where workers urged him to leave.

Meanwhile, in the western Xinjiang city of Kashgar, a traditionally important center of Islam in the region, the police, according to Reuters, have arrested 70 Uighurs in recent days in a sweep aimed at securing the city before the arrival of the Olympic torch, which was to pass through Kashgar in June.

Olympics boycott dismissed
The president of the International Olympic Committee has told its members that Chinese policies toward Tibet will have no bearing on the Beijing Olympics and has dismissed talk of a boycott, a journalists’ advocacy group said Friday, The Associated Press reported from Beijing. The group, Reporters Without Borders, said that the official, Jacques Rogge, also sent a memo last month to committee members instructing them on how to respond to anti-government protests in Tibet.