|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
BEIJING, July 12 (AFP) - China has executed three Muslims who helped found a "Hezbollah" group to fight for an independent Islamic state in the unruly northwestern Xinjiang region. The three were sentenced to death on Thursday last week and immediately executed, along with three others accused of non-political crimes, according to the official Xinjiang Daily. The condemned were among the co-founders of a Hezbollah ("Party of Allah") group engaging in "activities harming national security," the paper said. The group was set up in May 1997, shortly after some of the worst riots in the history of communist rule in China's northwest. In January of that year, clashes in the Xinjiang frontier town of Yining left at least 10 dead, according to official figures, although independent estimates put the toll as high as 100. This was followed by a violent tit-for-tat conflict between Muslims and Xinjiang's Han Chinese rulers, as the authorities with executions, torture and imprisonment met Islamists attacks. As well as sentencing the three to death, the Intermediate People's Court in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, handed out prison terms to other members of the group. Officials at the newspaper and the Xinjiang court declined all comment on the nature on the Hezbollah group, saying only those executed had received military training abroad - a frequent allegation in Islamic struggle cases in Xinjiang. China is extremely nervous over Islamists in its western regions and has worked with central Asian and former states of the Soviet Union to control terrorist activities attributed to Uighur Islamists. China keeps a tight rein on the practice of Islam in the country, as it does with all religions, demanding devotees worship in state-controlled mosques presided over by state-approved imams. Since Xinjiang's Islamists are believed to be in close contact with Muslims in neighboring parts of Central Asia, China has sought cross-border cooperation to quell the unrest. When Chinese President Jiang Zemin went to the republic of Tajikistan for a summit with Russia and three Central Asian republics earlier this month, Islamic struggles were high on the agenda. As a result, a joint anti-terrorism center was established between the participants. The three executed last week also engaged in a series of violent incidents throughout 1997, according to the newspaper, although it said most of it appeared to be targeting other Muslims. The group "cruelly" killed an informer in the port city of Tianjin near Beijing, and shortly afterwards murdered a member of the organization who had fallen out with one of the three, the paper said. The group also planned bomb attacks, and one of its members stowed four tons of chemicals in the northern city of Xian in order to manufacture explosives. The executions followed reports in mid-June that five Muslims were put to death in Urumqi for crimes ranging from Islamic struggles to arms trafficking and murder, according to the report. Tensions between the majority Muslim population, most of them Turkic-speaking Uighurs, and the ruling Han Chinese government have long plagued Xinjiang. They took on new impetus in the early 1990s with the dissolution of the former Soviet Union and the emergence of independent Central Asian republics across the border. |
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
