Chinese authorities defined multiple explosions on Friday in Xinjiang Aksu as a so-called "violence and horror" case. Six people were shot and five people arrested including two ladies; another six people died in the explosion. Commentators said the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has a new method to suppress the rebels. They shoot Uyghurs continuously and frame them as terrorists.
China has so far convicted 198 people, with more sentencings to come, a top official said Sunday.
Also on Friday, border guards in neighboring Kyrgyzstan said that a group of Uyghurs were killed after crossing the border and that their belongings indicated that they belonged to a separatist group. These are the latest in a series of violent incidents in Xinjiang, which authorities blame on separatist, or terrorist, groups, though few details are released about individuals involved or the events themselves, and journalists are not allowed to independently investigate.
Last October, a sport-utility vehicle sped onto a crowded Beijing sidewalk and exploded at the foot of Tiananmen gate, killing five people and injuring nearly 40 others. In the aftermath of the attack, the Chinese government declared the explosion an act of terrorism committed by Islamic jihadists from western China. Meanwhile, the foreign media turned the spotlight on the home province of the attackers -- China’s Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region -- where some nine million Turkic-speaking Muslims, known as Uighurs, have lived under the control of the Chinese Communist Party since 1950. This arrangement has not been altogether peaceful; just this week, for example, local police gunned down six people in the city of Xinhe.
Here is an 8' trailer to the 122 minute epic documentary of the lives of Ashiq, the Uyghur bards who live in the southern borders of the Taklamakan Desert of far west China.
Mr Reyim, 31, is a Uyghur (pronounced "weega" or "weecour"). He hails from the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in China, and he is eager to share his food with those in his adopted homeland. "Not many Kiwis will ever get a chance to travel to Xinjiang, so by starting a restaurant serving Uyghur food I think it will be the only way they will get a chance to experience our food," Mr Reyim said.
Chinese president and Communist Party chief Xi Jinping made a major strategic decision regarding northwestern China's troubled Xinjiang Uyghur autonomous region towards the end of last year, reports the website of the pro-Beijing Hong Kong newspaper Ta Kung Pao. The Politburo Standing Committee, China's top decision-making body, heard a special report on Xinjiang issues on Dec. 19, with Xi personally ordering departments to develop major strategies to tackle problems in the region over the following week, said Ta Kung Pao, citing a Jan. 7 report in the Chinese-language Xinjiang Daily.
Today, China's boom has seen those tensions with the country's 10 million Uighurs resurface. The Government says the movement contains Islamic extremists, citing last October's suicide attack in front of the iconic Chairman Mao portrait in Beijing.
The United States has defended the sending of the last three Uyghur Chinese inmates at the Guantanamo Bay detention center to Slovakia.
