3 Dead in Clash at Police Station in Western China, Report Says
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Version 0 of 1. BEIJING — Three ethnic Uighurs were shot and killed last week outside a police station in China’s far west Xinjiang region during a fight with security guards who blocked them from entering the building, Radio Free Asia reported Thursday. The shootings, which took place on Jan. 15 in Aksu Prefecture but were only confirmed on Wednesday, are the latest in a spate of deadly skirmishes involving the region’s Uighur residents and Chinese authorities. Such confrontations have been occurring with increasing frequency in the past year, alarming Chinese leaders and prompting even heavier security in a vast energy-rich region that borders several Central Asian nations. Last week, Beijing announced that it was doubling Xinjiang’s public security budget, with one regional official vowing “no mercy for terrorists,” according to the state news media. In the latest episode, Radio Free Asia, citing local police officials, said the men had sought a meeting with the police chief of the town of Yengieriq but were rebuffed by auxiliary guards at the entrance. During the confrontation that followed, the three men reportedly pulled out sickles from around their waists and wounded two of the guards, according to police officials in the neighboring town of Dolan. Police officers inside the station then opened fire, the officials said, killing the three men, who they said were villagers from nearby farming communities. As with previous episodes, officials attributed the violence to “separatists” seeking to establish an independent homeland for Xinjiang’s Uighurs, a Muslim, Turkic-speaking people whose loyalties to Beijing have been tested by increasingly heavy-handed government policies. Critics say the discontent is aggravated by intrusive measures, including restrictions on religious practices, as well as uneven economic development that favors ethnic Han Chinese migrants over native Uighurs. Exile groups contend that many of the recent Uighur deaths are the result of aggressive policing tactics, and that many of the “terrorists” killed by police gunfire were later described as carrying knives or farm implements. Like much of the recent violence, the Jan. 15 bloodshed went unreported in the Chinese news media. On Thursday, officials who answered the phone at several regional and prefectural-level government offices said they had not heard about the violence. An employee at the Dolan police station hung up when asked to comment. The phone at the police station in Yengieriq, where the killings took place, rang unanswered. |