Crackdown Launched in Xinjiang

From Radio Free Asia:

Authorities in China's troubled northwestern region of Xinjiang are holding more than 20 people in a new crackdown on separatism mainly targeting the region's Muslim Uyghur ethnic minority, an exiled group said on Friday.

This winter's "strike hard" campaign began in mid-November in Aqchi Nahiyisi, in southern Xinjiang's Kizilsu Kyrgyz autonomous prefecture, according to Dilxat Raxit, spokesman for the Munich-based World Uyghur Congress.

"Nearly 100 people have been detained," Raxit said. "Some of them are still being detained under criminal detention," he said, adding that several had also been freed.

Raxit said that more than 20 people were being held under criminal charges, while at least 10 had been freed on bail pending court hearings.

"Others are still being held in the detention center because they refused to pay fines," he said.

An officer who answered the phone at the county police department declined to comment.

"You will have to ask my superiors," he said. "Those are the rules."

"They know what is happening."

Surveillance

A resident of Aqchi said police had stepped up routine patrols and surveillance in the county town in recent weeks.

"Aqchi has a reputation, and it is always subjected to tight controls," the resident said.

"There are not so many people out and about at the moment, it's very plain to see."

"It's because the Chinese Communist Party has said it will crack down on the 'three forces,'" the resident said, referring to Beijing's campaigns against "separatism, terrorism, and splittism."

Raxit said that authorities in the northwestern region of Ili, which saw a bloody suppression of an uprising against Chinese rule in 1998, have recently been targeting the culture of Uyghurs, a Central Asian Turkic-speaking ethnic group, many of whom are unhappy under Chinese rule.

"The Chinese government has launched a clean-up campaign targeting audio-visual media being sold in the region," Raxit said.

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