my postings to this listserve will resume on Dec. 30
Dec. 18
CHINA:
Death penalty for 2 who killed Chinese officers
A court in the western Chinese region of Xinjiang has sentenced 2 men to
death for an attack in August that killed 17 paramilitary officers,
according to a report on Wednesday by Xinhua, the state news agency. The
assault was one of the deadliest against security forces since at least
the 1990s.
The court determined that the men, who carried out the attack on the
morning of Aug. 4 in the remote oasis town of Kashgar, were trying to
"sabotage the Beijing Olympic Games that began Aug. 8," Xinhua reported.
The men, Abdurahman Azat, 33, and Kurbanjan Hemit, 28, are ethnic Uighurs,
a Turkic-speaking Muslim people. Some Uighurs advocate independence in
Xinjiang and resent what they call discriminatory policies put in place by
the ruling ethnic Han Chinese.
Most, if not all, of the paramilitary officers killed or wounded on Aug. 4
were Han Chinese.
The Intermediate People's Court of Kashgar sentenced the men for
"intentional homicide and illegally producing guns, ammunition and
explosives," Xinhua reported.
Chinese officials said the day after the attack that the men, a taxi
driver and a vegetable vendor, had rammed a truck into a group of about 70
officers from the People's Armed Police who were out for morning exercises
and had then attacked the officers with machetes and homemade explosives.
At the time, the authorities said 16 officers were killed and 16 others
injured. The attackers were arrested, the authorities said.
The assault was the 1st and deadliest of 4 in Xinjiang in August that
officials blamed on Uighur separatists. The violence killed at least 23
security officers and 1 civilian, according to official tallies.
In interviews in September, three foreign tourists who were in the Barony
Hotel, across the street from the site of the assault, gave details of the
attack to the New York Times that appeared at odds with aspects of the
official version. The tourists confirmed that the truck plowed into the
officers, leaving many dead and injured. But they said they did not hear
multiple explosions afterward.
Furthermore, they said they saw paramilitary officers using machetes to
attack what appeared to be other men with the same green security
uniforms. The men with the machetes mingled freely with other officers
afterward, the tourists said.
The Xinhua report on Wednesday provides more details of the assault to
back up the earlier official version. The report said that the two men,
armed with guns, explosives, knives and axes, drove a heavy truck that
they had stolen to the site of the assault at 6 a.m. and waited for the
officers to emerge from their compound. About 8 a.m., Azat drove the truck
into the officers when they came out for their exercises, killing 15 and
wounding 13, Xinhua reported.
When the truck turned over, he detonated explosives to kill another
person, according to Xinhua.
At the same time, the Xinhua account said, Hemit tossed explosives toward
the gate of the security compound and brandished a knife at the police who
had been felled by the truck. Hemit killed one officer and wounded
another, Xinhua said.
One of the foreign tourists, a man who provided photos of the assault to 2
Western news organizations, said in September that he saw a severely
injured man tumble out of the driver's seat after the truck had rammed the
officers. The driver crawled around and did not appear to be in any
condition to carry out further attacks, the tourist said.
The Xinhua report did not give any details on what kind of evidence was
reviewed by the court in Kashgar during the trial of the 2 men. It also
did not mention the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, a shadowy
organization that Chinese officials have long cited as the main separatist
threat in Xinjiang. The day after the assault, the party secretary of
Kashgar, Shi Dagang, told reporters that it appeared the 2 men were
members of that group.
(source: San Francisco Chronicle)
