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CHINESE STATE MEDIA has said that 37 civilians and 59 “terrorists” were killed in an attack earlier in the week in Xinjiang, home to China’s mainly Muslim Uighur minority.
The total toll makes the incident by far the bloodiest since rioting involving Uighurs and members of China’s Han majority killed around 200 people in the regional capital Urumqi in 2009.
Police had arrested 215 “terrorists” while 13 civilians were also wounded in Monday’s attack on a police station and government offices in Shache county, or Yarkand in the Uighur language, in Kashgar prefecture, according to the official Xinhua news agency.
Latest violent attack
It was the latest in a series of violent incidents over recent months in and connected with the vast resource-rich region, where rights groups accuse China’s government of cultural and religious repression they say fuels unrest.
News of the clash first emerged late on Tuesday when Xinhua reported that dozens of people had been killed or wounded by knife-wielding assailants.
In its report Sunday, Xinhua said that 35 of the dead civilians were Han Chinese while two were Uighurs.
“A gang armed with knives and axes attacked a police station and government offices,” it said, with some later moving on to another township, “attacking civilians and smashing vehicles as they passed”.
The gangsters also set roadblocks and stopped vehicles passing by, before slashing passengers indiscriminately and forcing civilians to join them in the terror attack.
Officers had confiscated knives from the scene as well as “banners that hailed holy war”.
The news agency cited the government as saying investigations showed the attack was “organised and premeditated”, and “in connection with the terrorist group East Turkestan Islamic Movement” (ETIM).
Information in Xinjiang, in China’s far west, is often difficult to verify independently, and many foreign analysts doubt ETIM’s capacities.
Dilxat Raxit, a spokesman for the exiled World Uyghur Congress (WUC), accused Beijing’s security forces of using submachine guns and sniper rifles, leading to “huge casualties”.
“China has distorted the incident and claimed terrorism in order to cover up the truth, which is that they opened fire to repress Uighurs,” he said in a statement emailed to AFP.
Beijing has blamed violent separatists from Xinjiang for a series of attacks which have grown in scale and sophistication over the last year and have spread outside the region.
Among the most shocking were a May assault on a market in Urumqi, where 39 people were killed, and a deadly rampage by knife-wielding assailants at a train station at Kunming in China’s southwest in March, which left 29 dead.
The violence has also included a fiery crash at Tiananmen Square, Beijing’s symbolic heart, in October, that killed two tourists and the three people in the vehicle, all from the same family.
On Friday, police in Xinjiang shot dead nine suspected terrorists and captured one, according to Xinhua.
Don’t remember the garda begin so interested im policing the BLM protests last year…. the government and their puppet masters in nephed either. People have the right to protest. This is not the USSR. As long as there are precautions and social distancing in place no problem. Lock up the people who infiltrate to take part in violent actions and stop blaming all protesters on the acts of a few
@Marc Power: you spotted that well. Depending how favourable the authorities are for the cause, they will police in different way. Prepare for authoritarian style tomorrow. E.g. in Netherlands, during the BLM and Climate Change protests, the police really keep low profile. BUT at anti lockdown demo’s the opposite, then they show their totalitarian nature…. See this video from last Sunday in The Hague, forward to 10 min, 8 seconds…. never seen anything like it, they literally put a police dog on an activist and make him bite… pure sadism.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvUD44YNcDU
@Raymond Scott: at 8 min 32 seconds, the so called ‘Romeo’s’ are running out of police vehicle… they are from the undercover police unit. They often mix with the crowd from the start and stir things up. But people start to recognize them now….
@Marc Power: tediously predictable whataboutery
@DJ François: try making a sensible comment instead of ranting in strange language
@Marc Power: easily understood English
@Raymond Scott: You must be an anti vaxer too.
@Marc Power: try posing a sensible comment when you have an understanding of language beyond single syllable words. Ops.. sen si bil.. My bad.
@Billy McNamara: no, am not against vaccines. Though not getting one myself.
@Raymond Scott: why not?
@Marc Power: I’m sorry to hear about your assaults. However you complain about the response from the gardaí, and criticise giving them increased powers during the pandemic? Did they actually get increased powers, or did the government enact emergency legislation, just like almost every other government in the world.
@JG: try sticking to the subject instead of trying to prove your competence level In English
@Arch Angel: no they have increased powers. A dangerous thing for a corrupt, incompetent force
Didn’t Joan the moan not have people from Johnstown in front of a judge for protesting.. and having the neck to have mobile phones…Course these people were riff raff… labour.. don’t make me laugh
@Shay Redmond.: No, that was for unlawful imprisonment
@Shay Redmond.: There were 300 BLM protests in USA, involving millions and CDC says there was no spike in covid because outdoors is safe. Funerals with hundreds of travellers take place, with minimal policing. Ordinary decent people want to protest and Gardai clamp down. What’s going on here?
We have a labour party? I think not.
I’d like to ask him as one of my local T.D.’s that if he’s so concerned about people lacking hope then why is it that no one round the area has heard this from him in the last year? Serial bandwagon jumper…
@William Tallon:We all know if labour were back in government he wouldn’t saying anything at all .
Long comment alert:
There should be a positive message being communicated. Vulnerable people and elderly will be covered by vax in a few weeks.. this could easily be the point we celebrate “Covid Over”. Vaccines are proving to be >95% effective. MUCH better than expected.
18 deaths today is still too many for Ireland. Each year there are ~100 deaths from flu here. With approx 300-450 more deaths from it indirectly. So taking highest figures that’s 550 deaths per year. That’s about 3 deaths per day during the flu season.
When we hit 2 or 3 covid death per day, and flu being essentially gone, this gives a good metric to end this madness. As long as hospitals aren’t struggling (they are not) and as long as all vulnerable and elderly are vaccinated (a few weeks to go) and we are only getting 2 deaths per day we should open society back up..completely. That’s close..It’s like a few weeks away. I think we should he hopeful ..and it’s just a pity NPHET can’t communicate this kind of what-if scenario to a ‘level 0′ open.
We need positive communication from NPHET. If they start to slowly ease restrictions in any kind of piecemeal way for months we will all crack up completely, not just the demonstrators tommorow. We need to go full hard open and fast. ASAP. Let this mild virus spread to the younger healthier unvaxed ppl which is a strategy of many other countries including 20 of the states in USA right now.
We need to tell the demonstrators/rioters tommorow WHEN it is they’ll get what they are looking for. 2 weeks? 4 weeks? It cant go longer. Most people have hit breaking point.
@cianj: Well doctor, its reassuring to hear from someone qualified who’s worked on the front lines and isn’t afraid to give their opinion. I mean you are…?
@cianj: you do realise that the death figure is not deaths from Covid, but deaths of people who tested positive for Corona virus with a faulty test? If someone dies in hospital from their injuries following a car crash, but a PCR test comes out positive while they’re there, they are part of the covid death figures, and that’s a global agreement on how to count ‘covid deaths’. Fact, not conspiracy. If you doubt that do your research.
So long as every protester is adhering to the 5k limit, no harm done. Otherwise, fines for the lot of em just like the rest of us. Nuanced enough?
@mar: Godwin alert
@DJ François: didn’t take long..
@Adrian O’Donnell:
Complaining that a woman was tragically killed in a foreign country – let’s have a protest here and risk more lives, isn’t going to solve anything. I’m not being flippant, I sympathise with the family of Sarah Everard but I don’t wish to see others die or be ill protesting or holding vigils. Neither is other people complaining ‘but this protest was allowed last year, cracking down now is just an authoritarian response’, this is deliberately provocative.
We know we’re still in the middle of a Covid epidemic, we’re all fed up of lockdowns and would like to see the back of them. Doing something that is likely to make the current Covid situation worse is childishly stupid, no matter how noble their cause no group has this right, even if they believe they can give it to themselves. What seems worse is that most politicians are afraid to stand up and say this, as if it’ll cost them a few votes, somewhere. It’s even worse to basically say “ah but God love them, sure don’t they feel hopeless”.
We’re either going to work towards the end of lockdown, wearing masks, observing social distancing and, hopefully, getting our vaccine. If some people don’t wear masks, don’t give a damn about social distancing or vaccines but then whinge about lockdown, what do they want? It’s everyone else who is suffering for them.
@Arch Angel: Totally agree but consistency in application of the law would help. Huge traveller funerals involving hundreds if not thousands are allowed with a few fines that will never be paid. Student street parties and house parties for months that can be tracked with basic mobile phone locator tech yet no Garda action quick enough to stop them.
When last in government the so called Labour party drained people of all hope. They supported every austerity measure interduced by F.G. It took them reduced to six seats to find their road to Damascus moment.
What is Far Right because for FG,FF any objection to their ways is it seems branded far right
@Michael Maher: did you read the article?
I don’t particular like Aodhan but he’s right here.
Just don’t let the riff raff protest.
I know 2 id iot.s who are going there tomorow, but not for losing their jobs or anything like that, but because they believe that PCR test reset your brains and vaccines are there to control your brain or something like that. I wish the PCR test part is true, I need one.
@Nikolina Fiume: Reset their brains…? And that describes the intelligence level.
8 out of 10 lives could have been saved by using Ivermectin, never mind the untold misery of lockdowns, isolation, unquantifiable psychology effects on children, mental health, missed or delayed hospital appointments etc etc NICE UK TV CLIP FOR YOU BELOW. Journal this is fact, don’t censor this. https://twitter.com/roibeard1973/status/1371962301151121412?s=20
I label them as selfish, now back to the back benches Labour
People have the right to protest but they have the responsibility to do so in an appropriate way given that we are in a pandemic that’s killing our fellow citizens day in day out. Anti lockdown protests come off as unorganised and full of muppets that look like they don’t wear masks because they could barely tie their shoelaces either.
This is an example of an effective protest, and I highly doubt the anti lockdown brigade will go to this level of thought. If they are from beyond 5k, if they don’t do the social distancing, and if they get up in the gardai’s face, then fine them.
Looks like Aodhan is working from home not talking to this great nation from the seat of its government.
It’s BS anyway, what Irish people need are vaccines and quickly – the ‘hope’ will follow.
How about labour take a long walk off a short cliff.
this sums it up – https://twitter.com/AidiMac/status/1371842944567709696
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