The Guardian, 17 December 2013
By Jonathan Kaiman

Chinese police have arrested six suspects in the ethnically divided western region Xinjiang after an outbreak of violence this weekend left 16 people dead, including a number of police officers, state media have reported.

Sayibage Town in Kashgar, a city in rural western Xinjiang, was subjected to an “organised, premeditated violent terrorist attack” on Sunday night after police cracked down on a “criminal gang”, according to a report on Tianshan Net, a website run by the Xinjiang government’s information office.

“Police arrested six people and confiscated explosive equipment, homemade guns and knives, said the report.

Tensions between the native Uighur population – a predominantly Muslim minority – and Han Chinese have run high since late October, when a Uighur man drove an off-road vehicle through a crowd on Tiananmen Square in Beijing, killing five people including himself. Authorities called the incident a terrorist attack motivated by religious extremism, while Uighur activists abroad said it was a protest against repressive regional policies.

Tianshan Net said the gang behind Sunday’s attack formed in August and comprised 20 people. They “watched violent terrorist videos, propagated extreme religious thought, created explosive equipment and guns, conducted test explosions numerous times and planned terrorist activities”, said the report. It said police were ambushed while attempting to capture its leader, Hesen Ismail.

However, an “official from a powerful agency” in Xinjiang contradicted the report. The state-run Global Times newspaper was told police in Shufu County, which administers Sayibage Town, were attacked after entering a cottage for a routine year-end household survey.

After they entered, “they discovered a number of people illegally assembled there”, the official said. “When the police started questioning them, some people began to noisily resist, and then attacked the police with machetes. Two of the questioning police lost their lives because they were caught off guard. The police, when their warnings went unheeded, opened fire.”

The Shufu County police department declined to comment on the incident.

The Chinese government insists that it grants Uighurs a high degree of religious and cultural freedom. Xinjiang has been racked by sporadic violence since July 2009, when ethnic riots in its capital city, Urumqi, left 200 people dead. Last month, at least 11 people were killed in an attack near Kashgar, when an angry mob stormed a police station armed with axes and knives.

The Global Times called for “ethnic healing” to combat violence in the region. “Such violent and terrorist attacks have become normalised,” it said, directing Xinjiang authorities to find “the determination to crack down on violent terrorists” and bolster local policing and surveillance”.

“Some western forces always agitate tensions in Xinjiang and neighbouring terrorism is trying to increase its influence in the region,” it said. “But it is us that have the final say about Xinjiang’s future.”

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/17/violence-china-kashgar-dead-xinjiang-muslim