Xinjiang Arrests Nearly Doubled in ’14, Year of ‘Strike-Hard’ Campaign
Wall Street Journal, 23 January 2015
By James T. Areddy – New figures that show a near-doubling of arrests in Xinjiang last year illustrate that Chinese President Xi Jinping meant business with a vow to strike hard in that western region to suppress terrorism. Prosecutors in Xinjiang said they approved 27,164 criminal arrests in 2014, according to figures published on Friday on an official website in the region.
The rise of around 95% from the previous year followed a crackdown kicked off in April by China’s president during a high-profile visit to a region beset with violence that authorities blame mostly on ethnic Uighurs, many of whom are Islamic and want independence.
The crackdown followed a particularly brutal stabbing spree at a southern Chinese train station in March that authorities blamed on Xinjiang separatists. The president’s own visit to Xinjiang, where he vowed to send terrorists fleeing like “rats scurrying across a street,” was punctuated by a brazen train station bombing in the regional capital city Urumqi
After Mr. Xi’s visit where he reviewed security measures, the yearlong strike-hard campaign was officially launched in May. (It wasn’t the first such campaign, as authorities have used the strike-hard terminology in past efforts to stem violence in Xinjiang.)
Last year was particularly deadly in Xinjiang. Numerous reports in Chinese state media suggested a violent cat-and-mouse game between police and suspected separatists that featured big suspect roundups, brutal attacks and the deaths of police, suspects and civilians, plus the imam of a large mosque.
Human-rights groups worry that some arrests in Xinjiang are politically motivated.
This week, Human Rights Watch warned that China’s pending counterrorism law is a recipe for abuse because it could provide security forces “enormous discretionary powers” and too broadly define terrorism.
Among those criminally prosecuted in Xinjiang last year was Ilham Tohti, a Uighur scholar and well-known critic of China’s ethnic policies. He was sentenced to life in prison on separatism charges despite widespread protests by foreign governments and rights groups, which called him a moderate.
The new arrest tally was announced by Xinjiang officials presenting a work report to the regional People’s Congress where they credited the rise to faster prosecutions last year, the official report said Friday. It said the number of criminal cases handled by Xinjiang courts rose 59% to 34,816.
An article on the report in China Daily quoted Nixiang Yibulayin, chief prosecutor of the Xinjiang People’s Procuratorate, as saying, “We’ve shortened the time between approving arrests and prosecution in major terrorist-related cases so the suspects can be tried as soon as possible to show the region’s determination to fight terrorism in accordance with the law.”
The tone of the strike-hard campaign has spilled into other areas of China, particularly in southern Yunnan province where the March train station attack took place.
Last week, the Ministry of Public Security said it had cracked hundreds of cases of alleged “jihadi migration” involving mostly Uighurs trying to cross into Southeast Asia, and police released dramatic video of a confrontation just last week with two Uighurs that left them both dead.
On Friday, a Chinese newspaper, Global Times, estimated 300 Chinese citizens, mostly from Xinjiang, were in Malaysia with plans to fight in Syria or Iraq for the radical group Islamic State.
Asked about the Malaysia report on Friday, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman didn’t comment directly but said China is against all forms of terrorism.
The emergence of prosecution tallies, meanwhile, coincides with a decision announced this week by the Communist Party that aims to end the practice of using numerical targets as criteria to judge the quality of police and court activity.
–James T. Areddy. Follow him on Twitter @jamestareddy