BEIJING — China will begin trials in the next few weeks for suspects it accuses of playing a role in the deadly riots that shook the capital of the Xinjiang region in early July, state media outlets reported Friday.
The English-language China Daily newspaper said officials were organizing special tribunals to weigh the fate of “a small number” of the 1,400 people who have been detained, most of them Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking Muslim minority whom security forces have blamed for much of the killing.
Earlier this week, the authorities arrested an additional 253 suspects, many through tips provided by residents of Urumqi, the regional capital where the violence took place. On Thursday, the authorities published the photographs of an additional 15 people, all but one of them Uighur, who they say had a hand in the unrest. Those who provide information leading to an arrest can collect as much as $7,350 in reward money.
“The police urged the suspects to turn themselves in,” China Daily wrote, quoting an unidentified law enforcement official. “Those who do so within 10 days will be dealt with leniently, while others will be punished severely.”
In the days after the riots, the head of the Communist Party in Xinjiang was blunt about what awaits those convicted of the most serious offenses. “To those who have committed crimes with cruel means, we will execute them,” said the official, Li Zhi.
The riots, the worst outbreak of ethnic strife in China’s recent history, began July 5 after protests over the deaths of Uighur factory workers in another part of China turned into a murderous rampage. The violence, which lasted three days, claimed 197 lives, most of them Han Chinese beaten to death on the streets, according to the government. The Han are the dominant ethnic group in China.
Uighur advocates overseas, however, insist that the official death toll undercounts the number of Uighurs killed by the paramilitary police and during revenge attacks by the Han that followed the initial rioting.
China has accused outsiders of instigating the unrest, heaping most of the blame on Rebiya Kadeer, the 62-year-old leader of the World Uighur Congress, which advocates self-determination for China’s Uighurs. They say Ms. Kadeer, a businesswoman who spent years in a Chinese jail before going into exile, organized the killings from her home in Washington.
In recent weeks Ms. Kadeer has been on an aggressive campaign to convince the world that her people are the primary victims of the rioting. During a visit to Japan on Wednesday, she told reporters that 10,000 people had disappeared overnight in the days following the unrest. “Where did they go?” she asked. “Were they all killed or sent somewhere? The Chinese government should disclose what happened to them.”
Her claims have infuriated China, with one official in Xinjiang describing her remarks as “completely fabricated.” Ms. Kadeer says she cannot reveal the source of her information because to do so would endanger those who provided it.
If the trials that followed the 2008 riots in Tibet are any guide, the court hearings in Xinjiang will be swift. According to China Daily, the accused will be appointed lawyers who have “received special training,” as have the judges who will preside over the cases. Each trial will be heard by a panel of three or seven judges, and the majority opinion will prevail.
Human rights groups, however, say they have little confidence the tribunals will be fair. They expect the proceedings to be closed to the public, as are most trials in China, and they note that the defendants will not have lawyers of their own choosing.
“Without independent legal counsel, you don’t have any clue as to what evidence has been collected and through what means,” said Renee Xia, international director of Chinese Human Rights Defenders, which is based in Hong Kong. “Were they tortured or coerced to confess? Trials can be speedy, but it doesn’t mean they will be fair.”
No comments:
Post a Comment