8 people executed in Xinjiang on terrorism charges: China

The authorities in Xinjiang, the ethnically divided region in far western China, said on Saturday that eight people had been executed on charges related to separatist violence, including an attack last year in which a car plowed through tourists near Tiananmen Square in Beijing and erupted in flames.

The executions were the latest in a succession of displays of might and resolve by the Chinese government, which is trying to extinguish increasingly violent discontent among Uighurs in Xinjiang, 

their homeland where they now form a minority of the population.

Tianshan said that China’s highest court had in recent days approved the execution of eight people on charges stemming from five separate cases and that the death sentences had been carried out under the supervision of local courts. The report was widely publicized by Chinese state news media and accompanied by television footage that showed suspects in handcuffs and shackles under interrogation.

The reports did not give the ethnicity of the executed men, but their distinctive names indicated that they were Uighur, a Turkic-speaking people who mostly follow Sunni Islam. Their crimes included ‘organizing, leading and participating in a terror organization; intentional homicide; arson; illegally making, storing and transporting explosives; and jeopardizing public safety by dangerous means,’ according to the Tianshan report.

Three of the men who were executed ‘masterminded’ an attack in Oct last year, in which three bystanders died and 39 others were injured when a sport utility vehicle rammed through a crowd near Tiananmen Square before it burst into flames, according to Xinhua, the state news agency. Three people inside the vehicle also died. The other prisoners executed included Rozi Eziz, convicted of seizing a gun in June 2013 and firing at two police officers in Aksu, Xinjiang; and Abdusalam Elim, convicted of ‘organizing and leading’ a terrorist organization and making explosives, Xinhua said.