BEIJING – China yesterday raised the death toll to 18 from a clash at a police station in the restive far western region of Xinjiang, saying 14 “rioters” died along with two policemen and two hostages in the worst violence there in a year.
Government officials previously said at least four people were killed in what they described as a terrorist attack.
But the German-based exile group World Uyghur Congress said it was an attack on unarmed protesters.
The clash marked the worst violence in about a year in the far western region, home to many Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking people native to the area, many of whom resent the growing presence of majority Han Chinese in Xinjiang.
Xinjiang is strategically vital to China, and Beijing has shown no sign of loosening its grip on the territory. It accounts for one-sixth of China’s land mass, holds rich deposits of oil and gas, and borders Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and central Asia.
The exile group had said 20 Uighurs were killed – 14 beaten to death and six shot dead – and 70 arrested when police opened fire on protesters, leading to fighting between the two sides.
The Xinjiang government’s website said police fatally shot the 14 rioters after giving “legal education and warnings”.
It added that 18 rioters had bought and made weapons and sneaked into the desert city of Hotan days before the clash on Monday.
The report said the rioters, armed with axes, knives, daggers, Molotov cocktails and explosive devices, “crazily beat, smashed and set on fire” the police station, and hung “flags of extreme religion” on the top of the station.
Two policemen and two hostages were also killed in the clash and four of the rioters were arrested, it added. “It was an organised, premeditated and severe violent terrorist attack to local politics-and-law departments,” the report said.
The website also showed three pictures it said were taken on the scene of the incident, showing police with guns storming into a police station, which in one photograph was on fire.
Rebiya Kadeer, who leads the World Uyghur Congress from exile in the US, denied any of the Uighurs involved in the protest were armed.
“There [was] not even a wood stick in their hands,” she said.
“We keep demanding that the Chinese government stop this kind of terrorist activity against a peaceful people and respect the culture and national identity of Uighurs.”
The differing accounts and the authenticity of the photographs published by the government could not be independently verified.
Rights groups say Xinjiang remains under tight security, more than two years after its capital, Urumqi, was rocked by violence between Han Chinese and Uighurs that killed almost 200 people.
Since then, China has executed nine people it blamed for instigating the riots, detained and prosecuted hundreds, and ramped up spending on security, according to state media and overseas rights groups. – (Reuters)