China announces yet another move in its continued crackdown on alleged terrorist activity as the countdown to the Olympics progresses, but it sounds suspiciously like something that happened late last year. First, this week’s report, from AP:
Radio Free Asia reported that the Kashgar Intermediate Court in the restive western region of Xinjiang sentenced two men to death on Wednesday and then executed them after the public trial in Yengi Sheher county, citing Uighur sources and a local official. The men were identified as Mukhtar Setiwaldi and Abduweli Imin.
Three other Uighurs were given two-year suspended death sentences while the remaining men were sentenced to jail terms ranging from 10 years to life, the radio quoted the sources saying.
Given a recent rash of news about supposed terrorism in Xinjiang, this doesn’t come as a great surprise. But then there’s this from The New Dominion, a Xinjiang blog:
RFA claims that on the 9th, these two individuals were executed summarily after a public trial, during which they were accused of plotting terrorist activities and managing a hidden terrorist base of operations starting from August 2005. The plot was broken up when the police raided their hideout in January of 2007. However, we found a Chinese language article describing an uncannily similar trial being conducted in November of last year, with the same charges against the same individuals, with the same result (two summary executions, two delayed executions, and a number of other non-capital sentences). I vividly remember recalling when we looked at the article at the time being quite surprised that no international news agencies were picking up on the execution of alleged East Turkestan terrorists – only to be quite surprised to find out they finally picked up the scent, only 8 months later. We are thus facing a time-traveling trial and execution: did this happen just a few days ago, or did it happen last November?
New Dominion provides a full translation of the Chinese article at the end of the post.
See also this AP video about security preparations for the Olympics:
