The Chinese government announced that more suspects have been detained for alleged involvement in the violent attack near Kashgar, Xinjiang which left 21 dead. From AP:
China Central Television said Monday that another group of suspects had been captured and interrogated, though it didn’t say how many. It also said explosives were seized. The report quoted the state anti-terrorist office and Meng Hongwei, the vice public security minister.
Also Monday, CCTV broadcast images of a memorial service for the 12 men and three women police officers and officials killed in the clash. It said Meng attended, along with more than 1,000 people from local party and government departments.
A leading Uighur activist has questioned the official account of the incident. Local sources said that police sparked it by shooting a Uighur youth during an illegal search of homes, according to Dilxat Raxit, a spokesman for the German-based World Uyghur Congress.
Authorities previously said 10 of those killed on the government side were Uighurs, three were Han, and two were from the Mongolian ethnic group. It said two other Uighurs were hurt. The ethnicity of the assailants wasn’t given.
While the details of the attack are not clear, local residents have cast doubt on the government’s version of events that claims it was a terrorist attack. BBC reporter Damian Grammaticas traveled to the town of Selibuya where the attack occurred:
Rather than “terrorists”, local people told us the violence involved a local family who had had a long-standing dispute with officials.
The family, we were told, were very religious. Officials had, for a long time, been pressuring the men in the family to shave off their beards, and the women to stop wearing full veils covering everything but their eyes.
Local government regulations, we were told, stipulate that women must not wear full veils, and only men who are over 40 years old are allowed to grow beards.
We cannot identify those who talked to us, as they are at risk of official reprisals, but one person said “community workers asked the family not to have their women cover their faces”.
“They’d been telling them for a long time. They never agreed,” the person added.
