January 20, 2015

Chinese Police Kill 2 Uighurs Fleeing to Vietnam, Reports Say

by • [Human Rights]

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NYtimes
The shooting broke out near an expressway tollgate in the Guangxi region of southern China on Sunday night, when the police tried to stop a van carrying five Uighurs, according to the China News Service and China Daily. The van refused to stop at a roadblock of two police cars near Pingxiang, a small city near the border with Vietnam, and members of the group “resisted arrest and attacked the police with knives,” China Daily said.
Nytimes | Jan 19, 2015
HONG KONG — The Chinese police shot and killed two members of the Uighur ethnic minority trying to flee into Vietnam after members of their group resisted arrest with knives, the state-run news media reported on Monday.
The clash came after the Chinese Ministry of Public Security said it had arrested hundreds of people since last year in an effort to stanch illegal emigration into Southeast Asia.
The shooting broke out near an expressway tollgate in the Guangxi region of southern China on Sunday night, when the police tried to stop a van carrying five Uighurs, according to the China News Service and China Daily. The van refused to stop at a roadblock of two police cars near Pingxiang, a small city near the border with Vietnam, and members of the group “resisted arrest and attacked the police with knives,” China Daily said.
“The police finally shot dead two of them, while one escaped into a residential neighborhood,” the China News Service reported. The police captured the other two members of the group.
Uighurs are a largely Muslim ethnic minority who live in the Xinjiang region of northwest China, which has been beset by deepening violence and tensions with the government and China’s Han ethnic majority. The shootings appeared to be part of the government’s efforts to eradicate gangs involved in illegally spiriting people, especially Uighurs, across the border into Southeast Asia, and onward from there.
The Chinese authorities often say that attacks and bloodshed are the concerted work of terrorists with support from abroad. The Chinese government has become alarmed that the border with Vietnam is a major conduit for fleeing Uighurs.
Advocates of Uighur self-determination and international human rights groups have said that the Chinese government has exaggerated the role of international terrorism in Xinjiang and has unfairly depicted Uighurs attempting to escape religious and political repression as extremists.
In April last year, the Vietnamese government sent back 11 Chinese nationals, who appeared to be Uighurs, and the bodies of five others who were in a group that became embroiled in a deadly shootout with Vietnamese border guards.
Since then, the Chinese police have conducted a campaign to eradicate people smugglers and have arrested 352 people believed to be involved in smuggling networks and 852 people accused of attempting illegal border crossings, the Ministry of Public Security said on Sunday.
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