França - International Herald Tribune
Arrests increased in Muslim region of China
06/01/2009
By Edward Wong
BEIJING: Authorities in the western Chinese region of Xinjiang approved the arrests of nearly 1,300 people in the first 11 months of last year on suspicion of "endangering state security," according to a report published Sunday in an official newspaper. That is an extraordinary increase in the arrests on that particular charge compared with the number in 2007 and is drawing scrutiny from human rights groups.
The official newspaper, the Procuratorial Daily, which is published by the Chinese equivalent of the attorney general's office, said that prosecutors in Xinjiang approved 1,295 arrests of individuals and indicted 1,154 of them. In total, there were 204 cases that were opened. The newspaper article was also posted on a Xinjiang government Web site, lending legitimacy to the statistics.
In 2007, the number of people arrested across all of China on suspicion of endangering state security was 742, according to government statistics. Prosecutors indicted 619 of them.
Of those total numbers, about half were from Xinjiang, said Nicholas Bequelin, a China researcher for Human Rights Watch, citing statistics from the Xinjiang Yearbook, a government publication of regional statistics. So the numbers reported on Sunday by the official newspaper are a vast increase over the numbers from 2007.
"If this is confirmed, this is very alarming because it reflects that the threshold of what constitutes a state security crime was considerably lowered last year, in line with the campaign," Bequelin said, referring to a campaign against political crimes and terrorism that the authorities in Xinjiang announced last year ahead of the Beijing Olympics.
Chinese officials have said that elements in Xinjiang, a large region that is the homeland of a Turkic-speaking Muslim people called the Uighurs, are a special threat to the regional and national governments, which are controlled by ethnic Han Chinese.
Many Uighurs chafe at what they call discriminatory policies in Xinjiang, and some advocate for independence. Since 2001, when the Bush administration began its war on terror, Chinese authorities have said they are battling the "three forces" of separatism, terrorism and religious extremism in Xinjiang. Waves of crackdowns have taken place.
In 2008, officials made many announcements of arrests and raids in Xinjiang, especially during the approach of the Beijing Olympics, which took place in August. That month, a series of attacks on security forces unfolded in parts of Xinjiang. Wang Lequan, the regional secretary of the Communist Party, said at a meeting on Aug. 13 that the battle against the "three forces" was a "life or death struggle."
The charge of endangering state security includes inciting separatism, inciting subversion, stealing state secrets and giving state secrets to foreigners. It can carry the death penalty.
The Duihua Foundation, a nonprofit organization based in San Francisco that advocates for human rights in China, reported early last year that the number of arrests and legal cases in which people were accused of endangering state security has risen across China in recent years.
Government statistics show that of all the regions and provinces in China, Xinjiang has had by far the most number of cases of arrests on charges of endangering state security, Bequelin said.
Last month, Xinhua, the official state news agency, reported that two Uighur men had been sentenced to death for carrying out an attack on Aug. 4 in the city of Kashgar that ended up killing 17 paramilitary officers and wounding 15 others. But the Xinhua report said the men had been sentenced for murder and illegally producing weapons, not for endangering state security.
As for the statistics published Sunday, "there are a lot of unanswered questions," Bequelin said.
"Nobody doubts there are individuals and groups that are advocating the use of anti-state violence, although these people seem to be very low in number and don't constitute major threats to China's state security," he said. "The problem is that it's impossible to tell from Chinese accounts what proportion of the total are these cases and what are illegitimate cases based on political reasons — people who have expressed dissenting religious and political views."
The Chinese government maintains strict control over the practice of Islam in Xinjiang. For example, government workers are not allowed to worship at mosques, and the private teaching of the Koran and other religious material is forbidden. According to the law, though, these should not fall under the crime of endangering state security.
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