Deadly clashes hit Xinjiang amid sweeping security crackdown
A deadly clash in China’s far-western Xinjiang Province on Monday left dozens killed or injured, according to Chinese state media accounts, as Chinese authorities enter their second month of a sweeping antiterrorism campaign in the region.
A short notice in the official Xinhua news agency said a “gang armed with knives and axes” attacked a police station and government offices in two towns in Shache County in northwest Xinjiang before police officers “shot dead dozens of members of the mob.”
The report, released more than 24 hours after the incident, gives few details and cannot be independently verified, due to journalists’ restricted access to the region. It says that the attack was an “organized and premeditated” terror attack and that 31 cars were vandalized.
Voice of America reports that the delay in reporting the news – and a scrubbing of social networks for references about Shache County – could be an effort to keep the unrest from spreading. In 2009, “online discussion played a key role in the outbreak of massive riots between Han Chinese and Uighurs that hit the capital” of Xinjiang, VOA reports.
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Security-Watch/terrorism-security/2014/0730/Deadly-clashes-hit-Xinjiang-amid-sweeping-security-crackdown
