Eight to die for attacks in China’s Xinjiang : CCTV

BEIJING, Dec 8 (AFP): A Chinese court condemned eight people to death Monday for two deadly attacks in Xinjiang, as Beijing cracks down hard on violence in the homeland of the mostly Muslim Uighur minority.

Five others were given suspended death sentences, according to state broadcaster CCTV-a penalty normally commuted to life in prison-with another four jailed for varying terms.

In one incident, assailants armed with knives and explosives attacked a train station in the regional capital Urumqi in April, killing one person and wounding 79 on the final day of a visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping. Two assailants also died.

The following month 39 people were killed, along with four attackers, and more than 90 wounded when assailants threw explosives and ploughed two vehicles through a market in Urumqi, state media said.

The sentences, handed down by the Intermediate People's Court in Urumqi, bring the number of death penalties or executions announced for Xinjiang-related violence to around 50 since June.

They are part of a harsh crackdown Beijing has imposed on violence in the vast resource-rich area, deep in China's far west.

Over the past year at least 200 people have died in a series of clashes and increasingly sophisticated attacks in the region and beyond it.

Beijing has blamed such incidents on "separatists" and "terrorists".

Rights groups say that harsh police treatment of Uighurs and government campaigns against religious practices such as the wearing of veils have led to violence.

China defends its policies, arguing that it has boosted economic development in the area and that it upholds minority and religious rights in a country with 56 recognised ethnic groups.