BEIJING // Police in northeastern China fatally shot three minority Muslim Uighurs in a confrontation with suspects they described as terrorists armed with knives who resisted arrest.
A fourth suspect was also injured during the incident in Shenyang on Monday, the city police said on their microblog. A man who refused to identify himself at Shenyang police’s criminal offences office said the four were ethnic Uighurs.
A foreign-based spokesman for Uighurs said the people shot were among a group of Uighurs who were trying to flee China through its northern border.
Uighurs are a Muslim minority in China’s far western region of Xinjiang. Beijing has accused Uighur separatists of terrorism in Xinjiang and elsewhere in China, including a knife attack at a train station in south-west Kunming city last year that killed 31 people.
The government has also accused some Uighurs of trying to go abroad to join international terrorist groups.
The minority group has complained of harsh cultural and religious suppression as well as economic marginalisation in Xinjiang, where ethnic violence has left hundreds of people dead.
A report by Human Rights Watch on Monday said Uighurs were among ethnic minorities in China that found it difficult to get a passport because of a two-track system that subjected residents in certain areas to application delays of up to five years.
The police said that during Monday’s incident, “four violent terrorists resisted arrest by wielding knives, so to prevent any harm to society, police quickly decided to shoot them. Three were killed and one was injured”.
It said that no bystanders were injured or killed, and that investigations continued.
Dilxat Raxit, spokesman for the Munich-based World Uyghur Congress, which advocates Uighur rights, said that local sources say the suspects shot on Monday were among dozens of Uighurs who had been rounded up and arrested as they were trying to flee abroad through China’s northern border.
“China shot dead those who resisted,” he said.
“China’s barbarian policy of shooting people dead before judicial interrogation should be prevented by the international community.”
* Associated Press
