BEIJING, Jan. 18, 1999 -- (Agence France Presse) Several Muslim separatists

in the northwest province of Xinjiang are about to be executed for taking

part in bloody anti-Chinese protests two years ago, Amnesty International

said on Saturday.

The unknown number of separatists was sentenced to death last October after

a secret trial in the autonomous province's town of Gulja (Yining in

Chinese), the human rights organization said.

The intermediate court in the Xinjiang district of Ili, which would have

passed the sentences, denied all knowledge of the reported impending

executions.

"Executions are announced in the newspapers after they have taken place,"

an official said briefly.

The accused were arrested for taking part in a demonstration in Yining

supporting the creation of an independent Islamic state in Xinjiang in

February 1997 that descended into riots and left up to 100 people dead.

Amnesty in a statement received here identified two of the accused as

Abdusalam Shamseden and Abdusalam Abdurahman.

Amnesty said that an appeal by Shamseden, 29, against his conviction was

rejected at the beginning of January by the Supreme Court in Xinjiang. He

had nothing to do with the violence, it added.

"It is not known whether the others had appealed against the verdict but

all the prisoners are reportedly due to be executed soon," the statement

said.

"They are political prisoners who were denied a fair trial, in violation of

international standards and they may be arbitrarily imprisoned for the

peaceful exercise of fundamental human rights," Amnesty said.

The rioting of Feb. 5 and 6, 1997 by Muslim ethnic Uighurs, who form the

majority in Xinjiang, was followed by several arrests of militant

separatists.

Official accounts said 10 people were killed and another 132 injured when

the protest against rule by Beijing descended into a riot, but a

foreign-based Uighur group put the number of dead at more than 100.

At least 12 people were executed in 1997 for their role in the riots in

Yining, a town close to the Kazakh border where half the population is

Uighur.

Xinjiang has some 17 million people and Uighurs make up 48 percent of the

population, but the proportion has continued to fall in the face of waves

of new Han Chinese immigrants who now comprise 38 percent of the population.

( (c) 1998 Agence France Presse)