Published by: World Tibet Network News, Sunday, Jun 2, 1996

By Mure Dickie

BEIJING, May 31 (Reuter) - A policeman and a Moslem separatist were shot dead in a gunbattle this week in China's restive western region of Xinjiang, state media said on Friday.

The shootout was the latest in a series of violent clashes and political killings reported in recent weeks by state media and officials in China's mainly Moslem frontier region.

Separatists wanted for an attack on a Moslem leader and government advisor shot dead one police officer and injured another after being challenged by a police unit on May 27, the China news service said.

"The police managed to confine the two suspects to a marsh where the two criminals in desperation fired," it said. "One of the criminals was shot dead on the spot and his wounded accomplice was caught."

Local officials in Xinjiang told Reuters this week that Moslem activists had stabbed and injured Aronghan Aji, a religious leader and member of regional and national government advisory bodies.

Aronghan Aji's son was also badly wounded in the attack and both were now in "fair" condition in hospital, China news service said. It gave no other details.

The knifing of the 73-year-old mullah was the latest in a series of assassinations and attacks reported on cadres and pro-communist religious leaders in the Xinjiang region.

An underground group of pro-independence "splittists" based in the regional capital Urumqi had killed six or seven people and injured four since February, a local official in the region's western Toksu county said by telephone on Monday.

Government leaders fighting to curb the campaign of political killings have banned the construction of new mosques and tightened controls on religion in Xinjiang, local officials have said.

The news of separatist killings in Xinjiang has come amid a slew of reports of political discontent in neighbouring Tibet.

A Chinese court sentenced six Tibetans to up to five years in prison for demanding independence for the Himalayan region, Tibet television said in a report monitored by the British Broadcasting Corporation and seen in Beijing on Friday.

A court in Tibet's second largest city of Xigaze announced the sentences against the six at a recent rally, it said.

China has in recent months stepped up its battle against pro-independence activists and has tightened controls on temples and monasteries in the deeply Buddhist region.

Xinjiang officials have said Beijing has ordered tighter controls on border areas and has clamped down on underground religious groups in the region, which borders Afghanistan, Pakistan and three mostly Moslem Central Asian states.

Xinjiang authorities earlier this month stepped up their cmpagn against "splittism" after a group of nine Moslem activists, armed with guns and home-made bombs, were killed in a clash with police on April 29 in western Kuqa district.

Uighur leaders in neighbouring Kazakhstan have accused China of arresting 4,700 of their ethnic kin in the crackdown.

The Xinjiang Daily, Beijing's mouthpiece in the region, has warned of strict punishment for government and Communist Party officials implicated in "terrorism" -- appearing to suggest strong support for independence among some officials.

China has used harsh methods to counter religious and ethnic separatism in Xinjiang, using troops to suppress uprisings and pressing surrounding Central Asian republics to crack down on separatists operating from their territory.