Published by: THE WORLD UYGHUR NETWORK NEWS July 23,1997

Reuter, 7/23/97 (South China Morning Post)

Officials in the restive Muslim region of Xinjiang have called for a people's war against separatists and illegal religious activities. They contend that anti-Chinese sentiment has lingered after bloody riots this year.

"We must maintain sharp vigilance," the Xinjiang Daily quoted Amudun Niyaz, chairman of the Xinjiang People's Congress, as telling officials in Yining, where at least nine people died in anti-Chinese riots in February. "We must motivate the masses to launch a people's war against separatists and illegal religious activities," he was quoted as saying.

Although authorities had successfully suppressed the February riots, a handful of separatists had not resigned themselves to defeat, he told the officials in Yining, near the border with Kazakhstan.

"We must maintain high vigilance and be profoundly aware that the main dangers threatening Xinjiang's stability are ethnic splittism and illegal religious activities," he said.

The February riots, which began as a demonstration for Xinjiang's independence, left nine people dead and 198 injured, by official tally. Three people were executed and 27 sentenced to prison terms ranging from seven years to life after the riots.

"Our struggle against national separatists is neither an ethnic nor a religious problem," the chairman said. "It is a political struggle between those who safeguard the motherland's unification and security and those who split the motherland.

He accused foreign forces of providing support to the separatists in Xinjiang. "It is a complete waste of time for a small handful of ethnic separatists to think they can realise their dream with the support of foreign anti-Chinese powers. No power can separate Xinjiang from the motherland," he said.

Militants of Xinjiang's Uygur ethnic group have said they want to set up an independent state of East Turkestan in Xinjiang, which borders Afghanistan, Pakistan and three mostly Muslim Central Asian states. In May, eight people in Xinjiang were executed after being found guilty of involvement in crimes, including the planting of home-made bombs in the regional capital, Urumqi, that killed nine people.