Published by: THE WORLD UYGHUR NETWORK NEWS 18 September 1997

Associated Press, 09/17/97

BEIJING (AP) - Seven pro-Chinese clerics in northwestern China were assassinated last year during a bloody campaign by Muslim separatists, a Chinese official said Wednesday.

The comments by Wang Lequan, secretary-general of the Communist Party in Xinjiang, were the first official word of the April 1996 attacks by rebels accused of arson, murder and bombing public buses in the far northwestern province 1,600 miles west of Beijing.

The indigenous Muslim minority resents Chinese rule in Xinjiang, which had its own independent republic from 1944 to 1949. Little independent information is available about the violence in the remote, sparsely populated region of deserts and rugged mountains.

Three to four people died in each incident during the attacks that began Feb. 10, 1996, Wang said at a news conference with party leaders from Xinjiang and Tibet. He did not give a total death toll or say if the attacks have ended.

Wang said Beijing would refuse to compromise with the separatists.

``The most serious murders happened on April 29th of last year. On that day alone, they killed several patriotic religious figures,'' he said. ``We cannot be expected to be lenient with those thugs.''

There have been scattered reports of attacks on pro-government figures in Xinjiang over the past two years. In April 1996, two men in a town near the Pakistani border tried to assassinate a high-ranking Muslim cleric who advises the government.

Earlier this year, separatists were blamed for bombs that exploded Feb. 25 on three public buses in Urumqi, the Xinjiang capital, killing nine people. They also were blamed for a Feb. 5 riot that killed 10 people. At least 12 people have been executed in connection with that violence, the worst in Xinjiang since the start of communist rule in 1959.

At the news conference, party officials from Tibet also defended the forced ``patriotic education'' of tens of thousands of Buddhist monks and nuns as a security measure against separatist forces.

Some 30,000 residents from 900 monasteries have completed the course on law and citizenship, said Raidi, a former monk who is executive deputy secretary of the Communist Party in Tibet.

Tibet activists say participants are required to sign denunciations of the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan leader who fled into exile in 1959 after a failed uprising. Tibetans who have left the country recently say they were motivated by opposition to the campaign.

``Our purpose is only to crack down on a small number of people who try to damage the country,'' Raidi said.

China contends Tibet has been a part of the country for centuries and calls the Dalai Lama a subversive. Tibetans, however, say they had been independent for centuries before communist troops arrived.

Asked for information about a 6-year-old boy detained after the Dalai Lama identified him as the reincarnation of a major Tibetan Buddhist leader, Raidi said only that he was ``living a happy and free life, and he is receiving an education at school.''

China detained the boy and his family after the Dalai Lama announced he was the 11th Panchen Lama. The announcement robbed Chinese leaders of the chance to name the new leader. Chinese officials then forced Tibetan religious leaders to repudiate the Dalai Lama's choice and choose another boy.