China’s police-state

The Chinese regime’s ongoing police-military suppression of unrest in the north-western province of Xinjiang has created international tensions.

While the US and other Western powers have largely remained silent, concerned that social and political instability in China could endanger the global economy, Turkey has stepped up its condemnations of China while Islamic extremists have threatened to attack Chinese interests overseas.

Beijing’s deployment of more than 20,000 heavily-armed troops to Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, may have resulted in the deaths of hundreds of members of the Uighur minority. So far the official death toll is 192 (mostly Han civilians killed by Uighur rioters), with 1,721 wounded, and 331 shops and 627 vehicles burned. More than 1,400 people have been arrested.

The response of the security forces to any sign of resistance has been ruthless, in order to intimidate any opposition, especially from the working class. On Monday, soldiers shot and killed two Uighurs and wounded a third. While the Chinese authorities claimed that the shooting was necessary to prevent a crime, Zhang Ming, a construction worker at a nearby building site told the Associated Press (AP) that he saw three men with knives and sticks attack a group of paramilitary police officers, who then chased them, beat and shot them. More