China sentences 3 more to death for Xinjiang riot

[October 15, 2009]  BEIJING (AP) -- China sentenced three more people to death Thursday for murders committed during riots in the far western Xinjiang region in July, bringing to nine the number of people facing execution for the unrest.

Nearly 200 people were killed when Muslim Uighurs and members of China's dominant Han ethnicity turned on one another in the streets of the regional capital, Urumqi. First, Uighurs assaulted random people in the overwhelmingly Han city. Days later, Han vigilantes retaliated in Uighur neighborhoods. It was the country's worst communal violence in decades.

The official Xinhua News Agency said three new defendants were sentenced to death by the Urumqi Intermediate People's Court and three others were sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve -- a penalty usually commuted to life in prison.

The condemned men were all Uighur except for one Han Chinese man who was convicted of beating a Uighur man to death with a steel bar during the revenge attacks, Xinhua said.

The Uighurs sentenced to death were convicted of murder for the beating deaths of two people on July 5. One of those given a two-year reprieve was found guilty of a beating death and the other an arson attack on an auto dealership that destroyed 40 cars and resulted in heavy financial losses.

In all, 14 people were sentenced Thursday, including three who received life sentences for attacking people, setting fires and destroying private property. Of those, five were jailed for between five to 18 years for arson or assault, Xinhua said. A spokeswoman for the Xinjiang regional government, Hou Hanmin, said all those given jail terms were Uighur except for one.

The report did not say what pleas the defendants entered or if they would appeal.

Dilxat Raxit, a Uighur rights activist and spokesman for the Germany-based World Uyghur Congress, condemned the rulings. He said local sources in Xinjiang told him the defendants were not allowed to pick their own lawyers and spent just 10 minutes with the lawyers before the trial began.

"China does not have an independent justice system," he said in an e-mailed statement. "Judgments like these for the July 5 cases are mostly political and symbolic in nature. They are done for show and reported as lofty propaganda in order to serve a political purpose."

On Monday, six Uighur defendants were sentenced to death by the same court. Those sentences were the first to be handed down in the trials of scores of suspects arrested during and after the riots.

The violence flared on July 5 after a protest by Uighur youths demanding an investigation into a deadly brawl between Han and Uighur workers at a toy factory hundreds of miles (kilometers) away in southern China.

The government has blamed the rioting on overseas-based groups agitating for more Uighur rights in Xinjiang. Beijing has presented no direct evidence, and overseas Uighur activists have denied supporting violence.

Swift punishment of those arrested over the rioting was among the demands of Han protesters who swarmed Urumqi's streets early last month calling for the firing of Xinjiang's powerful Communist Party boss Wang Lequan. Five people died in those protests under circumstances that remain unclear.

[Associated Press; By ALEXA OLESEN]

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