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China Arrests Nine Muslims in Broad Crackdown
BEIJING, Dec 21 (Reuters) - Chinese police have
arrested nine Muslims for preaching illegally in the
northwestern region of Xinjiang as part of a broad
clampdown on separatists among the Uighur ethnic
minority group there.
A police officer in Xinjiang's Bayingolin Mongol
Prefecture, 500 km (310 miles) south of the capital
Urumqi, told Reuters on Friday the nine were arrested
as part of a stepped up campaign against ``separatists,
terrorists and religious extremists.''
He said the campaign in the prefecture, on the edge of
the Taklimakan desert, started on December 10 and was
scheduled to run until the end of February.
``Initial investigations show that these people were
involved in...illegal preaching more than 20 times
this year,'' the police officer said.
The nine translated the Koran into local languages and
used it to preach the separatist cause, he said.
Human rights and religious groups say the clampdown
has already swept up dozens of Muslims in other parts
of Xinjiang.
The start of the Xinjiang crackdown coincided with a
warning by Chinese President Jiang Zemin against using
religion to oppose the leadership of the ruling
Communist Party.
China blames Uighur separatists for a string of
violent attacks over the past decade and says they
have designs to pursue an independent state called
East Turkestan in Xinjiang.
A spokesman from the Swedish-based East Turkestan
Information Centre told Reuters that dozens of Muslim
clerics and students had been arrested in Xinjiang's
northwestern Bortala prefecture and the western city
of Hotan. Police in those areas declined to comment.
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ETIC REPORT 2000 
