Reuters AlertNet Lite - China holds mass funeral for policeman "martyr"

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China holds mass funeral for policeman "martyr"

10 Jan 2007 03:22:11 GMT
Source: Reuters

BEIJING, Jan 10 (Reuters) - More than 2,000 police and residents in the restive Xinjiang region of northwestern China attended the funeral of a policeman killed in a gun battle at what Beijing called a terrorist camp, media said on Wednesday.

Huang Qiang, 21, was killed in a police raid on the camp on the Pamirs plateau in the remote Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region during which police killed 18 people and captured 17.

"One of the officers died a martyr's death, another was wounded in the confrontation," the official China Daily newspaper said in an editorial on Wednesday.

The paper showed a picture of anguished relatives and police weeping next to an open coffin in which Huang's body lay shrouded in a Communist Party flag.

It added that almost all Internet users quoted on popular Web portal Sina.com had "praised the raid".

"Huang was also named a hero by the Ministry of Public Security and accepted posthumously as a member of the Chinese Communist Party," Xinhua news agency said in a separate report.

China has waged a relentless campaign against what it calls violent separatist activities of Uighur Muslims agitating for an independent East Turkestan state in the remote, oil-rich region which borders Pakistan, Afghanistan and three Soviet Central Asian republics.

But human rights groups say it has used its support for the U.S.-led "war on terror" to justify a crackdown on Uighurs characterised by arbitrary arrests and closed-door trials.

Chinese officials said on Tuesday it had a "large amount of evidence" that the training camp was run by the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), a group the United Nations labelled a terrorist organisation in 2002.

Police had seized a stash of grenades, guns and home-made explosives and found that the "terrorists had operated mines near the camp to raise funds", Xinhua quoted Ba Yan, a spokeswoman for the Xinjiang Public Security Department, as saying.

Officials said that the "terrorists" had links to international forces.

The China Daily editorial said "a massive manhunt" was under way to capture escapees from the raid.

"But judging from the escalating violence of sabotage attempts by separatist forces such as the ETIM, we cannot relax our vigilance even when they are finally brought to justice."

The Uyghur American Association (UAA), a Washington-based NGO that champions the rights of Uighurs, said on its Web site on Tuesday that the Chinese government's claims of terrorist activities in Xinjiang "lacked substance".

"If the Chinese authorities want to be taken seriously as a responsible member of the world community, then they must allow independent scrutiny of any evidence they have for the claims they are making," UAA president Rebiya Kadeer said.

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Last updated:Wed Jan 10 03:23:46 2007