Xinjiang, October 11, 2013
Photo: Reuters
The wave of arrests began late in August. It has been reported that many Uyghurs fought in Syria and then came back to China in order to put their experience there into practice.
According to the law-enforcement agencies, the arrested people studied how to kill people, viewed respective reels and underwent physical training.
Moreover, according to the police's information, among those arrested there were individuals who had been involved in organization of disturbances in the town of Lukqun in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. On June 26, at least 35 people were killed there.
The province of Xinjiang is the motherland of Uyghurs, the Turkic-speaking people, most of whom are Muslims.
"The events that are now happening in Xinjiang in China more and more remind us of the events in Chechnya in Russia in 1990s. Incendiary preaching in Mosques, attacks on police stations, killings by "those who came in numbers" from the central districts of the country, skillful taking advantage of actual errors by local governments and provocative myths, spreading of subversive publications and instructions (published abroad), and the establishment of foreign representations with the aim of waging information warfare," wrote Nezavisimaya gazeta (Independent Newspaper) in July this year
