An earlier version of this story incorrectly credited the photo to Jill Drew of The Washington Post. It was taken by Ryan Anson of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.
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China Unlikely to Loosen Its Grip in West
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Between 1,000 and 2,000 paramilitary police searched for the attackers, identified from photographs as being the same group that ambushed and killed three security officials in a nearby town on Aug. 12, Kuerbanjiang said. They found the suspects near Kashgar on Friday evening, apprehending and wounding three while killing six, according to an official report from China News.
Uighur advocacy groups say China's approach to the unrest exacerbates the problems. "I worry about the situation there very much because the Chinese policy of suppression makes the local situation more serious," said Dilxat Raxit, a spokesman for the World Uighur Congress, an exile group based in Germany.
But Chinese academics say Xinjiang is a region where China needs to maintain a firm hand to prevent separatism and terrorism.
"The main and core issue in Xinjiang is separatism, although it combines with some farmers and land problems. . . . We cannot regard this case purely as citizens trying to protect their rights," said Yu Jianrong, a professor at the Institute of Rural Development in the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. "If you want peaceful life, you must have strong and forceful measures. If the government wants to keep Xinjiang inside Chinese territory, they must take measures to crack down on separatists without any softness."
Nicholas Bequelin, a China researcher for Human Rights Watch, said the level of government control is already so high that it constitutes "a very broad denial of rights in both regions." He said he does not expect China to let up.
Rather, he expects the government to continue to encourage ethnic Han Chinese to move into the regions, eventually diluting the ethnic components into the Han majority. "China probably has the most efficient assimilation model in the world," he said. "It's the ultimate solution."
Researcher Zhang Jie contributed to this report.
