CHINA SENTENCES TWO TO DEATH FOR AUGUST ATTACK

CHINA SENTENCES TWO TO DEATH FOR AUGUST ATTACK 17 Dec 2008, 1540 hrs IST, AP BEIJING: China on Wednesday sentenced two people to death for an audacious attack in the far-west region of Xinjiang that killed 17 police and wounded 15 others days before the start of the Beijing Olympics. The Xinhua News Agency said the sentences were handed down by the Kashgar Intermediate People's Court. It did not give any other details. Calls to the court rang unanswered on Wednesday. The August 4 attack, four days before the start of the Olympics, took place in the ancient Silk Road city of Kashgar near the border with Afghanistan and Pakistan. Two men stole a truck and rammed it into a group of police on their morning jog. The men continued attacking with homemade bombs and knives, killing the officers. No one has claimed responsibility for the attack, though government officials have suggested terrorism is behind the violence. Chinese authorities say militants among the Uighurs, Turkic-speaking Muslims, are leading a violent Islamic separatist movement in Xinjiang and are seeking to set up an independent state in the Central Asia border province. Critics accuse Beijing of using claims of terrorism as an excuse to crack down on peaceful pro-independence sentiment and expressions of Uighur identity. About 1.5 percent of China's 1.3 billion people are Muslim, according to the US State Department's International Religious Freedom Report. But not all of them are Uighurs or live in Xinjiang.

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