China defends Islamic measures, says it has arrested 13,000 ‘terrorists’
Main exiled group, the World Uyghur Congress, denounces white paper
Beijing — Authorities in China have arrested almost 13,000 “terrorists” in the restive far western region of Xinjiang since 2014, the government said on Monday, in a lengthy policy paper again defending its controversial Islamic deradicalisation measures. China has faced growing international opprobrium for setting up facilities that UN experts describe as detention centres holding more than 1-million Uighurs and other Muslims. Beijing says it needs the measures to stem the threat of Islamist militancy, and calls them vocational training centres. Legal authorities have adopted a policy that “strikes the right balance between compassion and severity”, the government said in its white paper. Since 2014, Xinjiang has “destroyed 1,588 violent and terrorist gangs, arrested 12,995 terrorists, seized 2,052 explosive devices, punished 30,645 people for 4,858 illegal religious activities, and confiscated 345,229 copies of illegal religious materials”, it added. Only a small minority of peopl...
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