BEIJING (AFP) — Chinese police in a remote northwestern city have broken up 12 terrorist cells this year as part of the nation's pre-Olympic security blitz, state-run press said on Wednesday.
The announcement is the latest in a series of statements aimed at highlighting what China says is a major threat facing next month's Beijing Games that emanates from its mainly Muslim Xinjiang region.
The 12 groups were dismantled by police in the Silk Road oasis city of Kashgar and were all linked to international terrorist organisations, the Beijing News reported, quoting a local official.
Huang Sanping, the city's deputy Communist Party chief, was quoted as saying that the members of the cells were "jobless drifters, ex-convicts" or people "disgruntled with society."
There was no mention of what they were allegedly plotting or if any weapons had been found, but Huang again drew the link with between the alleged terror threat in Xinjiang and the Games which begin on August 8.
"As the Olympics draw ever closer, the powers of the Communist Party, People's Liberation Army, People's Armed Police and public security apparatus are on full alert and prepared for any sudden incidents," he reportedly said.
The official Xinhua news agency said last week that 82 suspected terrorists involved in five cells plotting attacks on the Olympics had been arrested this year.
It also said five "terrorists" were shot dead in a raid in the Xinjiang capital Urumqi last week.
Two Muslims convicted of terrorism were executed in Kashgar last week and another 15 sentenced to jail, US-based Radio Free Asia had previously reported.
A foreign ministry spokesman on Tuesday refused to comment on the issue, although a group of US lawmakers described the reports of the pair being executed as credible.
Xinjiang is a vast region of deserts and stunning mountain ranges bordering Central Asia that is home to more than eight million Turkic-speaking Uighurs, who have long complained about repression under six decades of Chinese control.
Human rights groups and exiled members of the Uighur minority allege China has fabricated or exaggerated the terror threat to justify a crackdown on dissent.
Dilxat Raxit, spokesman for the Germany-based World Uighur Congress, an exile group, said there was no proof those arrested in Kashgar were terrorists.
"If China is convinced of its own accusations, then it should not fear allowing in the international community to investigate," he said in a statement emailed to AFP.
US lawmakers last week backed up the assertions by human rights groups when the Congressional Human Rights Caucus "strongly condemned" what it called Beijing's harsh pre-Olympic crackdown in Xinjiang.
"The Chinese government should not be permitted to use the 'war on terror' or Olympic security as a front to persecute the Uighurs," said Republican Frank Wolf, the caucus co-chairman.
All of the 12 cells allegedly broken up by the Kashgar police were said to be sub-branches of international terror groups including the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, or ETIM.
ETIM is listed by the United Nations and the United States as a terrorist organisation. "East Turkestan" is what many Muslims call Xinjiang.
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