China says it has killed 4 militants in crackdown on Uygurs leaving country since 2014
Mainland media say police have also found 553 people trying to flee country as Beijing bolsters claims some of 109 Uygurs deported from Thailand to China last week posed security threat
Police in the southwestern Chinese border province of Yunnan have shot dead four militants and found 553 people attempting to flee the country since 2014, said state media on Friday, giving more details about efforts to stop ethnic Uygurs leaving China.
The report comes as China steps ups efforts to bolster its claims that some of the 109 Uygurs deported from Thailand back to China last week posed a security threat, amid global concerns about their wellbeing.
Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Uygurs, a largely Muslim ethnic minority that calls the Xinjiang region home, have left China in recent years, clandestinely crossing into Southeast Asia before making their way to Turkey.
Rights groups say such migrants are mostly fleeing ethnic violence in Xinjiang and Chinese controls on their religion and culture. Hundreds of people have died in unrest in Xinjiang in the last three years, blamed by Beijing on Islamist militants.
Beijing says many of those fleeing are extremists hoping to join up with other militants in Iraq and Syria. It denies any repression in Xinjiang.
In a detailed report of foiled attempts to leave the country since 2014, the Yunnan police said that they had mounted a “swift and fierce attack” and “shot dead four violent terrorists”, according to the official China News Service.
In one incident in March, Chinese police on the Vietnamese border shot dead a suspect “madly holding a knife to attack police and carry out so-called holy war”, the report said.