海角大神

The worst violence in the Chinese province of Xinjiang in many months erupted earlier this week between ethnic Uighur Muslims and Chinese police, as the Holy Month of Ramadan began.

Between 18 and 30 people were killed and more injured in an attack on a police checkpoint in Kashgar, an ancient Muslim city along the storied Silk Road through Central Asia. 聽

A聽Radio Free Asia dispatch corroborated by the New York Times says that the incident happened on Monday. A聽car driven by Uighurs refused to stop at a checkpoint, then backed up hitting a police officer and breaking his leg. Two people emerged from the car and stabbed unarmed traffic police, at which point other assailants joined in what became a larger fray.聽

RFA quotes a local policeman Turghun Memet, saying:聽

The Times writes that:

Relations are tense between Xinjiang's 40 percent ethnic Uighur population and Chinese authorities. Turkic-speaking Uighurs accuse Beijing of making them second class citizens and of efforts to strip them of their cultural identity, and of repression and policies hostile to their faith of Islam.

Last fall a prominent Uighur scholar,聽Ilham Tohti, was arrested and later sentenced to life in prison. Human rights organizations objected that Mr. Tohti was a moderate who had tried to bridge differences and create dialogue.聽

It's unclear what spurred Monday's attack, which wasn't reported in China's official media. But it comes amid a聽series of prohibitions and official strictures on Muslim behavior during Ramadan.

In recent weeks, reports Pakistan Today, Uighur officials and community leaders were asked to take an oath not to fast, part of the religious requirement for devout Muslims. And restaurant owners in Xinjiang were told to keep their establishments open all day or face visits by government inspectors.聽

One 鈥済overnment worker鈥� in Xinjiang told RFA, a US government-funded news service, that the latest attacks were correlated with Ramadan because of laws in the locality that apparently forbid children and youth under 18 from joining any formal religious observance.

Since the 1990s, China has instituted a variety of 鈥渟trike hard鈥� campaigns in Xinjiang, framed as a reaction to the emergence of a now-largely defunct 鈥淓ast Turkistan鈥� armed separatist group. The campaigns have a military dimension to them, with sweeps of neighborhoods and villages and mass arrests and detentions.

The New York Times reports that arrests of Uighurs in the latest "strike hard" campaign are double those made in 2013.聽