Over 200 held in China terror video crackdown: report

BEIJING, China – Police in China’s Xinjiang region, home to mainly Muslim Uighurs, have arrested more than 200 people over 6 weeks for “dissemination of violent or terrorist videos”, state media said Monday, amid a wave of train station attacks.

Police in the far western region, which is periodically hit by unrest, detained 232 people who “have circulated videos promoting terrorism through the Internet and on portable devices”, the state-run Global Times newspaper said, citing a Legal Daily report.

Xinjiang’s regional government announced a ban in late March on downloading, saving or spreading “terror-related” videos online.

The ban includes video and audio materials “advocating violence and terrorism, religious extremism and separation of ethnic groups”, according to the Global Times.

News of the arrests follows a series of violent incidents both inside and beyond Xinjiang which Chinese authorities have blamed on separatists from the area.

In April, assailants using knives and explosive devices struck at a rail station in the Xinjiang capital Urumqi, resulting in three deaths, including two attackers, and 79 wounded.

And, in March, 29 were killed and 143 wounded in a horrific knife assault at a railway station in the southwestern city of Kunming, which some Chinese media have dubbed the country’s “9/11.”

Beijing says groups including the Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP) and East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), influenced by Al-Qaeda, have inspired and even orchestrated violence in China from Central Asia, which borders Xinjiang.

Some experts, however, question the influence of the TIP, a shadowy organization that has released videos praising attacks in China but has yet to explicitly claim responsibility for them.

Last week, a lone knifeman was shot and caught after a slashing attack that injured six people at a train station in the southern city of Guangzhou. – Rappler.com