China court finds 55 guilty in mass stadium sentencing

A Chinese court has announced guilty verdicts for 55 people charged with of terrorism, separatism and murder, with the dependents learning of their fate at a stadium filled with 7,000 spectators — part of an apparent show by the government of its determination to combat unrest in the country’s far west.

At least one of the defendants was sentenced to death.

China’s official Xinhua News Agency said three of the defendants at the stadium Tuesday were convicted of using unspecified "extremely cruel methods" to kill four people, including a 3-year-old girl, in the city of Yining in April 2013. The Xinhua report gave few details about the cases, but defendants whose names were reported all appeared to be Uighurs – a Turkic-speaking Muslim minority people, many of whom fear a loss of livelihood and culture as majority Han Chinese settlers move to the Uighurs’ home region of Xinjiang in western China. 

China has been conducting a yearlong crackdown nationwide after a series of attacks that Beijing blames on Xinjiang separatists.

Tuesday’s sentences were announced at a stadium in the northern Xinjiang city of Yili near the Kazakhstan border, Xinhua said, adding that the audience was made up of area residents and officials and that at least one person received a death sentence. 

Photos showed armed soldiers standing guard next to the stadium's running track with the defendants, dressed in orange prison vests, grouped in the center.

The Chinese government said unrest among Uighurs is stirred up by groups with ties to hard-line Islamic organizations abroad – but many experts have said they see little evidence of that.

Uighur exiles and rights groups say the real cause of the unrest is China's repressive policies that put curbs on Islam Uighur culture. Uighurs have long complained of official discrimination in favor of the Han Chinese.

The public sentencing appeared to be a show of force in Xinjiang after 43 people were killed last week in an attack at a vegetable market in the regional capital, Urumqi.

Such sentencing rallies – designed to humiliate the accused and feed a public thirst for retribution – were once common across China, but have in recent years been mostly restricted to Xinjiang and the neighboring restive region of Tibet. 

The government says more than 200 people have been detained this month in Xinjiang and 23 extremist groups broken up, though it has released no details about them. Officials of the Yili branch of the Xinjiang High Court have also announced the arrests and detentions of an additional 65 people on charges including rape, separatism and covering up crimes, Xinhua said.

Wire services