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CHINA UNLIKELY TO LOOSEN ITS GRIP IN WEST

Experts Anticipate Unyielding Response to Latest Fatal Attacks in Xinjiang Province

Jill Drew

The Washington Post, August 30, 2008

Violent outbursts are continuing in the Xinjiang region of western China, with the latest resulting in the deaths of two policemen who were attacked Wednesday while searching a cornfield for a woman they believe is involved in a separatist cell.

State media reported Saturday morning that police found the alleged assailants and shot six of them dead after they tried to defend themselves with knives, wounding two security officials.

The attack and ensuing capture of suspects was the fourth incident this month in the area, bringing the total dead to 39 despite intense paramilitary police patrols since before Beijing's Summer Olympic Games.

In both Xinjiang and the nearby Tibetan regions, China has deployed thousands of security personnel in recent months to keep the peace and root out troublemakers. Now the government might consider keeping those forces in the regions indefinitely, experts said, because tensions remain high. Required affirmations of political loyalty and surveillance of telephone calls, Internet use and physical movement are also expected to continue.

"Three days ago, I called my mother back in Tibet," said Tenzin Losel, who fled Tibet for India in 1997 and had not spoken with his parents since this spring's riot in Lhasa and the ensuing wave of anti-government protests that swept the Tibetan plateau. He said he did not want his call to get them in trouble with police, but he wanted to hear his mother's voice. "She said hello and that she was okay. Then she asked if I was okay and after I said yes, she just put down the phone. I felt in that moment the tense division in Tibet."

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