Two village officials in western China’s restive Xinjiang region were stabbed to death by a suspected fugitive from earlier clashes while conducting house searches in their village, according to local officials and residents.
The alleged fugitive, farmer Alim Ebey, 32, was beaten to death after killing the two men, and his wife died in police custody following the May 9 incident in Uchar township in Kashgar prefecture’s Yengisar (in Chinese, Yingjisha) county, the sources said.
According to local religious leaders in the township, police had been searching for Alim Ebey over a possible connection to April clashes in nearby Maralbeshi (Bachu) county which left 21 people dead in the Xinjiang’s worst violence in four years.
The religious leaders said they had been told by local authorities that Alim Ebey stabbed the two officials—Village No. 7 Party Secretary Memtimin Tohsun, 52, and village chief Enver Obulqasim, 48—after they and other members of a community watch group searched his mother-in-law’s home where he had been staying.
Seeing that Alim Ebey was a stranger who had been living there, members of the community watch group asked him to go with them to the police station for registration, but after walking with them for a distance, he stabbed the two men in the throat, they said.
In one account, a township official speaking on condition of anonymity said the conflict had been prompted when officials ordered Alim Ebey’s wife and mother-in-law-to remove veils covering their faces.
While running from the scene of the stabbing, Alim Ebey was surrounded and beaten by other members of the community watch group. He was then taken to the hospital where he later died.
His wife, Nurimangul Hashim, and mother-in-law, whose first name is Gulqiz, were taken to the police station, where police said the wife later died of a heart attack during questioning, according to residents.
“This is what the government told us,” local religious leader Eziz Qarhaji said of the clash. “But we were not there when all this happened.”
“After the incident happened the government called on us to comfort the families of dead and we went and conducted the funeral and burials as they asked,” he said.
‘Back to normal’
Uchar township chief Qayser Alamshah confirmed the attack had occurred but refused to give further details.
“The dead have been buried, the injured have been treated, and the situation in the town has returned to normal,” he told RFA’s Uyghur Service.
But local residents said Village No. 7 has remained under heavy surveillance since the incident.
Alim Ebey’s mother-in-law is still in police custody, and his wife Nurimangul Hashim’s body has not yet been returned to her family, they said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Some added that they knew Alim Ebey, who ran a motorcycle repair business in Yengisar, to be a good man who helped his mother-in-law often and had left a positive impression on them.
According to the township official speaking on condition of anonymity, Alim Ebey had come to see his mother-in-law not because he was on the run, but to pay a visit according to normal customs.
The official said that the county held a funeral for the two village heads during which the security officials were praised for their work.
At the gathering, officials said Alim Ebey had been preparing extremist attacks in nearby towns along with 22 other accomplices, 16 of whom had been rounded up in police operations, and two shot and killed. They said four others are still being sought.
They did not give details on what Alim Ebey was suspected of doing in the Maralbeshi clashes two weeks earlier.
Security measures
Rights groups have decried heavy-handed security measures in Xinjiang and the use of community watch groups to police Uyghur neighborhoods, saying unlawful house searches conducted by the groups have led to arbitrary use of lethal force by security personnel.
The exile World Uyghur Congress has called for more transparency about the Maralbeshi clashes, which regional officials have labeled a “terrorist” attack.
The April 23 violence, the deadliest incident in the region since July 5, 2009 ethnic violence in the regional capital Urumqi, broke out when community officials were searching Uyghur homes for illegal items, according to state media.
Rights groups and experts say violence in the region is frequently blamed on separatists or extremists, and that Beijing exaggerates the threat of terrorism to take the heat off domestic policies that cause unrest or to justify the authorities' use of force against the Uyghur minority.
Uyghurs say they have long suffered ethnic discrimination and oppressive religious controls under Beijing’s policies in Xinjiang, blaming the problems partly on the influx of Han Chinese into the region.
Reported by Shohret Hoshur for RFA’s Uyghur Service. Translated by Mamatjan Juma. Written in English by Joshua Lipes and Rachel Vandenbrink.