No news but good news
BEIJING— A gang armed with knives last month attacked security guards at a coal mine in Xinjiang, a volatile region in the northwest of China. By the time the attack was repelled, at least 40 people had been killed or injured, according to Radio Free Asia, which quoted a local state security chief.
Chinese state media still haven’t reported on the Sept.18 coal mine attack. It’s the latest example of what appears to be a Chinese government news blackout on increasing violence in Xinjiang, an oilrich, mostly Muslim region crucial to Chinese President Xi Jinping’s plan for an economic-development belt across Asia.
Other unpublicized incidents include a police shooting of eight suspects in June, the police killing of two men in May after they reportedly attacked a patrol and a Han Chinese town official knifed to death, also in May.
The incidents have been reported by Radio Free Asia, a news outlet partly funded by the U.S. government, which
Upbeat stories are the only official stories coming from Xinjiang.
has closely followed clashes between Chinese authorities and Uighurs, the dominant ethnic group in Xinjiang.
What little is known about recent clashes comes from a lone Uighur reporter for Radio Free Asia, Shohret Hoshur. From his office in Washington, Hoshur manages to persuade police chiefs and other officials in Xinjiang to talk to him.
Hoshur said he has little doubt that Beijing has curtailed state media coverage about violence in the region, based on his independent reporting.
“There has been a noticeable drop-off,” he said in an email exchange. “They tend now to avoid reporting these events at all.”
Raffaello Pantucci, a Central Asian security expert based in London, said he also has noticed a marked increase in “good news” stories by Chinese state media about ethnic relations in Xinjiang. “Clearly something is being co-ordinated,” he said.