Continuing crackdown
Kashi in Xinjiang vows to keep on fighting extremism-related gang crimes
Authorities in Kashi, Northwest China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, have vowed to keep up the momentum in their crackdown on organized gang crimes, and encourage the public to offer tip-offs of gangsters involved with extremism and terrorist activities.
A letter distributed to the public by the local government listed 16 types of gang crimes, including organized groups or families that “threaten political security, especially the security of the socialist system,” those who “try to exert influence on the political field, or attempt to separate the country, plot extremist and terrorist activities.”
The letter was first published in February 2018 and was reissued by authorities and netizens on social media in recent months.
In January 2018, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council jointly released a notice on the launch of a major campaign against gang crimes.
According to a report from the Ministry of Public Security, by last January, police had solved 79,270 criminal cases, confiscated 851 guns, and sealed assets worth 62.1 billion yuan ($9.23 billion) related to such crimes.
Governments at all levels in Xinjiang have made efforts to push forward the operation.
Zhu Hailun, a deputy Party chief of Xinjiang, was quoted by the Xinjiang Daily as saying in October 2018 that the region should combine its drive to fight gang crimes with its anti-terrorism efforts.
Fighting extremism
Kashi, located in southern Xinjiang, has previously suffered from extremism and terrorism in recent years.
“The violent groups and criminal gangs are a malignant tumor which is detested by people and can harm the healthy development of the economy,” according to a release from Kashi’s Public Security Bureau in January.
In a promotional video, the bureau referred to some gang crimes connected to religious extremism.
For example, some Party members, religious groups and officials who have been used as protective umbrellas for separatists, criminal gangs, religious extremists or who have divulged information to separatists and interfered in such cases, will also be regarded as being involved with gang crimes.
The public letter distributed by the Kashi government also encouraged the public to report information on those behind the spread of extremism: illegal imams who collude with and support the “three evil forces” – separatism, terrorism and extremism; main members of terrorist groups who organize bomb exercises and physical training; and religious forces that incite the public to interfere with the local government’s work or promote extremism under the guise of managing religious work.
Other gang crimes listed in the letter include bribing Party members to obtain positions in local governmental or Party organizations and to embezzle State property; using religious influence to bully villagers and inciting disturbances in doctor-patient relationships or in land acquisition cases.
“People who have information on gang crimes are obliged to give tip-offs to local public security bureaus.
For those who have information for the police, local authorities should protect the safety of the whistleblowers,” read the letter.