Beijing, China - Chinese authorities issued the latest in a flurry of claimed victories against Islamic terrorist groups Wednesday, as Beijing continues its crackdown on those it accuses of targeting next month's Olympic Games.
Police in the city of Kashgar in the traditionally Muslim Xinjiang region so far this year have demolished a dozen terror cells linked to foreign-based organizations, the official China Daily newspaper reported Wednesday.
The report didn't say how many people had been detained, but said members of the cells were mainly "jobless drifters or ex-convicts."
Last week, authorities said they had detained 82 suspected Islamic terrorists and separatists in the first half of the year across Xinjiang. The suspects were engaged in plots targeting next month's Beijing games, a police official was quoted as saying in state media. The official offered no details or evidence.
It wasn't clear if any of the 82 detained were members of the Kashgar cells, word of which was released only on Wednesday. The report identified the groups involved as the East Turkistan Islamic Movement, or ETIM, reportedly based along China's borders with Afghanistan and Pakistan and linked to al-Qaida; and Hizb ut-Tahrir, which originated in the Middle East in the 1950s, and is banned in several countries.
Radicals among Xinjiang's indigenous Turkic Uighur people have been fighting Chinese rule for decades, although critics say communist authorities fuel resentment in the region with harsh repression and strict rules governing cultural and religious expression.
Experts who study the region say ordinary criminals and nonviolent human rights campaigners are often labeled terrorists, while state media say raids target "illegal religious schools" and "jihad training centers."
Media reports say at least seven terror suspects have been killed this year, while 18 were killed last year in a raid on a training base allegedly run by ETIM.
The reports follow human rights groups' claims that authorities are ratcheting up security and repression ahead of the Aug. 8-24 games in an all-out attempt to shield the event from disruptions that could tarnish China's carefully cultivated image of order and control.