II. Official Data on Arrests and Due Process Concerns

In the wake of the Urumqi protests, Chinese authorities immediately declared their resolve to deal decisively with the perpetrators, emphasizing that “every suspect, without any exception, will be arrested and punished according to the law to root out any hidden danger.“[36] But confusing data on arrests and prosecutions, combined with high-level instructions to “punish heavily and quickly” (cong zhong cong kuai),[37] raise serious due process concerns.

Official statements regarding the number of people detained and formally arrested have been contradictory. Ultimately, the authorities seem to admit detaining more than 1,000 people.

The highest number—1,434 detainees—was announced less than 24 hours after the protests,[38] and the later announcements regarding the numbers—253 detainees,[39] 319 detainees,[40] 718 detainees[41]—did not make it clear whether any of the initially detained had been released. The Financial Times’  Kathrin Hille reported on July 19 that a source, briefed at a Party meeting discussing the crackdown, had told her that “more than 4,000 Uighurs had been arrested since July 5,” and that new detainees were detained in ad hoc facilities—PLA warehouses—because prisons in Urumqi were already full.[42]

The information on formal arrests and prosecutions has been similarly inconsistent. For example, on August 26, the director of the Xinjiang Government Information Office, Hou Hanmin, put the number of formally arrested at 83 suspects,[43] yet less than a week later Xinhua News Agency reported that the authorities in Xinjiang “issued arrest warrants to 196 suspects and prosecuted 51 of them for their involvement in the July 5 riot in Urumqi,” while the police requested the approval of another 239 arrests. The same report said that another 825 suspects were held in detention.[44]

Chinese authorities suggested that they have been investigating not only the attacks perpetrated by the Uighurs, but also the retaliatory attacks by the Han, and emphasized that “anyone who has violated the law should be severely punished.”[45] Yet without an ethnic breakdown of those detained and arrested, it is difficult to ascertain whether, how many, or on what charges Han have been pursued.

Following the instructions from the Party leadership, the Xinjiang People’s Procuratorate has been streamlining the review of the protest-related cases, operating under the “three fast” principle (san kuai yuanze): “fast review, fast arrest and fast prosecution.” Two weeks after the protests, state media reported that the state prosecution had screened “several thousand cases of criminal suspects from the July 5 incident.”[46] And on September 4, the Xinjiang state prosecution announced that they would further “accelerate” approval of arrests and prosecutions.[47]

On October 12, 2009, China pronounced first sentences in protest-related cases. Six Uighur men were sentenced to death and one to life imprisonment for murder, arson, and robbery.[48]

There are also serious concerns that the trials of the protest cases, which have begun as this report went to print, will be neither independent nor fair. Along with the prosecutors, the judges in Xinjiang had already received direct instructions from Party authorities regarding the handling of the July 5 cases, including a “Propaganda Education Manual on the Truth about the July 5th Incident in Urumqi.”[49] Judicial personnel assigned to handle the trials have been carefully selected according to political criteria, further undermining the right of the suspects to be judged by an “independent and impartial tribunal” as set by international law.[50]

Public comments by Xinjiang authorities suggest that their investigations would not focus exclusively on evidence of wrong-doing, but on social class as well. On August 13, Xinjiang Party Secretary Wang Lequan declared:

The hardcore elements who participated to the July 5 incident are mostly concentrated in the social dregs [shehui zhazi] of the key sensitive areas of the greater Urumqi area. For many years the domestic separatist forces have clustered there, and have become a great hidden danger for the social stability of Urumqi and the entire Xinjiang.[51]

Wang also noted that:

The Autonomous Region has already taken a succession of measures, to carry out rectification in these key areas, with manifest results.... All local departments have ...taken strong measures, to root out this hidden danger, and defend against possible trouble.[52]