Fifty-five convicted in mass trial

BEIJING (AP):

In a stadium filled with 7,000 people, a Chinese court announced guilty verdicts for 55 people on charges of terrorism, separatism and murder as the government tries to display its determination to combat unrest in the troubled northwest region.

The public event was a show of force in Xinjiang after 43 people were killed last week in an attack at a vegetable market in the regional capital, Urumqi.

Such sentencing rallies, designed to humiliate the accused and feed a public thirst for retribution, were formerly common across China, but have in recent years been mostly restricted to Xinjiang and the neighbouring restive region of Tibet. That appears to speak to a separate brand of justice carried out against government critics and others accused of crimes who hail from minority ethnic groups, underscored by the announcement last week of a special one-year security crackdown in Xinjiang focusing on suspected terrorists, religious extremist groups, illegal weapons makers, and terrorist training camps.

Footage broadcast yesterday on local broadcaster Yili Television showed defendants dressed in orange vests worn by Chinese jail prisoners standing on about a dozen trucks, parked in two rows on the stadium's grass and running track. Defendants were made to bow their heads by police standing on the trucks as an official read out verdicts, according to the footage carried by the video site of the Sina Internet portal.