Chinese authorities handed down the death penalty to nine people, sentenced a further 72 to lesser sentences and made 29 new arrests in a huge anti-terrorism crackdown in the far west following deadly attacks blamed on Muslim extremists, state media and officials said on Thursday.
Four high-profile attacks on civilians since late October have handed a major security challenge to China’s president, Xi Jinping, during his first 15 months in office. The attacks have been blamed on extremists from the Xinjiang region’s native Turkic-speaking Uighurs seeking to overthrow Chinese rule and inspired by global jihadi ideology.
Since a vegetable market bombing that killed 43 people on 22 May, officials have issued a flurry of announcements citing more than 300 arrests and scores of rapid prosecutions resulting in stiff sentences including the death penalty, raising concerns among some human rights advocates that the prosecutions may be trampling legal rights.
David Zweig, a political scientist at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, said the Chinese government felt threatened by the attacks and wanted to show the public it had the means to stop them…
South Africa Today – World News – China 
