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China executes 8, including 3 involved in Tiananmen Square terror attack

The executions are part of a continued crackdown against China's Uighur population.

By Ed Adamczyk
Beijing's Tienanmen Square. UPI/Stephen Shaver
Beijing's Tienanmen Square. UPI/Stephen Shaver | License Photo

URUMQI, China, Aug. 25 (UPI) -- China executed eight people convicted on terrorism charges, including three it claimed were responsible for the October attack in Beijing's Tiananmen Square.

Officials in Xinjiang province in western China -- where an indigenous Uighur population is seeing its religious and culture traditions suppressed by the government -- said the three were "masterminds" of the Tiananmen Square incident, in which five people died when a bomb-laden vehicle exploded. The other five were convicted of a number of terrorism-related charges.

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China's state-run CCTV television network said the executions "represent the upholding of justice, and demonstrate their (the government's) resolution to crackdown on terrorism."

The government initiated a crackdown on the Uighur population, a Turkic-speaking and Muslim ethnic group, after a number of high-profile incidents. A group, armed with knives, killed 29 and injured 130 in March in a train station in the southwestern city of Kunming. An attack on the train station in Urumqi in May killed five, and an explosion in an Urumqi market in June killed 39. Religious extremists were blamed in all incidents.

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