China is holding mass public trials again
A Chinese paramilitary policeman stands in an armoured personnel carrier in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, on May 24, 2014. Security has been boosted following a series of deadly attacks in the city.
Public trials used to be a common event in China.
During the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and 1970s, large groups of people would gather to denounce and punish those accused of betraying the ideals of the Communist Party and taking the “capitalist road.”
Such events continued to be held in the 1980s and 1990s as the government battled rising crime fueled by the country’s dramatic economic reforms.
And now, as Beijing faces a wave of deadly violence linked to militants within the mostly Muslim Uyghur community in the remote northwestern region of Xinjiang, such political theater is being used again.
On Tuesday, Chinese authorities held a mass sentencing for 55 people in an open-air stadium holding 7,000 spectators.
The defendants, who reportedly appeared to be Uyghurs, wore orange vests and stood in the back of trucks surrounded by armed guards as their sentences were handed down.
Three were sentenced to death for the brutal murder of a family last year.
The public trial was held in Yining city in the northwestern prefecture of Yili, near China's border with Kazakhstan.
Reuters reported that a similar mass sentencing was held in the region last week.
The public trial was held to demonstrate the Communist Party’s determination to crack down on "violent terrorism, separatism and religious extremism," the prefecture’s deputy Party secretary Li Minghui was quoted as saying.
"[We] must resolutely strike criminals … and boost the confidence and will to fight for all ethnicities among the masses," Li said.
The event was also aimed at reassuring China's ethnic Han majority that "terrorists" were being caught and brought to justice.
Few details about Tuesday's trial were available. Reports said the defendants had been convicted of crimes including murder, rape, harboring criminals, participating in a terrorist group and separatism.
China has vowed to strike hard on terrorism following a series of deadly attacks allegedly carried out by militant members of the Uyghur community.
The most recent incident happened last Thursday when five suicide bombers killed more than 30 people and injured more than 90 at an outdoor vegetable market in Xinjiang's capital of Urumqi.
That came just weeks after a bomb went off at a train station in Urumqi, killing at least one person and injuring 79.