China publicly sentenced nine people to prison for terrorism crimes, and arrested 14 people in Qapqal near the Kazakhstan border on suspicion of calling for holy war and attending terror training camps abroad. Last month authorities arrested 380 people for violence in Xinjiang. An open letter purporting to come from 200 Uighur writers, poets, and translators in Xinjiang was published, denouncing terrorism and blaming attacks on “a small bunch of lunatic mobsters” who have humiliated and defamed Uighurs as an ethnic group. At the UN, China urged the international community to provide greater support for Afghanistan.
