China’s Xinjiang Communist Party chief urges ‘unwavering’ terror crackdown
- Party secretary Ma Xingrui’s call for sustained ‘high-intensity crackdowns’ follows latest military-police joint exercise in western border region
The Communist Party chief of China’s Xinjiang region has called on security personnel to “unwaveringly” uphold the authorities’ “high-intensity crackdown on terrorism”.
“Social stability must be at the forefront” of “strengthening stability and boosting development”, Ma told police officers in Xinjiang on Friday.
“[Our] approach towards high-intensity crackdowns has to remain unwavering,” Ma was quoted as saying by Xinjiang Daily, an official newspaper.
“[We] have to eliminate all terrorist threats at the initial stage, and push forward with normalising counterterrorism work.”
Ma also called for stronger border security and a “society-wide” ability to control risks. Eliminating political, economic and ideological “risks” were important to ensure the prevention of “structural risks”, he said.
The Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region is home to nearly 26 million people, more than half of them from ethnic minority groups, including the mainly Muslim Uygurs and Kazakhs.
