U.S. Watchdog Critical Of China Terror Killings

A human rights group is questioning recent killings in China by police against suspected terrorists, suggested that perhaps the country's police are using excessive force in an attempt to control terrorist attacks.

The China arm of Human Rights Watch recently told the Associated Press that since the terrorist attacks began in Xinjiang back in April, 323 people have died from incidences related to the growing civil unrest by the Uighur extremist minority.

Of the 323 people killed since the first terrorist attack in April, almost half of the deaths have been inflicted by police in what China's state media is calling a crackdown on terrorist activity in the Asian country. As the Associated Press reports, police have killed dozens of suspected Uighur members in raids in an attempt to curb terrorist activity.

Sophie Richardson, the China director for Human Rights Watch, told the Associated Press that regardless of the police force's motives in killing "terrorist suspects," such killings should be made transparent for the public. State media in the country has been accused of reporting watered-down accounts of police raids and terrorist deaths.

Richardson told the AP that there is a "deeply disturbing" lack of accountability among the Chinese police force and state media. "If the use of force is justified, the Chinese government should be allowing independent, credible experts to review the evidence," she said. "It should be making that evidence public."

This recent report comes after the Chinese government announced earlier in August that it would fight terror in the rural Xinjiang province by building more cities. 

"Urbanisation serves as a fundamental solution to tackle poverty, unemployment and inequality in less-developed southern Xinjiang where religious conservatism is prevalent and terrorist attacks occur more frequently," the state-run Global Times newspaper reported back in August.