A court in China condemned eight people to death Monday for two deadly attacks in the violence-torn region of Xinjiang, home to the mostly Muslim Uighur minority, state media said.
Five others were given suspended death sentences, according to state broadcaster CCTV — a penalty normally commuted to life in prison — with another four jailed.
In one incident, assailants armed with knives and explosives attacked a train station in the regional capital Urumqi in April, killing one person and wounding 79 on the final day of a visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping. Two assailants also died.
The following month 39 people were killed, along with four attackers, and more than 90 wounded when assailants threw explosives and ploughed two vehicles through a market in Urumqi, state media said.
The sentences, handed down by the Intermediate People’s Court in Urumqi, are the latest as Beijing imposes a harsh crackdown on violence in the vast resource-rich region in China’s far west.
Over the past year at least 200 people have died in a series of clashes and increasingly sophisticated attacks in the region and beyond it.
Beijing has blamed such incidents on “separatists”, while rights groups accuse China’s government of cultural and religious repression they say fuels unrest in Xinjiang, which borders Central Asia.
China defends its policies, arguing that it has boosted economic development in the area and that it upholds minority and religious rights in a country with 56 recognised ethnic groups.