China executes two Uighurs, jails 15

China has executed two Uighurs and sentenced another 15 to jail for alleged terrorist links, the US government-funded Radio Free Asia said in a report just days after Beijing warned of attacks aimed at the Olympics.

The Kashgar Intermediate People's Court sentenced two men - Mukhtar Setiwaldi and Abduweli Imin - to death and immediately executed them after a July 9 public trial in Yengi Sheher county, said RFA, citing local Xinjiang, Uighur and official sources.

The report could not be independently confirmed. Government officials could not be reached immediately yesterday.

Chinese authorities were using the terrorist allegations as a pretext to persecute Uighurs, said the Uighur American Association (UAA), which strongly condemned the executions.

"Uighur men, women and children in East Turkestan continue to live under an extremely brutal form of repression," said UAA President Rebiya Kadeer.

"They live in a state of constant fear that they will become victims of state violence," said Kadeer.

China said on Thursday it had foiled five "terrorism groups" plotting attacks on the Olympics, and in the first six months of the year, police detained 82 people in the restive far western Xinjiang region for plotting to sabotage the Games.

A day earlier, state media said police had shot and killed five people seeking "holy war" against the country's dominant Han Chinese.

RFA said three of the defendants were given death sentences suspended for two years and the rest prison terms ranging from 10 years to life.