(MENAFN- Kuwait News Agency (KUNA)) A total of 712 people were sentenced in China last year for instigating secessionist activities or participating in violent terrorist attacks, up 13.3 percent year on year, state-run Xinhua News Agency reported Thursday, citing the Supreme People's Court.
Those convicted were involved in 558 cases, up 14.8 percent, Chief Justice Zhou Qiang said in the work report delivered at the annual session of the national legislature in Beijing.
"We will actively participate in the fight against terrorism and secessionism, severely punish violent terrorist crimes according to the law, and severely punish all types of crimes that gravely endanger the safety of the people," Zhou was quoted as saying. "We will resolutely safeguard national security, ethnic unity and social stability," he said.
Violence and terrorism have been on the rise in China over recent years, with the northwestern Muslim-majority Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region suffering the most. An assault on a market in Xinjiang's regional capital Urumqi last May killed more than 30 people and injured 94 others, prompting a year-long campaign against terrorism. Terrorist attacks have also spread to other parts of the country.
In March last year, knife-wielding assailants killed a total of 31 people and injured 141 others at a train station in Yunnan' s provincial capital Kunming.
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