© AFPUyghur leader Rebiya Kadeer speaks during a press conference in Tokyo, June 20, 2013.
An exile Uyghur leader has claimed that at least 2,000 ethnic minority Uyghurs may have been killed by Chinese security forces following riots last week in a restive county in China's western Xinjiang region, far more than reported by the state media.
Citing "evidence" from the ground, Rebiya Kadeer, president of the Germany-based World Uyghur Congress (WUC), accused the Chinese authorities of a cover up of what she called a "massacre" of Uyghurs in Yarkand (in Chinese, Shache) county in Xinjiang's Kashgar prefecture on July 28.
Chinese state media had at first said "dozens" of people were killed but revised upwards the death toll to 96 this week, saying the riots erupted after a "gang" of Uyghurs attacked a police station and government offices in Yarkand's Elishku township and that the authorities reacted with "a resolute crackdown to eradicate terrorists."
But Kadeer told RFA's Uyghur Service that information the WUC received from the area was "absolutely different than the accounts provided by Chinese official narrative."
"We have evidence in hand that at least 2,000 Uyghurs in the neighborhood of Elishku township have been killed by Chinese security forces on the first day [of the incident] and they 'cleaned up' the dead bodies on the second and third day during a curfew that was imposed," she said.
"We have recorded voice messages from the people in the neighborhood and written testimonies on exactly what had taken place in Elishku township of Yarkand county during this massacre," she said, adding that the victims were mainly from villages No. 14, 15 and 16 in the township.
"We can share these facts without releasing the source of the information as their security and safety is at risk," said Kadeer, who has been in exile in Washington since being released from a Chinese prison in 2005.
Comment: For more on the roots of Zionism, read the book by Britain's foremost World War II correspondent Douglas Reed called: The Controversy of Zion