70 Uighurs reportedly arrested

Police have arrested 70 people from China’s minority Uighur ethnic group in the Silk Road oasis city of Kashgar, fearing trouble when the Olympic torch passes through it in June, an exile group said.

The Xinjiang regional government’s news office denied the reported arrests, and an officer at Kashgar’s police headquarters said he knew nothing, but residents said security had been tightened ahead of August’s Summer Games in Beijing.

Dilxat Raxit, spokesman for the World Uyghur Congress, a Munich, Germany-based exile group that seeks independence for the ethnic group in Xinjiang, said the authorities were using the Olympics as an excuse to crack down on the Turkic-speaking Muslim Uighurs.