China will boost police forces in its western Xinjiang region, state media said, in an effort to tackle unsanctioned religious activities in the region, which has been beset by ethnic strife and sometimes violent unrest.
Authorities will recruit 8,000 new police officers.
“Security patrols, management of the migrant population and cracking down on illegal religious activities” will be among their main duties, Xinhua said, citing an unnamed Communist Party spokesman in Xinjiang.
Xinjiang is home to the Uighur ethnic group, a Turkic-speaking Muslim people who account for just over 40 percent of the region’s more than 21 million population.
The government blamed the incidents in Kashgar and Hotan — both in the majority Uighur southern part of Xinjiang — on religious hardliners and separatists who want to establish an independent state called East Turkestan for their people.
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