Dubbed “China’s 9/11” by state-run media, witnesses to the attack say a group of people bearing knives entered the train station, attacking travellers indiscriminately, SkyNews reports.
Authorities blamed separatists from Xinjiang province, which is largely Muslim. At least 200 people have been killed in attacks and clashes between locals and security forces over the last year.
Activists have accused the Chinese government of cultural and religious repression, and this, they claim, is what fuels unrest in Xinjiang. This remote region borders on central Asia and is home to the largely Muslim Uighur minority.
Al-Jazeera reports that Tuesday’s announcement regarding the executions comes six months after Iskandar Ehet, Turgun Tohtunyaz, and Hasayn Muhammad received death sentences after being convicted of homicide and leading a terrorist organization.
A higher court upheld the sentence, the official Xinhua news agency reported, per Al-Jazeera.
Four other assailants were shot dead by police during the knife attack, which injured 141 people.
Tensions have built up in recent years in Xinjiang, and some Uighurs are frustrated over Chinese restrictions on their culture and religion.
The defendants were denied a fair trial, said Dilxat Raxit, a spokesman for the exiled World Uyghur Congress.
“China’s use of the death penalty as a political tool does not address the root of the problem,” he wrote in an email to Reuters, per Al-Jazeera. “China continues to make use of this incident to incite discrimination against Uighurs.”
For its part, the Chinese government denies accusations that it has discriminated against Uighurs and says trials are fair and carried out in accordance with the rule of law.
Human rights organizations have expressed concern as executions and mass-sentencings have been carried out regularly because violence is on the upswing in the strife-ridden province.
Patigul Tohti, a woman who was also an attacker, was pregnant when she was arrested and has been given a life sentence Xinhua reported, per Al-Jazeera.
Police say the three men didn’t take part in the attack, but instead had trained others for terror activities, Xinhua reported, according to the BBC News. The men were arrested two days before the attack while attempting to leave China.
Ethnically, Uighurs are Turkic Muslims and they make up about 45 percent of the region’s population, BBC News reports.
