China executed eight people convicted terrorism believed to be from the Xinjiang region, Xinhua News Agency reported.

Of the eight who were executed, three were involved in the Tiananmen Square attack on October 28, 2013. The other five were responsible for terrorist crimes in Xinjiang.

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Xinjiang is home to an ethnic minority called Uighurs and other minorities that have been causing terrorist attacks and civilian deaths this year. According to reports, all eight people who were executed appeared to be Uighurs.

Uighurs are Turkic-speaking Muslim minority. Some attacks carried out by the minorities were a suicide mission.

For instance, the attack on Tiananmen Square in Beijing last year took place when a sports-utility vehicle went through security barriers that crashed into a pedestrian bridge and hit people along its way.

It killed all three people in the vehicle, including the driver's wife and mother, and two from the crowd. At least 40 people were injured, according to government-run Tianshan Net.

Last May, attackers bombed an Urumqi market and directed two vehicles at a crowd, causing 39 deaths that included the four attackers.

In March, a group attacked people with knives at a railway station south of Kunming. There were 29 people who died, while 143 others were reported wounded.

Aside from these incidents, Xinjiang-connected crimes involved murder, manufacturing of explosives, creating a terrorist organization, and arson at checkpoints.

The Chinese government vowed to use an iron-fist in dealing with terrorists in the region. In June, the court, which has 100 percent conviction rate, sentenced 13 people to death for committing terrorism.

The government also blamed the ties of Xinjiang-based terrorists with terrorists overseas.

However, human rights groups countered the government's claim and said that the minority group suffers from repression by Xinjiang's local government.

The group argued that the government's strategy would only cause resentment among Uighurs and other groups.

TagsXinjiang, Uyghurs, Xinhua, Tiananmen Square, terrorists, terrorist attacks, Death Sentence