In China, four men have been sentenced to death for a series of deadly attacks in Xinjiang. The attacks, which occurred between August and November last year, killed nine people and wounded 15. The Xinjiang Daily website said the sentences had been approved by China's highest court. Xinjiang, in China's north-west, hosts an ethnic Uighur separatist movement. The four men are assumed to be Uighur separatists seeking independence from Chinese rule. In 2009, deadly ethnic riots erupted in Xinjiang after tensions flared between the Muslim Uighur minority and the Han Chinese. There have also been a number of blasts in Xinjiang in the past, which the government blames on Uighur separatists. But Uighur activists and human rights groups accuse Beijing of using the issue to crack down on Uighur dissidents, who have complained that waves of Han Chinese migrants have marginalised the Uighur culture.