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Six men were sentenced to death 12 October for their role in the riots in Urumqi, Xinjiang province in western China that killed 197 people in early July. A seventh has been given a life sentence. The men, all reportedly ethnic Uighurs, are the first to be tried in what was China’s worst ethnic rioting in decades. They were convicted of murder, looting and rioting.

The victims were mostly Han Chinese in a historically Muslim ethnic Uighur region which has seen large-scale Han Chinese immigration over the past decades. The riots erupted after a clash at a toy factory earlier in eastern China left two Uighurs dead. AP, Xinhua