( CNN ) -- Police in the western Chinese region of Xinjiang have arrested 139 people for spreading religious extremism online , officials and state media said , amid a wider crackdown on internet rumors . A spokesman for the Xinjiang government , Luo Fuyong , said that local police had gathered around 900 pieces of evidence of online rumor spreading and arrested at least 256 people . Of those , he said 139 had spread rumors about jihad , or Muslim holy war , mainly through posting videos that showed violent terrorist attacks or taught viewers how to create bombs and explosive devices . `` Jihad and terrorists are the enemy of all human races , '' Luo said . The report did not say whether those arrested were Han Chinese or Uyghurs , a Turkic-speaking predominantly Muslim ethnic group . The arrests were made from June 26 to August 31 following an outbreak of violence in the remote township , about 250 kilometers southeast of the regional capital Urumqi , that left 35 people dead . Frequent outbreaks of unrest have hit Xinjiang , a resource-rich region where the arrival of waves of Han Chinese people over the decades has fueled tensions with the Uyghurs . They complain of discrimination and harsh treatment by security forces , despite official promises of equal rights and ethnic harmony . Beijing has found it useful to portray such tensions as the result of outside interference , attempting to cast separatists as part of a global terror network since the 2001 World Trade Center attacks , said Nicholas Dynon , a researcher at Macquarie University in Australia . This strategy undermines sympathies at home and abroad for legitimate grievances of the Uyghurs , he added . `` Conflating international terrorism with domestic separatism is way for Chinese authorities to leverage support for their own issues . '' The arrests in Xinjiang come amid a nationwide crackdown on online rumors that critics have said is a way for the government to squash dissent .
Police in Beijing arrest 139 people for spreading religious extremism online . Arrest occurred amid wider crackdown on internet censorship in China . Ethnic tensions exist between Han Chinese and predominantly Muslim Uyghurs .