The Chinese government has sentenced six people to death, for helping organise an attack on a market in its restive Uyghur province earlier this year, which left 39 people dead.
Two others were given death penalties for another attack on a railway station in the provincial capital Urumqi.
The exiled World Uyghur Congress has blamed the violence on the central government's policies, which the group says repress the local culture.
The Xinjiang province, originally inhabited by the Uyghur, a Turkic people following Islam, has seen violence escalate over recent months, with scores left dead in regular attacks, blamed by Beijing on terrorists, however experts say the violence is also rooted in the social and economic exclusion of Uyghur.
China has systematically settled Han Chinese in the region, in an effort to rebalance the ethnic makeup of the Xinjiang province. In November the government announced it would deploy thousands of former soldiers in Xinjiang, to counter the increasing violence.
Xinjiang violence leaves 15 dead (29 Nov 2014)
22 killed in market attack in Xinjiang (20 Oct 2014)
Prominent Uighur academic jailed for life (23 Sep 2014)