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    China Muslims Target of Deadly Riots-Exiled Uighurs Blamed

    China Muslims Target of Deadly Riots
    Monday, July 06, 2009

    July 5: Protesters throw rocks at police on a street in Urumqi, capital of China's Xinjiang province.


    Violent street battles killed at least 140 people and injured 828 others in the deadliest ethnic unrest to hit China's western Xinjiang region in decades, and the Chinese government blamed Uighur exiles for stoking the unrest.

    Security forces have clamped down on the city of Urumqi and set up checkpoints to catch any fleeing rioters, state media reported, after tensions between ethnic Muslim Uighur people and China's Han majority erupted into riots.

    Rioters on Sunday overturned barricades, attacking vehicles and houses, and clashed violently with police, according to media and witness accounts. State television aired footage showing protesters attacking and kicking people on the ground. Other people, who appeared to be Han Chinese, sat dazed with blood pouring down their faces.

    The demonstrators had been demanding justice for two Uighurs killed last month during a fight with Han Chinese co-workers at a factory in southern China.

    The U.S. freed four Uighur detainees from Guantanamo Bay and sent them to Bermuda last month — a move that sparked fierce criticism from the Chinese government, which wanted the Uighurs returned.

    The Justice Department under the Bush administration had decided that they should no longer be classified as "enemy combatants," but China has declared them "terrorist suspects."

    Tensions between Uighurs and the majority Han Chinese are never far from the surface in Xinjiang, China's vast Central Asian buffer province, where militant Uighurs have waged a sporadic, violent separatist campaign.

    Uighurs make up the largest ethnic group in Xinjiang, but not in the capital of Urumqi, which has attracted large numbers of Han Chinese migrants. The city of 2.3 million is now about overwhelmingly Chinese — a source of frustration for native Uighurs.

    On Sunday, about 1,000 to 3,000 people had gathered Sunday in the regional capital for the protest that apparently span out of control. Accounts differed over what happened, but the violence seemed to have started when the crowd of protesters refused to disperse.

    The official Xinhua News Agency reported hundreds of people were arrested. Mobile phone service provided by at least one company was cut Monday to stop people from organizing further action in Xinjiang.

    Wu Nong, director of the news office of the Xinjiang provincial government, said more than 260 vehicles were attacked or set on fire in Sunday's unrest and 203 houses were damaged. She said 140 people were killed and 828 injured in the violence.

    She did not say how many of the victims were Han or Uighurs.

    Xinhua quoted regional Police Chief Liu Yaohua as saying several hundred people had been arrested in connection with the riot and police were searching for about 90 other "key suspects." He said checkpoints had been set up in the city and in neighboring Changji and Turpan prefectures to prevent the rioters from fleeing. Liu also said the death toll was expected to rise.

    Uighur exiles condemned the crackdown.

    "We are extremely saddened by the heavy-handed use of force by the Chinese security forces against the peaceful demonstrators," said Alim Seytoff, vice president of the Washington, D.C.-based Uyghur American Association.

    "We ask the international community to condemn China's killing of innocent Uighurs. This is a very dark day in the history of the Uighur people," he said.

    The association, led by a former prominent Xinjiang businesswoman now living in America, Rebiya Kadeer, estimated that 1,000 to 3,000 people took part in the protest.

    Xinjiang Governor Nur Bekri said in a televised address early Monday that Uighur exiles led by Kadeer of caused the violence, saying, "Rebiya had phone conversations with people in China on July 5 in order to incite, and Web sites ... were used to orchestrate the incitement and spread propaganda."

    A government statement quoted by Xinhua said the violence was "a pre-empted, organized violent crime. It is instigated and directed from abroad and carried out by outlaws in the country."

    Seytoff dimissed the accusations. "It's common practice for the Chinese government to accuse Ms. Kadeer for any unrest" in Xinjiang, he said.

    The clashes Sunday in Urumqi echoed last year's unrest in Tibet, when a peaceful demonstration by monks in the capital of Lhasa erupted into riots that spread to surrounding areas, leaving at least 22 dead. The Chinese government accused Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, of orchestrating the violence — a charge he denied.

    Many Uighurs yearn for independence for Xinjiang, a sprawling region rich in minerals and oil that borders eight Central Asian nations. Critics say the millions of Han Chinese who have settled here in recent years are gradually squeezing the Turkic people out of their homeland.

    But many Chinese believe the Uighurs (pronounced WEE-gers) are backward and ungrateful for the economic development the Chinese have brought to the poor region.

    Adam Grode, an American Fulbright scholar studying in Urumqi, described a heavy police and military presence in the city Monday.

    "There are soldiers everywhere, police are at all the corners. Traffic has completely stopped but people are walking on the sidewalks," Grode said.

    He said authorities took him to the police station Monday morning after seeing him taking photographs from his apartment window. They deleted his photos, confiscated his passport and released him. They gave no reason for taking his passport but said it would be returned Tuesday.

    Seytoff said he had heard from two sources that at least two dozen people had been killed by gunfire or crushed by armored police vehicles just outside Xinjiang University.

    Wang Kui, an official with the Foreign Affairs Department at the university, said she aware of no such incident. She said no students from the university were among those killed or injured.

    "We are not allowing students to come and go because the situation is chaotic at the moment," Wang said. "All the students are at school, and we are taking care of them. But we are not clear about what's been going on outside."

    China Mobile phone service was suspended in the region "to help keep the peace and prevent the incident from spreading further," a customer service representative in Urumqi said. The woman would give only her surname, Yang.

    Previous mass protests quelled by armed forces became signal events for Xinjiang's separatist movement. In 1990, about 200 Uighurs shouting for holy war protested through Baren, a town near the Afghan border, resulting in violence that left at least two dozen people dead.

    In 1997, amid a wave of bombings and assassinations, a protest by several hundred Uighurs in the city of Yining against religious restrictions turned into an anti-Chinese uprising that left at least 10 dead.

    In both cases pro-independence groups said the death tolls were several times higher, and the government never conducted a public investigation into the events.

    The Associated Press contributed to this report.

    http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,530149,00.html
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    Did the US start this one too?
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    Xinjiang riot toll hits 156 as unrest spreads

    By Chris Buckley Chris Buckley – 2 hrs 10 mins ago

    URUMQI, China (Reuters) – Chinese police dispersed 200 people gathering outside a mosque in the Silk Road city of Kashgar, the day after ethnic riots killed 156 in the capital of the Muslim Xinjiang region, state media said on Tuesday.

    Calm had settled over Urumqi, capital of western Xinjiang region, after 20,000 police, troops and firefighters reclaimed the streets from rioters who burned and smashed vehicles and shops, and clashed with security forces over Sunday night.

    Over 700 people had been detained, the official Xinhua news agency reported, although local residents told Reuters police were making indiscriminate sweeps of Uighur areas.

    But despite heightened security some unrest appeared to be spreading in the volatile region, where long-standing ethnic tensions periodically erupt into bloodshed.

    Police dispersed around 200 people "trying to gather" at the Id Kah mosque in the center of Kashgar city on Monday evening, the day after the Urumqi rioting, Xinhua said. Kashgar is in the far west of Xinjiang.

    The report did not say if police used force, but said checkpoints had been set up at crossroads between Kashgar airport and downtown.

    Police also had "clues" about efforts to organize unrest in Aksu city and Yili prefecture, the latter a border region that was racked by unrest in the late 1990s, Xinhua said.

    Along with Tibet, Xinjiang is one of the most politically sensitive regions in China and in both places the government has sought to maintain its grip by controlling religious and cultural life while promising economic growth and prosperity.

    But minorities have long complained that Han Chinese reap most of the benefits from official investment and subsidies, while making locals feel like outsiders in their own homes.

    Almost half of Xinjiang's 20 million people are Uighurs, while the population of Urumqi, which lies 3,270 km (2,050 miles) west of Beijing, is mostly Han Chinese.

    Chinese officials have already blamed the unrest on separatist groups abroad, who it says want to create an independent homeland for the Muslim Uighur minority.

    A Xinjiang public security spokesman told Xinhua that people outside China used telephones to "direct mobs in Xinjiang to stage the violence," and said calls for protests were posted Saturday evening on Internet forums by sympathizers.

    Last year, Beijing also blamed unrest across Tibetan areas on a "clique" led by the exiled Dalai Lama.

    But exile groups deny organizing the violence and say it was an outpouring of pent-up anger over government policies and Han Chinese economic dominance.

    In Washington, the White House said it was concerned about the deaths but it would be premature to speculate on the circumstances. "We call on all in Xinjiang to exercise restraint," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said.

    CHASM BETWEEN SIDES

    Muslim Uighur and Han Chinese residents of Urumqi gave accounts of bloodshed that are likely to deepen the chasm between the two sides.

    Uighur residents, speaking softly in alleyways away from patrolling police and troops, complained about the growing Han Chinese presence. Some said many of those arrested were youths caught up in indiscriminate police sweeps of the rundown concrete apartments where many Uighurs live.

    "They've been taking away all the young people, going into our homes and taking them away," said Amina, a middle-aged woman in a Muslim headscarf sitting on the steps of a mosque. She said her own son had been taken but did not want to give his name.

    "They don't care who they take, as long as you're between 17 and 20 and they don't like the look of you," she said as her neighbors shook their heads and clucked in sympathy.

    Nearly all Uighurs traced the protests on Sunday back to their own anger over a confrontation in far southern China in late June, when Han Chinese fought Uighurs working in a factory in Shaoguan, leaving two Uighurs dead, after a false allegation that some of them had raped a Han Chinese woman.

    The government said two Uighurs died in that clash. But many Uighur residents of Urumqi said they were sure that many more died at the factory, and gave vivid accounts of how 20, 50 or a 100 of the workers were killed in their sleep -- stabbed, strangled or poisoned. And some said a Uighur woman was raped.

    There is no independent evidence to support those claims, but Uighur residents said they were angry the details of the factory clash were not more fully aired by the government.

    "We know that 100 workers were killed," said a young Uighur, who gave his name as Memet. "Now who cares about their deaths? Why all these police for us, but nothing when they died?"

    Han Chinese residents said the toll from the riots was likely to rise and their deepened fears of the Uighurs were unlikely to abate.

    Chen, a driver, said his wife who shares driving duties with him had suffered a badly cut eye when a Uighur youth attacked their car, and now she was afraid to venture far from home.

    "Why doesn't the United States classify them as terrorists?," said Chen, who would not give his full name. "What they did to us is terrorism, isn't it?"

    He said the rioters appeared to be mostly Uighur men in their twenties, many of them unemployed. Riot victims recovering in a Urumqi hospital described groups of men who targeted Han Chinese and attacked them with purposeful efficiency.

    "They didn't really talk to you," said Huan Zhangzhao, with two broken ribs and a bloodied eye. "When they saw you, when they saw a Han person coming along, they started to attack. When a bus came along, they started to attack."

    (Additional reporting by Tyra Dempster and Mark Chisholm, Writing by Emma Graham-Harrison; editing by Myra MacDonald)

    http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090706/ts_ ... a_xinjiang
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