SHANGHAI — Chinese officials said Wednesday that
they were grappling with ethnic unrest on a second front, in the northwestern
region of Xinjiang, where Uighur Muslims protested Chinese rule last month even
as Tibetans rioted in the southwest....
WUNRN
Part 3 of this WUNRN Release on
China - Uighur Muslims & Recent Tensions:
BEIJING
— The Chinese state news agency reported Monday that at least 140 people were
killed and 816 injured when rioters clashed with the police in a
regional capital in western China
after days of rising tensions between Muslim Uighurs
and Han Chinese. Published: July 6, 2009
________________________________________________________________
CHINA - UIGHUR MUSLIM WOMAN
Ethnic & Religious Minority in
China
A young Uighur Muslim woman is pictured in a shop window in Kashgar, Xinjiang Province, China. Muslim residents of this ancient Silk Road city express quiet anger when asked about recent clashes in a nearby city between Muslims and Chinese police....
Mark Ralston, AFP
_____________________________________________________________
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/03/world/asia/03china.html?ref=world&pagewanted=print
The New York Times
April 3, 2008
China Confirms Protests
by Uighur Muslims
The news of the protest in Xinjiang underscored the breadth of China’s problems with ethnic and religious minority groups in the country’s vast western regions, where there is a long history of unhappiness with Chinese rule...
________________________________________________________________________
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/07/world/asia/07china.html?_r=1&th&emc=th
July 6, 2009
CHINA - ETHNIC CLASHES
BETWEEN MUSLIM UIGHURS
& HAN CHINESE
TENSIONS - CASUALTIES - GENDER
BEIJING — The Chinese state news agency reported
Monday that at least 140 people were
killed and 816 injured when rioters clashed with the police in a
regional capital in western China
after days of rising tensions between Muslim Uighurs
and Han Chinese.
The casualty toll, if confirmed, would make this
the deadliest outbreak of violence in China in many years.
The rioting broke out Sunday afternoon in a
large market area of Urumqi, the capital of the vast, restive desert region of
Xinjiang, and lasted for several hours before riot police officers and
paramilitary or military troops locked down the Uighur quarter of the city,
according to witnesses and photographs of the riot.
At least 1,000 rioters took to the streets,
throwing stones at the police and setting vehicles on fire. Plumes of smoke
billowed into the sky, while police officers used fire hoses and batons to beat
back rioters and detained Uighurs who appeared to be leading the protest,
witnesses said.
The Associated Press reported Monday that
protests had also spread to a second city, Kashgar, citing eyewitness accounts.
The casualty numbers in Urumqi appeared to be
murky and shifting on Monday. Xinhua, the state news agency, said the toll so
far was 140 dead and 828 wounded, citing regional police officials. Earlier,
Xinhua had reported that three civilians and one police officer were killed.
One regional official reached by telephone put
the death toll at 105 and said at least 800 people had been injured. One
American who watched the rioting at its height said he did not see people being
killed or corpses in the streets, though he said he did see Uighurs shoving or
kicking a few Han Chinese. Images of the rioting on state television showed
some bloody people lying in the streets and cars burning.
Dozens of Uighur men were led into police
stations on Sunday evening with their hands behind their backs and shirts
pulled over their heads, one witness said. Early Monday, the local government
announced a curfew banning all traffic in the city until 8 p.m.
The riot was the largest ethnic clash in China
since the Tibetan uprising of March 2008, and perhaps the biggest protest in
Xinjiang in years. Like the Tibetan unrest, it highlighted the deep-seated
frustrations felt by some ethnic minorities in western China over the policies
of the Communist Party, and how that can quickly turn into ethnic violence.
Last year, in Lhasa, the Tibetan capital, at least 19 people were killed, most
of them Han civilians, according to government statistics.
Many Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking Muslim group,
resent rule by the Han Chinese, and Chinese security forces have tried to keep
oil-rich Xinjiang under tight control since the 1990s, when cities there were
struck by waves of protests, riots and bombings. Last summer, attacks on
security forces took place in several cities in Xinjiang; the Chinese
government blamed separatist groups.
Early Monday, Chinese officials said the latest
riots were started by Rebiya Kadeer, a Uighur human rights advocate who had
been imprisoned in China and now lives in Washington, Xinhua reported. As with
the Dalai Lama,
the Tibetan spiritual leader, Chinese officials often blame Ms. Kadeer for
ethnic unrest; she denies the charges.
The clashes on Sunday began when the police
confronted a protest march held by Uighurs to demand a full government
investigation of a brawl between Uighur and Han workers that erupted in
Guangdong Province overnight on June 25 and June 26. The brawl took place in a
toy factory and left 2 Uighurs dead and 118 people injured. The police later
arrested a bitter ex-employee of the factory who had ignited the fight by
starting a rumor that six Uighur men had raped two Han women at the work site,
Xinhua reported.
There was also a rumor circulating on Sunday in
Urumqi that a Han man had killed a Uighur in the city earlier in the day, said
Adam Grode, an English teacher living in the neighborhood where the rioting
took place.
“This is just crazy,” Mr. Grode said by
telephone Sunday night. “There was a lot of tear gas in the streets, and I
almost couldn’t get back to my apartment. There’s a huge police presence.”
Mr. Grode said he saw a few Han civilians being
harassed by Uighurs. Rumors of Uighurs attacking Han Chinese spread quickly
through parts of Urumqi, adding to the panic. A worker at the Texas Restaurant,
a few hundred yards from the site of the rioting, said her manager had urged
the restaurant workers to stay inside. Xinhua reported few details of the riot
on Sunday night. It said that “an unknown number of people gathered Sunday
afternoon” in Urumqi, “attacking passers-by and setting fire to vehicles.”
Uighurs are the largest ethnic group in Xinjiang
but are a minority in Urumqi, where Han Chinese make up more than 70 percent of
the population of two million or so. The Chinese government has encouraged Han
migration to the city and other parts of Xinjiang, fueling resentment among the
Uighurs. Urumqi is a deeply segregated city, with Han Chinese there rarely
venturing into the Uighur quarter.
The Uighur neighborhood is centered in a warren
of narrow alleyways, food markets and a large shopping area called the Grand
Bazaar or the Erdaoqiao Market, where the rioting reached its peak on Sunday.
Mr. Grode, who lives in an apartment there, said
he went outside when he first heard commotion around 6 p.m. He saw hundreds of
Uighurs in the streets; that quickly swelled to more than 1,000, he said.
Police officers soon arrived. Around 7 p.m.,
protesters began hurling rocks and vegetables from the market at the police,
Mr. Grode said. Traffic ground to a halt. An hour later, as the riot surged
toward the center of the market, troops in green uniforms and full riot gear
showed up, as did armored vehicles. Chinese government officials often deploy
the People’s Armed Police, a paramilitary force, to quell riots.
By midnight, Mr. Grode said, some of the armored
vehicles had begun to leave, but bursts of gunfire could still be heard.
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