People's Republic of China unrest in the autonomous region of Xinjiang Uygur has resulted in the deaths of over 140 people and the injuring of 800 others. The authorities have moved to halt the unrest.
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http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-07/06/content_11663232.htm
140 people killed in Xinjiang violence
http://www.chinaview.cn
2009-07-06 20:53:02
BEIJING, July 6 -- Police in China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous region say weekend violence in the capital of Urumqi has left 140 people dead and at least 800 others injured.
According to doctors, many of the injuries include stab wounds and broken bones.
Police are holding a separatist organization known as the World Uyghur Congress responsible for the violence in which a number of cars and shops were smashed and burned. Regional authorities say the situation is now under control.
According to a government statement released Monday, the unrest was masterminded by Rebiya Kadeer, a former businesswoman in China. In 1999, Kadeer was detained on charges of harming national security. She was released in 2005 to seek medical treatment in the United States.
Investigators are labeling the weekend unrest in Urumqi as quote, "preempted, organized violent crime, instigated and directed from abroad." Authorities are accusing the World Uyghur Congress of using the Internet to recruit and organize supporters.
Xinhua News Agency correspondents reporting from Urumqi.(XHTV)
South China toy factory brawl victims in stable conditions: doctors
SHAOGUAN, Guangdong, July 6 (Xinhua) -- All the Xinjiang Uygur workers injured in a toy factory brawl in south China's Guangdong Province were in stable conditions, doctors said Monday.
Among the 60 injured workers from Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, 29 have been discharged from hospital and a dozen others had recovered, said Fan Shiping, a doctor at Yuebei People's Hospital in Shaoguan City.
"The rest who were being treated and are in stable conditions," he said. "We are getting along with the patients very well."
"I'll continue to work in Shaoguan after I recover," said Ebeyjan Ahmad from Shufu County in Xinjiang. His arms and head were hurt in the fight.
"As long as I'm safe here, I'd like to stay," he said. "I have made phone calls to my family so that they won't be worried about me."
Doctors celebrated the birthday of the 18-year-old Kurbanjan Abdulla in the hospital. He was presented with a birthday cake and received good wishes from the patients.
The government of Shaoguan and the factory are trying their best to help Uygur workers go back to work as soon as possible, officials said.
The alleged sexual assault on a female Han worker Huang Cuiling by several Uygur co-workers at 11 p.m. on June 25 triggered the fight between Uygur and Han ethnic workers in the Xuri toy factory in the early morning on June 26, said Nur Bekri, chairman of the Xinjiang regional government, at the press conference on Monday.
Two Uygur workers died in the fight. Their deaths were used as an excuse for the riot in the regional capital Urumqi, which Bekri said was masterminded by the forces of terrorism and separatism.
In the early hours of Sunday, the Urumqi police department got a tip-off that there were calls on Internet forums for demonstrations.
The riot began around 8 p.m., when rioters started beating pedestrians and smashing up buses. The violence soon spread to other downtown areas.
At least 140 people had died and more than 800 were injured in the riot, the regional government said Monday.
Backgrounder: Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region
BEIJING, July 6 (Xinhua) --Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region Xinjiang in the border area of northwest China covers about 1.66 million square km, accounting for one sixth of the Chinese territory.
The region has a population of about 21 million, among whom 60 percent are ethnic minorities. There are 47 ethnic groups in Xinjiang, mainly the Uygur, Han, Kazak, Hui, Mongolian, Kirgiz, Xibe, Tajik, Ozbek, Manchu, Daur, Tatar and Russian.
The region has five autonomous prefectures for four ethnic groups -- Kazak, Hui, Kirgiz and Mongolian; six autonomous counties and 43 ethnic townships.
The GDP of Xinjiang exceeded 400 billion yuan (58.9 billion U.S. dollars) in 2008.
The major religions in Xinjiang are Islam, Buddhism (including Tibetan Buddhism), Protestantism, Catholicism and Taoism. Shamanism still has considerable influence among some ethnic groups.
Since the Han Dynasty established the Western Regions Frontier Command in Xinjiang in 60 B.C., the Chinese central governments of all historical periods exercised military and administrative jurisdiction over the region.
Since the peaceful liberation of Xinjiang September 25, 1949, the "East Turkistan" forces have never resigned themselves to their defeat. The tiny group of separatists who had fled abroad from Xinjiang collaborated with those at home, and carried out splittist and sabotage activities with the support of certain international forces.
Especially in the 1990s, influenced by religious extremism, separatism and international terrorism, part of the "East Turkistan" forces plotted and organized a number of explosions, assassinations, arsons, poisonings and assaults, seriously jeopardizing the lives, property and security of the people of various ethnic groups, and social stability in Xinjiang.
China says 140 dead in Xinjiang riot, blames separatists
Mon Jul 6, 2009 9:08am EDT
By Tyra Dempster and Mark Chisholm
URUMQI, China (Reuters) - At least 140 people have been killed in rioting in China's northwestern region of Xinjiang, with the government blaming exiled separatists for the Muslim area's worst case of unrest in years.
Hundreds of rioters have been arrested, the official Xinhua news agency reported, after rock-throwing Uighur people took to the streets of the regional capital on Sunday, some burning and smashing vehicles and confronting ranks of anti-riot police.
The unrest underscores the volatile ethnic tensions that have accompanied China's growing economic and political stake in its western frontiers.
Along with Tibet, Xinjiang is one of the most politically sensitive regions in China, and in both cases the government has sought to maintain its grip by controlling religious and cultural life while also vowing economic growth and prosperity.
But analysts said the fresh trouble in the remote resource-rich region was unlikely to have a major impact on China's economy.
"In terms of China's domestic economy, it is in a remote place and it does not have a big impact on things generally unless there is some evidence, of which there is none, that the government is in some meaningful way losing control," said Arthur Kroeber, Managing Director of Dragonomics, a research and advisory firm in Beijing.
Beijing's image as a global power, though, may take a hit as it cracks down on the rioters, say analysts.
"Unfortunately ... this will bring a negative impact on China's image as a responsible power. Coercion alone will not solve the problem. If you use coercion alone it will worsen the problem," said Zheng Yongnian, director of the East Asian Institute at the National University of Singapore.
Signaling a security crackdown in the strategic region near Pakistan and central Asia, a senior Chinese government official said the unrest was the work of extremist forces abroad.
"This was a crime of violence that was pre-meditated and organized," Xinhua quoted the unnamed official as saying.
He blamed the violence on the World Uyghur Congress led by Rebiya Kadeer, a Uighur businesswoman now in exile in the United States after years in jail, and accused of separatist activities. She did not answer calls for comment.
But exiled Uighur groups adamantly rejected the Chinese government claim of a plot. They said the riot was an outpouring of pent-up anger over government policies and Han Chinese dominance of economic opportunities.
China's markets largely brushed off the riots, with the benchmark Shanghai Composite index ending up 1.2 percent at a 13-month closing high, bucking a generally weaker trend in the rest of Asia.
"This is regional unrest only," said Zheshang Securities analyst Zhang Yanbing.
HAN CHINESE TARGETED
Li Zhi, the Communist Party boss of regional capital Urumqi told a news conference that the death toll from the rioting had risen to 140, the semi-official China News Agency said. Xinhua said 816 people were hurt and admitted to hospital.
Xinhua did not give the ethnic identity of the dead, or say if they were civilians or police, but admissions at the People's Hospitals, one of the biggest in Urumqi, suggested Han Chinese were targeted.
Xinhua said the hospital received 291 people of whom 17 died later. Among them 233 were Han Chinese, 39 were Uighurs, while the rest were from other ethnic minorities.
The riot in Urumqi, 3,270 km (2,050 miles) west of Beijing, followed a protest against the government's handling of a June clash between Han Chinese and Uighur factory workers in southern China, where two Uighurs died in Shaoguan.
"In Xinjiang one of the major sources of discontent is that there is still a major gap economically between Han and Uighurs," said Barry Sautman, a specialist on China's ethnic politics at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
Almost half of Xinjiang's 20 million people are Uighurs. The population of Urumqi is mostly Han Chinese, and the Uighurs complain they dominate economic opportunities.
Chinese state television showed rioters throwing rocks at police and overturning a police car, and smoke billowing from burning vehicles.
"I personally saw several Han people being stabbed. Many people on buses were scared witless," Zhang Wanxin, a Urumqi resident, said by telephone.
Police rounded up "several hundred" who participated in the violence, including more than 10 key players who fanned unrest, Xinhua said, and are searching for 90 others.
Residents in Urumqi were unable to access the Internet on Monday, several said. "The city is basically under martial law," Yang Jin, a dried fruit merchant, said by telephone.
(Additional reporting by Chris Buckley, Emma Graham-Harrison, Yu Le and Benjamin Kang Lim in Beijing and Ben Blanchard in Shanghai; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani and Jeremy Laurence)
Deadly ethnic riots in China's northwest
Mon Jul 6, 2009 7:57am EDT
By Emma Graham-Harrison
BEIJING (Reuters) - At least 140 people have been killed in rioting in the capital of China's northwestern region of Xinjiang, with the government blaming exiled separatists for the Muslim area's worst case of ethnic unrest in years.
Hundreds of rioters have been arrested, the official Xinhua news agency reported, after Uighurs took to the streets of the regional capital on Sunday, some burning and smashing vehicles and throwing rocks at ranks of anti-riot police.
WHY ARE UIGHURS RIOTING?
The riots followed a protest about government handling of a June clash between Han Chinese and Uighur factory workers in southern China, where two Uighurs died.
But the underlying cause of the unrest was probably long-standing economic, cultural and religious grievances, which have built up over decades of tight central rule and periodically erupt into violence, though never before on such a deadly scale.
"In Xinjiang one of the major sources of discontent is that there is still a major gap economically between Han and Uighurs," said Barry Sautman, a specialist in China's ethnic politics at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
"There are also people who object to the amount of control exercised by the state with regard to religion and there are people who resent that the Han population is substantial."
WILL THERE BE MORE RIOTS?
It is extremely unlikely that there will be further rioting in Urumqi itself. Security forces moved swiftly to crush the unrest as soon as it erupted, and have established a heavy presence on the streets.
Analysts say there could be isolated incidents in other towns, particularly ones with a Uighur majority population, but China has a strong grip on Xinjiang and its geography is less of a challenge than neighboring Tibet, so the chances of sustained unrest over a long period are low.
"Although the scale of the security-force response makes a serious deterioration in public order unlikely, more limited, isolated security incidents are very possible in the current climate," Control Risks' China analyst Andrew Gilholm said in a note on the Xinjiang situation.
IS THE UNREST LINKED TO 2008 RIOTS IN LHASA?
There has been no evidence or claims of links between rioters in Urumqi and unrest in Lhasa in March last year. But Beijing's handling of the two events is similar, and the official Xinhua news agency made an explicit comparison in a commentary.
"There are big parallels with what happened in Tibet ... the government has started applying the same reading to this event," said Nicholas Bequelin, of Human Rights Watch in Hong Kong.
"That is (they are saying) that the causes of this event are a plot by foreign forces with an exile at their head, and that the blame is entirely apportioned on the demonstrators."
WILL THERE BE ANY CHANGE IN POLICY Toward MINORITIES?
It seems impossible that Beijing could ignore two major eruptions of ethnic violence in its two most sensitive regions over less than 18 months apart.
But the rioting, which comes three months before the 60th founding anniversary of the People's Republic of China, will provide as much fuel to hardliners keen to tighten security screws as it will to officials who favor policies of reconciliation and accommodation.
"Every time there has been major ethnic incidents two (government) approaches go on parallel tracks," said Sautman.
"There are people who say 'we have to think about changing policy' and there are people who say 'we have to be more effective in hunting down separatists', and I think both things will probably occur."
However any soul-searching is likely to happen in private as China's secretive government has long fostered nationalism as a unifying ideology and favors presenting a strong, unified face to its citizens and the world.
WILL THE RIOTS DETER FOREIGN INVESTMENT IN XINJIANG?
Xinjiang's remote location and sensitive national security role have meant that foreign investment so far is small-scale and the interest of major international firms largely confined to the oil and gas sector.
Any would-be investors are unlikely to be put off by fears of further violence given the size and strength of the army.
If reporting on the unrest raises awareness in the West of ethnic discontent in northwest China, Uighur activists in exile might be able to leverage uneasiness about Chinese government policy into some pressure on would-be investors.
However it is extremely unlikely that they would be able to generate anything even approaching the momentum behind Tibetan exile groups and their supporters.
(Editing by Benjamin Kang Lim and Sanjeev Miglani)
1 comment:
"Oops! Not Again!"
This is all evil China can say after shooting hundreds of protesters!?
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