More than 150 people reported killed, hundreds hurt in Xinjiang region
 David Gray / Reuters Chinese soldiers wearing riot gear prepare to march in formation as they patrol the streets of Urumqi, Xinjiang region, in China on Monday. |
The arrests come amid a security clampdown on the region, with hundreds of paramilitary police with shields, rifles and clubs taking control of the streets of the capital, Urumqi, where the riots took place on Sunday.
The violence does not bode well for China's efforts to mollify long-simmering ethnic tensions between the minority Uighur people and the ethnic Han Chinese in Xinjiang — a sprawling region three times the size of Texas that shares borders with Pakistan, Afghanistan and other Central Asian countries.
"We haven't had anything like this, really, ever," said Dru Gladney, a Uighur expert at the Pacific Basin Institute at Pomona College in California. "It really gives strong evidence of widespread unrest and discontentment."
Mobile-phone service and the social-networking site Twitter have been blocked, and Internet links also were cut or slowed down.
A nonviolent protest by 200 people was broken up in a second city, Kashgar, and the official Xinhua News Agency said police had evidence that demonstrators were trying to organize more unrest in Kashgar, Yili and Aksu.
It said police had raided several groups plotting unrest in Dawan township in Urumqi, as well as at a former race course that is home to a transient population.
Hans inundate region
The unrest in Urumqi began Sunday after 1,000 to 3,000 people gathered at the People's Square to protest the June 25 deaths of Uighur factory workers killed in a riot in southern China. Xinhua said two died; other sources put the figure higher.
 Peter Parks / AFP - Getty Images Chinese riot police patrol a street in Urumqi, in China's far west Xinjiang province, on Monday, following a deadly riot. |
The government often says the Uighurs should be grateful for the roads, railways, schools, hospitals and oil fields it has been building in Xinjiang, a region known for scorching deserts and snowy mountain ranges.
'One big family'
A similar situation exists in Tibet, where a violent protest last year left many Tibetan communities living under clamped-down security ever since.
"The Han Chinese say we all belong to the same country. We're all part of one big family," said Memet, a restaurant worker who like other Uighurs declined to give his full name because he feared the police. "But the Han always treat us separately."
A Han Chinese shopkeeper, who only gave his surname Wang because the ethnic issue is so sensitive, disagreed. "Those who cause such trouble are criminals," he said. "They're never happy with what they have."
Sunday's violence was notable because it happened in Urumqi, which has been relatively peaceful and hasn't been a hotbed of religious or political agitation. In other restive Xinjiang cities, red propaganda banners are filled with slogans encouraging ethnic harmony. But most of the banners in Urumqi touted anti-drug and fire prevention campaigns.
The population of 2.3 million is also overwhelmingly Han Chinese in the city, a mixture of drab concrete apartment blocks and gleaming new office towers.
Uighur Gitmo prisoners sent to Bermuda
China labels some Uighur separatist groups as terrorists.
Four Uighur detainees at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba were recently released and relocated to Bermuda despite Beijing's objections because U.S. officials have said they fear the men would be executed if they returned to China. Officials have also been trying to transfer 13 others to the Pacific nation of Palau. The men were captured in Afghanistan and Pakistan in 2001, but the U.S. later determined they were not "enemy combatants."
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
0 comments:
Post a Comment