China says 140 killed in riots in west


URUMQI, China – 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 officials said Monday the death toll was expected to rise.

Police sealed off streets in parts of the provincial capital, Urumqi, after discord between ethnic Muslim Uighur people and China's Han majority erupted into riots. Witnesses reported a new protest Monday in a second city, Kashgar.

Columns of paramilitary police in green camouflage uniforms and flak vests marched Monday around Urumqi's main bazaar — a largely Uighur neighborhood — carrying batons, long bamboo poles and slingshots. Mobile phone service was blocked, and Internet links were also cut or slowed down.

Rioters on Sunday overturned barricades, attacking vehicles and houses, and clashed violently with police in Urumqi, 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.

There was little immediate explanation for how so many people died. The government accused a Uighur businesswoman living in the U.S. of inciting the riots through phone calls and "propaganda" spread on Web sites. Exile groups said the violence started only after police began violently cracking down on a peaceful protest complaining about a fight between Uighur and Han factory workers in another part of China.

The unrest is another troubling sign for Beijing at how rapid economic development has failed to stem — and even has exacerbated — resentment among ethnic minorities, who say they are being marginalized in their homelands as Chinese migrants pour in.

Thousands of people took part in Sunday's disturbance, unlike recent sporadic separatist violence carried out by small groups in Xinjiang. The clashes echoed the violent protest that rocked Tibet last year and left many Tibetan communities living under clamped-down security ever since.

Tensions between Uighurs and the majority Han Chinese are never far from the surface in Xinjiang, a sprawling region rich in minerals and oil that borders eight Central Asian nations. Many Uighurs pronounced WEE-gers yearn for independence and some militants 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 who say they are being squeezed out.

About 1,000 to 3,000 Uighur demonstrators had gathered Sunday in the regional capital for a protest that apparently spun 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 and checkpoints ringed the city to prevent rioters from escaping. Mobile phone service provided by at least one company was cut Monday to stop people from organizing further action in Xinjiang.

Internet access was blocked or unusually slow in Urumqi on Monday. Videos and text updates about the riots were removed from China-based social networking sites such as Youku, a YouTube-like video service, and Fanfou, a Chinese micro-blogging Web site similar to Twitter.

A Fanfou search for posts with the key word Urumqi turned up zero results while Twitter, which is hosted overseas, yielded hundreds of comments in Chinese and English. Major Chinese portals such as ,andrelied solely on Xinhua for news of the event and turned off the comment function at the bottom of the stories so people could not publicly react.

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

Uighur activists and exiles 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 are backward and ungrateful for the economic development the Chinese have brought to the poor region.

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 shops were damaged. She said 140 people were killed and 828 injured in the violence.

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.





Wuppertal in Germany. REUTERS/Ina Fassbender

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