Chinese Communists Massacre few hundred Muslims in Urumqi, Xinjiang

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A video grab from CCTV shows a burning vehicle in Urumqi, Xinjiang Autonomous Region, China. – Reuters pic

All the Chinese should change their history books to blame Chinese in Nan Kin Massacre. With this logic of thinking, you colonized other people’s land and blamming the victims like Muslims, Tibets etc, the world should blame Chinese even if Japanese had killed a lot of Chinese. Now you are blaming Taiwan government and its people because you could not colonize them. STUPID FOOLS!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 BEIJING, July 6 — China said a riot that shook the capital of the western Xinjiang region yesterday killed 140 people and the government called the ethnic unrest a plot against its power, signalling a security crackdown.

Locals took to the streets of the capital, Urumqi, some burning and smashing vehicles and confronting ranks of police and anti-riot troops.

The death toll from the rioting has risen to 140, the semi-official China News Agency quoted Li Zhi, the Communist Party Boss of Urumqi City, as telling a news conference on Monday morning.

A separate report from the official Xinhua news agency had said the unrest injured 816, according to regional police authorities. That report had put the dead at 129.

The government put the number of people on the streets on Sunday at 300 to 500 while other sources had it as high as 3,000.

Chinese police have arrested “several hundred” who participated in the violence, including more than 10 key players who fanned unrest, Xinhua said.

The riot followed a protest in Urumqi — a city of 2.3 million residents 3,270 km west of Beijing — against government handling of a late June clash between Han Chinese and Uighur factory workers in far southern China, where two Uighurs died in Shaoguan.

Today morning “the situation was under control”, Xinhua said. There were no immediate reports of violence in other parts of Xinjiang.

But a senior official there swiftly delivered the government claim that the unrest was the work of extremist forces abroad, signalling a security crackdown in the already tense and strategic region near Pakistan and central Asia.

“After the (Shaoguan) incident, the three forces abroad strived to beat this up and seized it as an opportunity to attack us, inciting street protests,” Nuer Baikeli, governor of Xinjiang, said in a speech shown on Xinjiang television.

The “three forces” refer to groups the government says engage in separatism, militant action and religious extremism.

“In Xinjiang, nothing is worth speaking of without stability,” said Nuer Baikeli, a Uighur.

Officials ordered traffic off the streets in parts of Urumqi to ensure there was no fresh unrest, Xinhua added.

“The city is basically under martial law,” Yang Jin, a dried fruit merchant in Urumqi, said by telephone.

“It would be wrong for anyone to say he wasn’t afraid, but the situation looks calm for now.”

MASTERMINDS

An unnamed Chinese official said the “unrest was masterminded by the World Uyghur (also spelt Uighur) Congress led by Rebiya Kadeer”, according to Xinhua. “This was a crime of violence that was pre-meditated and organised,” said the report.

Rebiya Kadeer is 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.

“They’re blaming us as a way to distract the Uighurs’ attention from the discrimination and oppression that sparked this protest,” said Dilxat Raxit, a spokesman for the World Uyghur Congress in exile in Sweden.

“It began as a peaceful assembly. There were thousands of people shouting to stop ethnic discrimination … They are tired of suffering in silence.”

The government’s claims of conspiracy by pro-independence exiles echo the handling of rioting across Tibetan areas in March last year, which Beijing also called a plot hatched abroad.

The unrest underscores that Xinjiang, no less than Tibet, faces volatile ethnic tensions that have accompanied China’s growing economic and political stake in its western frontiers.

Xinjiang is the doorway to China’s trade and energy ties with central Asia, and is itself rich in gas, minerals and farm produce. But many Uighurs say they see little of that wealth.

“The government is applying its ready-made template that all ethnic tension is caused by external plots,” said Nicholas Bequelin, a China researcher for Human Rights Watch, a New York-based group, who has long studied Xinjiang.

“This incident could further polarise ethnic groups in Xinjiang … The official reaction is going to be pretty much what we saw in Tibet — more repression, tighter control.”

ROCKS THROWN AT POLICE

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, told Reuters by telephone.

Alim Seytoff, of the Uyghur American Association in Washington D.C., emailed pictures showing hundreds of locals confronting police in Urumqi, armoured riot-control vehicles patrolling streets, wounded and bloodied civilians lying on streets, and ranks of anti-riot police with shields and clubs.

Almost half of Xinjiang’s 20 million people are Uighurs. The population of Urumqi is mostly Han Chinese, and the city is under tight police security even in normal times. — Reuters

China says 140 dead in Xinjiang unrest , Malaysian Insider

Read another report here_

China blames Muslim Uighurs for deadly protests, Malaysiakini

China blamed Muslim Uighurs armed with knives and batons for riots in the capital of its restive Xinjiang region that left at least three dead, as heavy security was imposed across the city.

 

Dramatic footage of Sunday’s unrest broadcast by the state-run CCTV network showed men turning over a police car and smashing its windows, a woman being kicked as she lay on the ground, and buses and other vehicles aflame.

Three “ordinary” Han Chinese people died in the violence, an initial Xinhua report said, while a later dispatch said a “number of civilians and one armed police officer” were killed, without clarifying the death toll.

Authorities said heavy security had been rolled out across Urumqi, and a police spokesman there told AFP by telephone that the situation on Monday was calm.

“All (police) units and individuals shall voluntarily help maintain social order,” an Urumqi government notice said, according to Xinhua.

“People who violate the notice will be detained and punished by police.”

A witness, a Han Chinese bar owner in the city centre where the riots took place and who refused to be named, told AFP there were around 3,000 Uighur protesters, some of whom were armed with wooden batons and knives.

She said the rioters broke cars, smashed windows and tried to set some buses on fire.

“All shop owners in the street were very scared,” she told AFP by telephone, adding order had now been restored.

A pre-empted violence

The Xinjiang government blamed Rebiya Kadeer, the Uighurs’ leader who is living in exile in the United States, for orchestrating the unrest.

“An initial investigation showed the violence was masterminded by the separatist World Uighur Congress led by Rebiya Kadeer,” the government said in a statement, according to Xinhua.

“The violence is a pre-empted, organised violent crime. It is instigated and directed from abroad, and carried out by outlaws in the country.”

However Uighur exiles, who have long chafed at Chinese rule in Xinjiang, accused Chinese security forces of over-reacting in quelling peaceful protests by thousands of people, and said police had fired indiscriminately.

The unrest echoes deadly violence in Buddhist Tibet in March last year when Tibetans stormed through the streets of the region’s capital, Lhasa, attacking Han Chinese in frustration at what they claimed was repressive Chinese rule.

Many of Xinjiang’s roughly eight million Uighurs similarly say they have suffered political, cultural and religious persecution.

As in Tibet, they also complain about Han Chinese moving into Xinjiang and dominating economic and political life.

Alim Seytoff, general secretary of the Uighur American Association, told AFP in Washington that he feared the death toll was higher than the three reported by Beijing.

Police fired shots

Seytoff said Uighur students were seeking the arrest of suspects behind an ethnically charged brawl late last month at a factory in southern China that left two Uighurs dead.

“These young Uighurs peacefully took to the streets but more than 1,000 armed Chinese police came out,” Seytoff told AFP.

“What we were told is that they began to shoot indiscriminately.”

Kadeer also blamed Chinese authorities in a statement released by the Uighur American Association.

“This incident could have been avoided if the Chinese authorities had properly investigated the Shaoguan killings,” Kadeer said, referring to the factory brawl.

“Young Uighurs exercised their right to peacefully protest the mishandling of the killings and were in turn met with government violence.”

Xinjiang is a rugged region of vast deserts and mountains that borders central Asia, and the Uighurs are a Turkic-speaking people who have closer cultural links to their regional neighbours than the Han Chinese.

2009 marks 60 years since communist Chinese troops entered Xinjiang and “peacefully liberated” the region. Advocates of independence for the area have maintained the move was an invasion.

-AFP