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  • Urumqi: a Quiet “Open Prison”

    Urumqi: a Quiet “Open Prison”

    2009-07-10

    A man contacted by RFA in Urumqi tells about his fears while the official Chinese media strive to portray a city under control and life back to normal.

    copy2 of copy of mosque 305

    RFA

    Chinese People’s Armed Police in front of the Grand Bazaar in Urumqi, on July 9.

    Official Chinese media are describing the city of Urumqi as “quiet” following several days of ethnic violence between Muslim Uyghurs and the majority Han Chinese.

    “Major streets in Urumqi seemed peaceful Friday,” said the official Xinhua news agency.

    “Life back to normal in Urumqi,” said a caption over a Xinhua picture showing residents buying vegetables in a market.

    But Uyghurs, who say their grievances are routinely ignored and suppressed as “separatism” by Beijing, describe the atmosphere as anything but normal.

    One man in Urumqi, reached by telephone by RFA, said that for its Uyghur minority, Urumqi was “an open prison.”

    Xinhua did acknowledge that “security remained tight” and that “some mosques were shut on Friday “for security reasons.”

    By RFA’s count, only two mosques were open in Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) with a population of 2.3 million people.

    White mosque opened

    On Friday, Uyghur men demanded that they be admitted to the White Mosque near the neighborhood where some of the worst violence occurred following Uyghur protests, a police crackdown, and ethnic clashes that left at least 184 dead, according to an official Xinhua report.

    xinhua_305
    A New China News agency (Xinhua) picture showing “Urumqi residents buying vegetables at a market,” as proof that normalcy has returned to the regional capital on July 10.

    The police decided to open the mosque, apparently in order to avoid yet another clash.

    According to the Associated Press, a group of 10 policemen blocked a small demonstration not far from the White Mosque.

    About 40 Uyghur men and women “began to march, shouting, crying and pumping their fists in the air as they walked.”

    “The Uyghur people are afraid,” said Madina Ahtam, a woman in a multicolored headscarf, who spoke English. “Do you understand? We are afraid. … The problem? Police.”

    Police “pushed journalists away from the area and detained at least four foreign journalists, holding them for several hours.”

    Death toll

    China on Saturday issued its latest casualty figures – 137 ethnic Han Chinese and 46 Uyghurs. A man of Hui nationality was also reported to have been killed.

    Many Uyghurs believe that this understates the Uyghur death toll.

    In an interview on Friday with AP Television, Rebiya Kadeer, the exiled Uyghur leader, said that China’s casualty toll for the unrest has greatly understated the number of Uyghur killed.

    The man contacted by RFA said that Uyghurs were currently unable to move freely around the city.

    The man’s name is not disclosed in order to protect him from retaliation.

    “We cannot go out freely,” he said. “Whenever they see some Uyghur people gathering up, they are forcing them to go inside.”

    “Fully armed police are marching around in the street, in front of our doors. Just below my house, there are police officers, and they can break in and take me away at any time.”

    This man seemed to express a kind desperation displayed by many in the city.

    “The heart of the Uyghur people in our land is broken,” he said. “We can only ask God for help. No one is here to protect us.”

    Foreign reactions

    Overseas, The Organization of the Islamic (OIC) condemned the “disproportionate” use of force in Xinjiang, according to Agence France-Presse.

    The OIC called on China to carry out an “honest” investigation into the clashes and find those responsible for the killings.

    Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told reporters that the issue should be taken to the United Nations’ Security Council.

    The head of Indonesia’s largest Muslim political party, the Prosperous Justice Party, called for the U.N. and Western countries to put pressure on China to stop the “slaughter” of Uyghurs and Han Chinese.

    Original reporting in Uyghur by Erkin. Uyghur service director: Dolkun Kamber. Written for the Web by Dan Southerland.

    https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyghur/eyewitness-07102009094007.html

  • Uighurs dispute China’s breakdown of riot dead

    Uighurs dispute China’s breakdown of riot dead

    By WILLIAM FOREMAN and GILLIAN WONG, Associated Press Writers William Foreman And Gillian Wong, Associated Press Writers – 30 mins ago

    URUMQI, China – China released a breakdown Saturday of the death toll from communal rioting, saying most of the 184 killed were from the Han Chinese majority — an announcement that only fueled suspicion among Muslim Uighurs that many more of their people died.

    Identifying the ethnic background of the dead for the first time since last Sunday’s unrest in western Xinjiang, the government’s Xinhua News Agency cited provincial officials as saying 137 victims were Han while 46 were Uighurs and one was a Hui, another Muslim group.

    Uighurs on the streets of the Xinjiang capital, Urumqi, and from exile activist groups disputed the new figures, citing persistent rumors that security forces fired on Uighurs during Sunday’s protest and in following days.

    “I’ve heard that more than 100 Uighurs have died, but nobody wants to talk about it in public,” said one Uighur man who did not want to give his name because the city remains tense and security forces are everywhere.

    Dispelling such suspicions has become another challenge for the government as it tries to calm the troubled region and win over critics in the international community. Turkey — whose people share an ethnic and cultural bond with the Uighurs — has been particularly critical with the prime minister likening the situation to genocide.

    Uighurs (pronounced WEE-gers) have repeatedly told foreign journalists in Urumqi that police shot at crowds. The accounts have been difficult to verify, except in isolated cases, making it unlikely that Uighur deaths numbered 500 or more as some exile activists have claimed. Security forces have shown discipline in dealing with agitated and angry crowds of Uighurs and Han in the days following the riot.

    Nearly a week after last Sunday’s disturbance, officials have yet to make public key details about the riots and what happened next. How much force police used to re-impose order is unclear. Xinhua’s brief report, which raised the death toll by nearly 30, did not say whether all were killed Sunday or afterward when vigilante mobs ran through the city with bricks, clubs and cleavers.

    China’s communist leadership has ordered forces across Xinjiang to mobilize to put down any unrest, adding a note of official worry that violence might spread elsewhere. The state-run China News Service said that authorities last Monday arrested an unspecified number of people plotting to instigate a riot in Yining, a city near Xinjiang’s border with Kazakstan.

    In a separate report, the news agency said that some of the rioters in Urumqi (pronounced uh-ROOM-chee) came from Kashgar, Hotan and other cities in the region, which abuts Pakistan, Afghanistan and other parts of Central Asia.

    In Urumqi, some Chinese held funeral rites for their dead Saturday. At a makeshift funeral parlor along an alley, friends paid respects at an altar with photos of the dead: a couple and her parents, all beaten to death in the riot.

    Security forces patrolled the city in thick numbers. Paramilitary police carrying automatic weapons and riot shields blocked some roads leading to one largely Uighur district. White armored personnel carriers and open-bed trucks packed with standing troops rumbled along main avenues.

    In one Uighur neighborhood, a police van blared public announcements in the Uighur language urging residents to oppose activist Rebiya Kadeer, a 62-year-old Uighur businesswoman who lives in exile in the U.S., whom China says instigated the riots without providing evidence. She has denied it.

    Kadeer, president of the pro-independence World Uyghur Congress, and other overseas activists say that many more Uighurs have accused authorities of downplaying the toll to cover up killings by Chinese security forces. “We believe the actual number of people dead, wounded and arrested is much higher,” she said in an interview Friday in Washington.

    Kadeer has said at least 500 people were killed while other overseas groups have put the toll even higher, citing accounts from Uighurs in China.

    China has said its security forces exercised restraint in restoring stability but has not provided details nor explained why so many people died.

    Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey — where daily protests have voiced support for the Uighurs — urged Beijing to prevent attacks on the minority group.

    “These incidents in China are as if they are genocide,” said Erdogan. “We ask the Chinese government not to remain a spectator to these incidents. There is clearly a savagery here.”

    The violence last Sunday followed a protest against the June 26 deaths of Uighur factory workers in a brawl in southern China. The crowd then scattered throughout Urumqi, attacking Han Chinese, burning cars and smashing windows.

    Many Uighurs who are still free live in fear of being arrested for any act of dissent.

    Thousands of Chinese troops have flooded into Urumqi to separate the feuding ethnic groups, and a senior Communist Party official vowed to execute those guilty of murder in the rioting.

    A report in the Urumqi Evening News on Friday said police caught 190 suspects in four raids the day before.

    The government believes the Uighurs should be grateful for Xinjiang’s rapid economic development, which has brought new schools, highways, airports, railways, natural gas fields and oil wells in the sprawling, rugged Central Asian region, three times the size of Texas.

    But many of the Turkic-speaking Uighurs, with a population of 9 million in Xinjiang, accuse the dominant Han ethnic group of discriminating against them and saving all the best jobs for themselves. Many also say the Communist Party is repressive and tries to snuff out their Islamic faith, language and culture.

     AP – A mother holds on to her child as she cries for her husband who was killed during riots in Urumqi, China, …
  • Turkish PM to raise Uighur mass killing in G8 summit

    Turkish PM to raise Uighur mass killing in G8 summit

     

     
     

    [ 09 Jul 2009 18:25 ]
    Baku – APA. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan will raise the issue of bloody events in Xinjiang-Uighur autonomous region of China in the G8 summit in L’Aquila, Italy.

    On his departure for the G8 summit, Erdogan told journalists that he will raise the issue of mass killing of Uighurs to the G8 leaders, including the US, APA reports quoting Haberturk. “Our foreign ministry invited the Chinese ambassador and gave a notice to him. We demanded to end this wildness soon. I will discuss this issue with the world leaders. It is impossible for Turkey to keep silence toward this wildness”.

    Erdogan said Turkey was ready to give a visa to the leader of World Uighur Congress Rebia Kadeer, who lives in exile in the United States, if she asks them for it. Chinese communist regime accused Kadeer in the masterminding of unrests and said she instigated the Uighurs in China.

  • Equal Partners or Equal Rivals?

    Equal Partners or Equal Rivals?

    By Aaron Mulvihill
    Special to Russia Profile

    July 6, 2009

    As Europe and Russia Manoeuvre for Control of Energy Routes Across the Caucasus and the Black Sea, Turkey Has Emerged as a Key Broker

    As the jet carrying Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and Energy Minister Taner Yildiz took off from Moscow after a meeting with their Russian counterparts, reports were already circulating about the conclusion of a deal on the Nabucco gas pipeline, which is to pump gas from the Caspian Sea into Europe, bypassing Russia. A coincidence? Or a sign, perhaps, that the meetings could have gone a little better for the Kremlin?

    The dossiers on energy and foreign relations are never far apart when Russian and Turkish delegations meet. The foreign minister was officially visiting to discuss relations with Armenia and Azerbaijan, and the energy minister was to negotiate the building of Turkey’s first nuclear power plant – but the Nabucco pipeline is central to both issues, and it is unlikely to have been left off the agenda.
    The planned 3,300km Nabucco pipeline, which is to pump natural gas from the Caspian Sea into Europe as far as Austria, is designed to reduce European dependence on Russian energy. The final agreement on the construction of the $7.9 billion conduit is to be signed on 13 July in Ankara, it was revealed last Friday.

    Determined to maintain what the media has termed its “energy weapon,” Russia put forward a rival project: South Stream, which would pump Russian gas through the Black Sea to Bulgaria and beyond, also as far as Austria. Turkish representatives earlier in the year hinted that the country would put its full support behind Nabucco only if given guarantees on EU accession. The plausible alternative of South Stream, then, allowed both Russia and Turkey to exert leverage on Europe: Turkey could hold out for an EU quid-pro-quo, while Russia had time to put obstacles in Nabucco’s path, such as buying up its intended sources of gas. Turkey was last week formally invited to take part in the South Stream project, but it was not announced what form this might take, as the pipeline does not pass through Turkish land in its current draft form.

    It is unclear whether, by dragging its heels, Turkey has secured any EU promises (11 of 35 negotiation “chapters” are now open, but the one on energy, significantly, remains blocked), but it certainly has not damaged relations with the Kremlin.

    Since then-President Vladimir Putin’s landmark visit to Ankara in 2004 – the first by a Russian head of state – trade turnover has multiplied, reaching a total volume of $38 billion dollars in 2008, and with increasing frequency observers began referring to a “special relationship” between the two countries. Turkish President Abdullah Gul paid a state visit to Moscow as recently as February 2009.
    Is the Turkey-Russia “equal partnership” more equal than others, as officia1 announcements from both sides would have observers believe? Or do Russia and Turkey regard each other as equally-matched rivals in a shared exclusion from Europe, as did the Russian and Ottoman Empires? 
    Sinan Ogan, the chairman of the Turkish Centre for International Relations and Strategic Analysis, argues that Russo-Turkish relations exhibit a special character. “Our economic structures complement each other and few countries in the world economy have such a feature. The other interesting thing in this relation is that both cooperation and competition exist at the same time within these relations, especially in the field of energy,” said Ogan.

    Energy

    The construction of Nabucco will not only mean that Europe becomes less reliant on Russian imports – the same applies to Turkey itself. Russia currently supplies Turkey with the bulk of its gas imports. In 2007, Russia overtook Iran to become Turkey’s top oil supplier as well. Turkey has few hydrocarbon resources of its own, yet its domestic demand for energy has risen sharply in recent years. Ankara’s latest answer to energy security is a balanced one: it has demanded that a percentage of the Nabucco capacity be made available for domestic distribution, and even possible re-sale, while at the same time is enlisting Russian help in constructing the republic’s first nuclear plant. Neither plan has yet been officially confirmed.

    Turkey’s role as an energy hub makes it politically perilous to accept overtures from one neighbour over another. Ankara’s balancing act is complicated by its simultaneous membership of several, sometimes conflicting, groups.

    Turkey’s NATO allies frown upon its purchase of Russian military hardware, while conscious that the secular Muslim democracy and leading member of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference is a vital partner in Afghanistan and in the fight against Islamic extremism. Russia and Turkey found themselves on the same side in vocal opposition to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and Turkey reversed years of close cooperation with the United States by refusing to cooperate in the offensive. But in August 2008, Turkey aggravated the Kremlin by allowing U.S. warships to pass through the Bosporus en route to Georgia, which was then struggling to regain control over the Russian-backed breakaway province of South Ossetia.

    NATO and Russia cut off ties as a result of the Georgia crisis, and formal co-operation resumed only in late June 2009. The continuing thaw, and possible resumption of military cooperation, is heavily dependent on internal lobbying from Turkey, though it has not prevented Russia from expressing its irritation by erecting barriers to trade.

    Trade

    In an almost immediate retaliation for the Georgian incident, in September 2008 Russia turned away convoys of Turkish trucks at its border, claiming the Turkish produce was of poor quality. According to Sinan Ogan, Turkish exporters are still facing problems with customs officials, despite the fact that “measurements made by Turkish official institutions have proved that there is nothing harmful in these products.” Turkish convoys, he added, are singled out for lengthier checks, and “Turkish trucks have to wait for days and sometimes for weeks [before clearing customs].” 

    In trade, as well as energy, Russia holds the trump cards. Turkey’s trade deficit against Russia reached a colossal $18 billion in 2008, giving its northern neighbour significant economic leverage. The three million Russians who holiday in Turkey annually are perhaps the most visible indicator of this booming trade. Turkish companies are key players in the Russian construction market – Terminal 3 of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport, due to open shortly, is only the most prominent example of Turkish firms’ appetite for major Russian government tenders.

    But Moscow’s continuing dominance in trade is not assured. Its main exports to Turkey are in the volatile sectors of energy and tourism, while it imports durable goods and foodstuffs from Turkey, the demand for which is more stable in the long term even if it has recently fallen. Analysts and rating agencies such as Fitch and Barclays Capital have tipped Turkey as the first country in the “emerging Europe” region, which includes Russia, to buck the economic downturn with strong growth in 2010. They point to its large domestic consumer base and robust banking system.

    Security

    The need for close cooperation between Ankara and Moscow, if not a “special relationship,” is vividly apparent in the sphere of national security. Chechen terrorist cells are thought to be still active in Turkey, and the armed wing of the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) is known to use Russian territory as a safe haven. It has almost become a ritual to accompany each official state visit with a raid on the respective terrorist group’s hideout and a joint declaration of cooperation in the fight against terror. But Moscow has so far declined to add the PKK to its official list of terrorist organisations, despite token pledges of support.

    Tangible security cooperation on a larger scale in the Caucasus region is fraught with complexity. Turkey and Russia de facto support opposite sides in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, which flared up between Armenia and Azerbaijan when they achieved independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. Armenia is Russia’s lone ally in the region, and the republic enjoys generous military support from Moscow. Azerbaijan, whose citizens consider themselves Turkish, rather than Turkic, is the source of much of the crude oil flowing through Turkey, carried by the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline.
    After a long and bloody stalemate, both Russia and Turkey have begun to promote the OSCE Minsk Group peace process. Pipeline politics certainly have their part to play. The Georgian crisis demonstrated how violence in the Caucasus can play havoc with energy distribution, and consequently Turkey is anxious to normalise its strained relations with Armenia. In its turn, Russia’s state-owned gas giant Gazprom signed a deal with its Azeri counterpart in June 2009 to import 500 million cubic metres of gas in 2010 for eventual resale in Europe.

    Caucasus battleground

    Backers of the Nabucco pipeline are anxious that, with Russia snapping up large chunks of Caspian gas production, they will struggle to fill the pipeline when it opens in 2014. As far as energy competition is concerned, the Caucasus and Black Sea region has become as significant a battleground as it ever was during the rivalry of the Russian and Ottoman Empires.

    Accordingly, the historical logic of Turkey and Russia as “equals apart from Europe” is perhaps as useful now as it was during the 16th century.

  • Uighur Protesters March in Washington

    Uighur Protesters March in Washington

    Associated Press
    Tuesday, July 7, 2009; 5:00 PM

     

    Video: Click on the Picture
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    An exiled Uighur leader accused by China of inciting ethnic violence says the Chinese government is responsible for the rising tensions.

    Rebiya Kadeer spoke to Uighur protesters at a rally in downtown Washington on Tuesday. About 100 people are holding blue flags with a white crescent and chanting “Shame on China” as they march to the Chinese Embassy.

    Chinese authorities have accused Kadeer of inciting violence between Muslim Uighurs and ethnic Han Chinese, in which at least 156 people have been killed. The riots broke out Sunday in China’s Xinjiang region.

    Kadeer disputes the number of fatalities, saying she believes at least 500 people have been killed in the riots.

    Kadeer says she’s seeking a stronger statement from the U.S. government about the violence.

    Washington Post

  • Han Chinese Terorists Throng Urumqi

    Han Chinese Terorists Throng Urumqi

    Witnesses say thousands of armed Han Chinese are on the streets of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region’s capital vowing revenge after a deadly clash.

    c1HONG KONG—An angry crowd of several thousand ethnic majority Han Chinese has gathered in Urumqi following weekend riots, amid a welter of rumors surrounding deadly clashes between Muslim Uyghurs and police, according to initial reports from foreign journalists and exiled Uyghur groups overseas.

    “Chinese civilians, using clubs, bars, knives, and machetes, are killing the Uyghurs,” the Munich-based World Uyghur Congress said in a statement.

    “They are storming the university dormitories, Uyghur residential homes, workplaces, and organizations,” it said, accusing the mob of killing unprotected Uyghur civilians.

    Foreign correspondents on the ground in Urumqi said they saw armed crowds of thousands of Han Chinese running through the capital of the northwestern Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR).

    “Two police officers just escorted a Uyghur woman with a baby through a Han crowd with clubs by the People’s Theater,” Time correspondent Austin Ramzy wrote via the real-time micro-blogging platform Twitter.

    Telegraph correspondent Peter Foster reported via Twitter from Urumqi that thousands of armed Han Chinese had gathered near a mosque in Shanxi Alley in downtown Urumqi.

    Police tried to calm the crowd, which was armed with “snooker cues, axes, machetes, baseball bats, metal scaffolding poles, cattle prods, and a plastic mop handle,” according to Foster’s updates.

    Meanwhile, Al-Jazeera correspondent Melissa K. Chan tweeted, also from Urumqi, “A Han Chinese man with a stick just tore open our car door to beat our producer. Averted just in time.”

    Chan said Urumqi was now under martial law. Official media also reported further unrest. Two separate estimates by foreign journalists at the scene put the crowd at around 10,000.

    ‘Troops everywhere’

    Despite Chinese officials’ decision to cut off the Internet and mobile phones, pictures, videos and updates from Urumqi poured into social-networking and image-sharing Web sites including Twitter, YouTube, and Flickr.

    A Han Chinese employee at a youth hostel in downtown Urumqi said, “We have a curfew now and troops are everywhere.”

    “We can still can drive on the streets—but I don’t know if the situation will get worse so I stored some bottles of water and instant noodles,” the employee said.

    “More Han Chinese live in Urumqi than Uyghurs now,” he said. “Many Uyghurs are afraid to go out now. They have their own friends, and we won’t try to be their friends.”

    “Before it was them attacking us. Now it’s our turn to attack them,” another Han Chinese resident said.

    But a municipal official downplayed the tensions.

    “We are coming to work as usual. What do you mean, take to the streets? We will see what happens. Ask again later,” the official said.

    “Of course there have always been ethnic separatists. They have existed for a long time. They are always looking for ways to make trouble. They will do it as soon as they spot an opportunity,” the official added.

    Chaos and vigilantes

    Police fired tear gas repeatedly at the protesters, who refused to disperse. Police were blocking them from getting through to an area of Urumqi populated by Uyghurs, who authorities have blamed for riots on Sunday that left 156 people dead and more than 1,000 injured.

    China’s state-run Xinhua news agency reported similar scenes in other parts of Urumqi.

    “Chaos was seen in a number of places in Urumqi on Tuesday afternoon,” the official Xinhua news agency reported.

    Back in Urumqi, al-Jazeera’s Chan tweeted: “There is no right or wrong anymore. Just vigilantes, Han and [Uyghur]. Mostly men but some women and even children.”

    “I asked a Han Chinese girl if she was scared. ‘Yes, but this is to defend my country,’ she says with stick in hand.”

    The World Uyghur Congress said it had received several reports of deaths at the hands of Han mobs in different locations in Xinjiang, which is home to a population of Turkic-speaking Uyghurs, many of whom oppose Beijing’s rule, and a growing influx of migrants from the rest of China.

    Ethnic tensions have simmered for decades, with Uyghurs saying they are subject to racial discrimination and have scant access to the fruits of China’s breakneck economic growth of the past 30 years.

    China has said some overseas Uyghur separatist groups are connected with international terrorism.

    Foster reported via Shanghai-based Telegraph correspondent Malcolm Moore that some of the crowd were comparing exiled former Uyghur businesswoman Rebiya Kadeer to al-Qaeda mastermind Osama bin Laden.

    The Congress statement said: “[A] Uyghur young man was mutilated on [Urumqi’s] Dongbeilu. A Uyghur woman who was carrying a baby in her arms was mutilated along with her infant baby on Huanghelu.”

    Witnesses on the ground said the mood of the crowd was ugly, with a group of Han Chinese protesters attacking Telegraph correspondent Foster and his assistant, who were protected by police.

    The Uyghur Congress said Chinese security forces were “not taking any action” against the attackers, and that it had received telephone threats from “ethnic Han Chinese” at its headquarters in Munich.

    A Foreign Ministry spokesman said Tuesday that Sunday’s violence in the region was not a peaceful protest, but “evil killing, fire-setting, and looting.”

    Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang told a regular news briefing: “Anybody calling the violence a peaceful protest is trying to turn black into white in an attempt to mislead the public.”

    Urumqi Communist Party chief Li Zhi went to the scene, addressing the crowd and calling for calm. The crowd roared soon after, before rushing off in the other direction, witnesses said.

    Earlier, Li had told reporters: “We immediately reinforced the emergency prevention and control measures after the riots started. Security was dispatched to the four main areas of unrest, and they swiftly took care of the matter in accordance with the law.”

    Internet curbs, media strategy

    Also Tuesday, Li confirmed at a news conference that authorities there had cut off Internet access in parts of Urumqi to stop the flow of information that it saw as a dangerous threat.

    “We cut the Internet connection in some areas of Urumqi in order to quench the riot quickly and prevent violence from spreading to other places,” Li said.

    The Paris-based media watchdog Reporters Without Borders accused authorities of wanting to see Urumqi “cut off from the rest of the world.”

    “Once again, the Chinese government has chosen to cut communications in order to prevent the free flow of information. We firmly condemn this behavior,” the organization said in a statement.

    Many phone lines have been disabled since the violence erupted, but others remain in working order.

    Netizens inside China said the personal update service Twitter, which is frequently used to transmit keywords, news, and photos around the Chinese Web at a speed that eludes China’s censors, was blocked.

    “Twitter is blocked: In another act of net-nanny folly Twitter.com has been blocked on the Chinese mainland,” media analysis blog Danwei commented via the service Monday.

    Other users said the service was still accessible using third-party applications elsewhere on the Web.

    They said sensitive keywords such as “Xinjiang” were currently returning no search results on the Chinese Web, either.

    “Why is it that the moment something happens, the first thing they think of is blocking it?” user Keso tweeted. “Surely the fact that they do this shows that there are skeletons in the closet?”

    Authorities have meanwhile taken the unusual step of bringing foreign reporters to Urumqi to learn about the incident and setting up a media center in a city hotel.

    This contrasts with Beijing’s virtual blackout on previous instances of unrest, such as the Tibetan uprising of early 2008, but is in keeping with its handling of media immediately after the May 2008 Sichuan earthquake.

    But that initial openness ended amid allegations that corruption had resulted in shoddy construction of school buildings that collapsed in the quake.

    Shenzhen-based media commentator Zhu Jianguo said official media reports seemed to be intensifying conflicts rather than soothing them.

    “They are putting out information at a much faster speed than previously, but their approach is exactly the same as it always has been,” Zhu said, suggesting the coverage was one-sided.

    “Now the incident has erupted into racial conflict, and it’s not a simple racial conflict either. It’s all over the country—it’s a crucial point at which the government faces off against the people.”

    Original reporting by RFA’s Uyghur, Mandarin, and Cantonese services. Written for the Web in English by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Sarah Jackson-Han.

    Radio Free Asia