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Tag: Urumqi

  • New protest in China city torn by deadly rioting

    New protest in China city torn by deadly rioting

    Chinese residents protested deteriorating public safety Thursday after reported syringe attacks in the western Chinese city of Urumqi where ethnic rioting in July killed nearly 200 people.

    People living near the city center reached by telephone said hundreds, possibly thousands, of members of China’s majority Han ethnic group gathered downtown to denounce the regional government and deteriorating law and order in the city of 2.5 million.

    Despite official claims of calm returning, safety fears have remained high since the July 5 riots among members of the region’s main Uighur ethnic group who targeted Han, residents said.

    Renewed unrest in Urumqi and the vast surrounding region of Xinjiang could pose a vexing problem for China’s leadership now engaged in an all-out campaign to ensure stability ahead of the 60th anniversary of the founding of the communist state on Oct. 1.

    Han resident Zhao Jianzhuang said he joined a large crowd of protesters at a downtown intersection who were being blocked by riot police from marching on central People’s Square, less than 1 mile (1.6 kilometers) away.

    He said people were pushing and shoving police and some in the crowd had been beaten. Participants were shouting slogans including “The government is useless,” and calling for the dismissal of the regional Communist Party boss Wang Lequan, a noted hard-liner and ally of President Hu Jintao.

    The official Xinhua News Agency confirmed the protest. People assembled at several places, including more than 1,000 in the residential area of Xiaoximen, to demand a “security guarantee” from authorities after a series of syringe attacks were reported in city, it said.

    Police seized 15 suspects for attacking people with hypodermic needles in the city, Xinhua said. No reason was given for the attacks.

    A Uighur woman who runs a shop near the Grand Bazaar in the Uighur district described the atmosphere as tense. She said there were few people on the street by mid-afternoon.

    “Earlier, a lot of people ran over saying ‘something’s happened, something’s happened,’ so I quickly closed my shop and rushed home,” said the shopkeeper, who did not want to give her name for fear of government reprisals.

    Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said she had no knowledge of the protest, but told reporters at a regularly scheduled news conference that China’s government “is competent to safeguard social stability and national unity.”

    Thursday is the 15th day of the seventh lunar month — an important day when Han Chinese honor the dead by inviting them back for meals. The date may have been cause for agitation as most of the victims in the July violence were Han Chinese.

    Zhao said anger was stoked by a perceived delay in trials for those arrested over the riot, as well as a recent spate of stabbings by people wielding syringes. He claimed more than 460 people had been injured.

    “There are so many security forces deployed here, yet they’re incapable of protecting us,” Zhao said.

    Xinhua gave no information about when the stabbings occurred or the number of victims, but quoted a deputy director of the region’s health department as saying nobody had been infected or poisoned and medical workers were conducting regular follow-up checks.

    The July riots — China’s worst ethnic violence in decades — killed 197 people, injured 1,700 more and sparked a massive security crackdown in the traditionally Muslim western region of Xinjiang, of which Urumqi is the capital.

    The protest also comes a day after an international trade fair opened in Urumqi, with the government trumpeting the area for foreign investment.

    “It is safe for foreign businesspeople to invest in Xinjiang. They should not have safety concerns,” He Yiming, the regional commerce department head, was quoted as saying by the state-owned China Daily newspaper on Wednesday.

    On a visit to Xinjiang late last month, Hu called for the strengthening of ethnic unity and Xinjiang’s local economy.

    China claims the July riot was instigated by exiled Uighur activist Rebiya Kadeer, an accusation she strongly denies. Uighurs have long complained of discrimination and economic marginalization by Han migrants who have flooded into Xinjiang since communist troops entered the region in 1949. Like Tibetans, another restive minority, many Uighurs claim they were independent for much of their history.

    The July unrest broke out after police stopped an initially peaceful protest by Uighur youths, prompting crowds to smash windows, burn cars and attack Han Chinese. Two days later, Han vigilantes carried out revenge attacks.

    03 September 2009, Thursday

    AP BEIJING

    TodaysZaman
  • Anger China or defend Uighurs? Turkey walks fine line.

    Anger China or defend Uighurs? Turkey walks fine line.

    Beijing urged Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan to retract his statement that China is committing “genocide” against its Muslim minority.

    c2Istanbul – Developments in China’s restive Xinjiang Province and the attacks against the minority Muslim Uighurs there may not have led to vocal protests in most of the Muslim world. But in Turkey, the events in western China have led to large protests in the streets and strong words from Turkish officials.

    The comment raising the loudest outcry has been Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s accusation last week that China is committing “genocide” against the Uighurs, a statement that Beijing is now pressuring him to retract.

    Experts say that taking its criticism of China too far could backfire on Ankara, which has been working to improve both its diplomatic and trade relations with Beijing.

    An estimated 184 people have died in the recent violent clashes between Uighurs and ethnic Han Chinese in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang. Chinese officials have claimed that most of those killed have been Han.

    Turkey’s minister of industry and trade, Nihat Ergun, last week called for a boycott of Chinese goods, while Mr. Erdogan, speaking on television last Friday, said: “The incidents in China are, simply put, tantamount to genocide. There’s no point in interpreting this otherwise.”

    Uighurs as ‘brothers’

    “There is a lot of sensitivity among the Turkish public about the Uighurs. They consider them as real brothers,” says Sami Kohen, a political affairs columnist for Milliyet, a Turkish daily.

    “Turks originally came from that part of Asia to Anatolia, and the language that Uighurs use is much closer to the language that Turkey speaks than others in Central Asia,” he continues.

    The Turkish president’s official flag, for example, has 16 stars on it, representing “Turkish states” established throughout history. One of the stars commemorates the Uighur state that existed around the 8th century.

    Adds Mr. Kohen: “There is quite a large Uighur community in Turkey, and they are quite strong. They have a lobby and they have been quite strong in defending their cause.”

    Turkey raises its global profile

    Turkey has, in recent years, been working to raise its foreign policy profile and establish itself as a regional political and economic power. Turkey’s president, Abdullah Gul, actually visited Urumqi as part of a recent state visit shortly before the violence broke out there. Turkey signed a reported $1.5 billion worth of trade deals during the visit.

    But analysts say Ankara’s criticism could lead to a rupture with Beijing.

    “The Turks really have a tough decision to make, whether they keep this going or back off. This is a major test for Turkey’s new foreign policy,” says Bulent Aliriza, director of the Turkey Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “This is a serious problem for the Turks from every angle.”

    Ankara now also needs to decide if it will grant a possible request to visit Turkey by Rebiya Kadeer, a Uighur diaspora activist based in the United States whom China has accused of being behind the violence in Xinjiang.

    “All hell is going to break loose if she shows up in Turkey, especially after the comment that Erdogan made,” Mr. Aliriza says.

    Take it back, China says

    The Chinese government now appears to be pushing back against Turkey. A Tuesday editorial in the government-controlled English-language China Daily urged Erdogan to “take back his remarks … which constitute interference in China’s internal affairs.”

    Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi, in a phone conversation with his Turkish counterpart, blamed the violence in Xinjiang on “three evil forces,” state news agency Xinhua said, referring to “extremism, separatism, and terrorism.”

    For Turkey, which has had its share of domestic violence and terrorism, both from Islamic extremists and Kurdish separatists, these are not meaningless words.

    The Christian Science Monitor

  • 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