Beijing, July 08: Banks of anti-riot police tried to drive a wedge into a crowd of about 1,000 Han Chinese protesters on Wednesday in Urumqi after 156 people were killed at the weekend in the region’s worst ethnic violence for decades.
Urumqi, regional capital of the far-flung northwestern region of Xinjiang, imposed an overnight curfew after thousands of Han stormed through its streets demanding redress and sometimes extracting bloody vengeance on Uighurs for Sunday’s violence.
There were scuffles in the volatile crowd on Wednesday as police and security forces seized apparent ringleaders, prompting cries of “release them, release them”.
President Hu Jintao abandoned plans to attend a G8 summit in Italy, returning home early to monitor developments in energy-rich Xinjiang, where 1,080 people have been wounded and 1,434 arrested since Sunday.
Financial markets again appeared unaffected and life was returning to the streets of Uighur neighbourhoods. But residents said night-time arrests were continuing and they were quietly preparing to defend against further Han attacks.
The city was still on edge. In one downtown street two young boys were surrounded by an angry mob, with dozens trying to pull them down and grabbing at their hair.
Volatile Han crowds, swelling by the hour, protested against security forces seizing young Han men.
“Why are you catching Han Chinese? They are only trying to protect us,” said one woman in the crowd, bickering with police.
Rumours swirled. A group of Uighur men said they were convinced two locals died in Tuesday’s confrontations and that there were many more deaths across the city.
A man in his 50s, who gave name as Mohammed Ali, said he had heard from neighbours and friends that two men had died and two had been seriously wounded.
“Now we are scared to go anywhere,” he said. “Doing even simple things becomes frightening.”
“BLOOD FOR BLOOD INCOMPATIBLE WITH RULE OF LAW”
Police say Sunday’s clashes were triggered by a brawl between Uighurs and Han at a factory in south China prompted by a rumour Uighurs had raped two women. Police have detained 15 people in connection with the factory brawl, including two suspected of spreading rumours on the Internet.
“If a wrong is avenged with another wrong, there would be no end to it,” the state-owned English-language China Daily said in an editorial.
“Blood for blood is incompatible with the rule of law and will only lead to a vicious cycle of harm and revenge.”
Along with Tibet, Xinjiang is one of the most politically sensitive regions in China. It is strategically located at the borders of Russia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, has abundant oil reserves and is China’s largest natural gas-producing region.
Xinjiang has long been a tightly controlled hotbed of ethnic tensions, fostered by an economic gap between many Uighurs and Han Chinese, government controls on religion and culture and an influx of Han migrants who now are the majority in most key cities, including Urumqi. There were attacks in the region before and during last year’s Summer Olympics in Beijing.
But controlling the anger on both sides of the ethnic divide will now make controlling Xinjiang, with its gas reserves and trade and energy ties to central Asia, all the more testing for the ruling Communist Party.
Russia put its support firmly behind China, saying the violence was a purely internal affair.
Groups of Han gathered around reporters in Urumqi to talk about how angry they were and dragged away a Uighur woman who also approached. It was not clear what happened to her.
“We want these terrorists punished. Our hearts are still filled with anger,” said one of the Han Chinese men.
Li Yufang, a Han who owns a clothes store, said he was outraged by what had happened over the weekend and wanted to protest again, although he admitted it was unlikely amid the heavy presence of troops.
“Uighurs are spoiled like pandas. When they steal, rob, rape or kill, they can get away with it. If we Han did the same thing, we’d be executed,” he said.
The government has blamed Sunday’s killings on exiled Uighurs seeking independence for their homeland, especially Rebiya Kadeer, a businesswoman and activist now living in exile in the United States.
“This was a massive conspiracy by hostile forces at home and abroad, and their goal was precisely to sabotage ethnic unity and provoke ethnic antagonism,” the Communist Party boss of Xinjiang, Wang Lequan, said in a speech.
Kadeer, writing in the Asian Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, condemned the violence on both sides and again denied being the cause of the unrest.
“Years of Chinese repression of Uighurs topped by a confirmation that Chinese officials have no interest in observing the rule of law when Uighurs are concerned is the cause of the current Uighur discontent,” she wrote.
Uighurs, a Turkic people who are largely Muslim and share linguistic and cultural bonds with Central Asia, make up almost half of Xinjiang’s 20 million people.
The population of Urumqi, which lies around 3,300 km (2,000 miles) west of Beijing, is mostly Han.
—Agencies