Muslim minority riots erupt in China's west

Muslim minority riots erupt in China's west

By GILLIAN WONG – 52 minutes ago

BEIJING (AP) — Protesters from a Muslim ethnic group clashed with police in China's far west Sunday, with activists saying police fired shots in the air and used batons to disperse a crowd that had swelled to nearly 1,000.

State media said at least three ethnic Han Chinese were killed, while an activist group said one demonstrator may have died.

Protesters, mostly from the Uighur ethnic group, set at least one car on fire, overturned police barriers and attacked buses in several hours of violence that appeared to subside somewhat as police and military presence intensified into the night, according to participants and witnesses.

Tensions between Uighurs and Chinese are never far from the surface in Xinjiang province, China's vast Central Asian buffer province.

Accounts differed over what happened Sunday in the city of Urumqi, but the violence seemed to have started when a crowd of protesters — who started out peaceful — refused to disperse.

Adam Grode, an American Fulbright scholar studying in Urumqi, said he heard explosions and also saw a few people being carried off on stretchers and a Han Chinese man with blood on his shirt entering a hospital.

He said he saw police pushing people back with tear gas, fire hoses and batons, and protesters knocking over police barriers and smashing bus windows.

"Every time the police showed some force, the people would jump the barriers and get back on the street. It was like a cat-and-mouse sort of game," said Grode, 26.

People started to disperse after two hours, he said, but hundreds of police and soldiers poured into the city in the night with two dozen police buses, trucks, and other security vehicles and rounded up Uighurs who were sitting on street curbs.

The government's Xinhua News Agency quoted unnamed officials saying that at least three ethnic Han Chinese were killed in the violence, in which the crowd attacked passers-by, torched vehicles and interrupted traffic on some roads.

The demonstration started peacefully with more than 300 people staging a silent sit-down protest in People's Square in Urumqi to demand an investigation into a brawl June 25 between Uighur and Han Chinese workers at a toy factory in southern China, said Gulinisa Maimaiti, a 32-year-old employee of a foreign company who took part in the protest.

Two reportedly died in last month's factory melee in southern Guangdong province, but Gulisina said protesters believed the real figure was higher.

"We are mourning our compatriots who were beaten to death in Guangdong," Gulinisa said in a phone interview.

She said the crowd grew to 1,000 people, and when they refused to disperse, police pinned protesters to the ground before taking some 40 protesters away.

Dilxat Raxit, a spokesman for the pro-independence World Uighur Congress based in Germany, said he received calls from Urumqi describing the protest as peaceful until police used force to try to clear the square.

Dilxat said some protesters were beaten badly. One of his informants told him that one person was killed. The account could not immediately be corroborated.

Grode, the American student, said he saw groups of Uighurs harassing Han Chinese people who were trying to leave the scene.

A 23-year-old woman who belongs to another Muslim ethnic minority, the Hui, said the public bus she was on was attacked by dozens of Uighurs who were using sticks and bricks to smash the windows of the bus.

"I jumped off the bus to escape and got cut on my arms by the broken glass," said the woman, who declined to give her name for fear of retaliation. She said mobile phone communications in the city appeared to have been disrupted.

Video shot from a building nearby and photos from mobile phones taken from the protest showed people running from police and a car on fire. In other shots, smoke rises in the distance and fire engines race to the protest.

The Urumqi police and city government would not comment about the incident.

Uighur separatists have waged a sporadic campaign for independence in recent decades, and the military, armed police and riot squads maintain a visible presence in the region. After a few years of relative calm, separatist violence picked up last year with attacks against border police and bombings of government buildings.

A protest by several hundred Uighurs in the city of Yining in 1997 against religious restrictions turned into an anti-Chinese uprising that the military put down, leaving at least 10 dead.

Four Uighur detainees at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba were recently released and relocated to Bermuda despite Beijing's objections because U.S. officials have said they fear the men would be executed if they returned to China. Officials have also been trying to transfer 13 others to the Pacific nation of Palau.

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