Xinjiang widens crackdown on Uighurs

Xinjiang widens crackdown on Uighurs

By Kathrin Hille in Kashgar

Published: July 19 2009 17:13 | Last updated: July 19 2009 17:13

The government of the restive western Chinese region of Xinjiang is stepping up security amid a widening crackdown on Uighurs after ethnic unrest earlier this month that left more than 190 dead and many more wounded.

The move came as Nuer Baikeli, Xinjiang’s regional governor, admitted in a public statement on Sunday that Chinese police shot dead 12 Uighur rioters in the region, in a rare government admission of the deaths inflicted by security forces. He claimed that the rioting was an attempt by exiled separatists to split Xinjiang from China.
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Sources informed of security planning in the wake of the unrest said the government was flying more armed police into Xinjiang as the need for continued heavy presence in and around Urumqi, the regional capital, was stretching troops thin in other parts of the region.

Armed police levels are to be raised to 130,000 before October 1, the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China.

In the worst ethnic unrest in China since the Cultural Revolution, Uighurs attacked majority Han Chinese in Urumqi on July 5 after taking to the streets to protest against an ethnic clash at a factory in south China in June which left two Uighurs dead.

More than 4,000 Uighurs had been arrested since July 5, said a source briefed on security matters.

According to a person present at a Communist party meeting discussing the crackdown, Urumqi’s prisons are full and newly arrested people are being held in a People’s Liberation Army warehouse.

Armed police have established checkpoints on all roads leading in and out of Urumqi. This week all vehicles were being stopped and all passengers on long-distance buses leaving Urumqi had to disembark for identity checks.

Private cars without Uighur passengers were waved through after a quick document check for the drivers.

Vehicles with Uighur drivers or with Uighur passengers were being searched at gunpoint.

A source who receives regular briefings on the security procedures said: “It may have been possible for Uighurs to get out of Urumqi on the same day but now no one is going to slip through the net.”

The regional government warned at the weekend that Uighurs could try to take hostages and then demand that they be exchanged for members of their ethnic group.

Security is also tight beyond the regional capital. Armed police were stopping vehicles at motorway entrances and exits, toll stations and entrances and exits of towns and cities between Urumqi and Kashgar, which is south-west of the capital.

Several rural counties in Xinjiang, which the government suspects to be the home of most Uighurs involved in the riot, have been closed off entirely.

On Sunday thousands of ethnic Uighurs rallied in Almaty, the largest city in Kazakhstan, to protest against the crackdown on Uighurs in China.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009

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