EastSouthWestNorth: The Urumqi Mass Incident

The Urumqi Mass Incident - Part 4

(Xinhua) Rebiya Kadeer's separatist stories challenged by EU lawmakers September 02, 2009.

Rebiya Kadeer, president of the so-called World Uygur Congress, pitched her separatist stories in the European Parliament on Tuesday, but they appeared to be unpopular among European Union (EU) lawmakers.

    Dressed in traditional Uygur costume, Kadeer attended a session of the European Parliament's human rights committee. She commenced her address by accusing the Chinese government of mishandling the bloody riot in Urumqi, capital of China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, on July 5.

    Speaking through an interpreter in the Uygur language, Kadeer claimed the Uygurs had established their own independent state before Xinjiang was liberated in 1949, referring to the autonomous region of China as "East Turkestan" throughout her speech.

    But her accusations and separatist claims failed to convince some EU lawmakers.

    Nirj Deva, a British member of the European Parliament, said he was confused as Kadeer's personal experience ran counter to her accusations. "How is it possible for her to become one of the richest women in China if she has been discriminated? If her human rights were trampled, is it possible for her to become a member of the Chinese National Committee of the Political Consultative Conference, which is one of the highest bodies of China's national assembly?" he asked.

    Before going into exile and engaging in separatist activities abroad, Kadeer had made a fortune with her business empire and became a millionaire in Xinjiang. She was even listed as the eighth richest person in mainland China by Forbes in 1995. As a business mogul, she was elected to the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference in the 1990s.

    Deva said he could not agree with Kadeer's accusation that the Chinese government had deprived the Uygurs of the right to learn their own language since the so-called occupation in 1949, either. "If the Uygur language is banned, how could Kadeer speak it so fluently today?" he said. Kadeer was born in 1951. Deva said the inability to differentiate between fundamental human rights and separatist-related violence was a cause for concern.

    Charles Tannock, another British member of the European Parliament and a long-time critic of China's human rights record, said Kadeer's words were unfounded as well. Instead of being discriminated against, minority groups in China. including the Uygurs, were in fact enjoying preferential treatment, Tannock observed.

    While the Han majority could only have one child under the family planning policy, Uygurs were allowed to have a larger family and build thousands of mosques, the lawmaker explained. Kadeer herself has 11 children.

    "Defending the rights of minorities does not, in my view, mean supporting violence incited by secessionists against legitimate Chinese authority in the province and against Han Chinese people," Tannock said. He added that the EU was committed to the one-China policy, the common position of all 27 EU member states, and that the European Parliament should not support secessionist forces within China which are backed by religious extremist groups.

    In response to Tannock's comment, Heidi Hautala, a Finnish lawmaker and chairwoman of the Human Rights Committee, stressed that she personally did not support separatists in China. "For my own part, the fact that Kadeer is being invited here as a representative of the World Uygur Congress does not mean that I am a supporter of Uygur secessionism," she concluded.

(The New Zealand Herald) 63,000 watch doco on Uighurs. September 03, 2009.

A controversial documentary about the struggles of exiled Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer in China failed to draw a big audience despite all the hype that preceded its broadcast. The Chinese Embassy created a buzz last month when it asked Maori Television not to screen The 10 Conditions of Love, claiming it distorted facts.

But the controversy did not convert into high ratings. Attracting 63,000 viewers to watch the documentary - which depicted the plight of the Muslim Uighur people living in Xinjiang - was "probably a bit disappointing", said Maori TV's general manager of sales and marketing, Sonya Haggie.

While the Chinese Government did not manage to stop the broadcast, it was successful in having its response - Xinjiang Urumqi July 5 Riot: Truth - shown immediately after The 10 Conditions of Love. But that official version of the ethnic riots in July in which at least 197 people were killed and more than 1600 were injured drew only 50,000 viewers to Maori TV.

Ms Haggie said that "overall, the ratings were strong for a Tuesday." "However, we were surprised that the two documentaries did not attract a larger audience given the level of interest that there has been."

In Xinjiang Urumqi July 5 Riot: Truth, Kadeer was branded a terrorist and was accused of instigating and orchestrating the riots. Ms Haggie said the station received one email which expressed concern at the level of violence in the Chinese Government's documentary.

A senior source at Maori Television said that despite the Chinese Embassy's request to "can" The 10 Conditions of Love, the New Zealand Government had never pressured the station not to show it. "They have never, to my knowledge, tried to exert any editorial control over the station at any time."

The source said the possibility of Ms Kadeer, who now lives in the United States, seeking an audience with King Tuheitia during the recent coronation commemorations at Ngaruawahia had been mooted. But a senior Tainui figure, whom the Herald agreed not to name, said the meeting had never eventuated and no contact between the exiled Muslim leader and the tribe had occurred.

(Xinhua) 15 seized over syringe attacks in Xinjiang. September 3, 2009.

Police have seized 15 people for stabbing members of the public with hypodermic syringe needles in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, a senior local official said Wednesday. Of the 15, four were officially arrested and prosecuted, said Zhu Hailun, head of the political and legal affairs commission of the Communist Party of China (CPC) committee in Xinjiang. The court would pronounce judgment on the four in the near future, Zhu said.

Members of nine ethnic groups including Han Chinese, Uygur, Hui, Kazak and Mongolian had reported stabbing incidents to the police, said Zhu. Police investigations are under way. Yin Yulin, deputy director of the region's health department, said nobody had been infected or poisoned from being stabbed so far.

(Reuters) China detains 15 for syringe attacks in Xinjiang. September 3, 2009.

Chinese police in the far western region of Xinjiang have detained 15 people for stabbing attacks using syringes that have increased tension between ethnic groups in the region, media and visitors to the area said on Thursday.

State media did not say how many people had been stabbed. A doctor in the regional capital, Urumqi, said the number may be as high as 1,000, but he could not confirm that.

Nobody had been infected with anything or poisoned by the stabbings in Urumqi, the China Daily said on its website, citing the Xinhua news agency.

"According to eyewitness reports, on September 2 several hundred Urumqi citizens took to the streets to rebuke the despicable conduct of the violent perpetrators and call on the government to severely punish offenders," the pro-Beijing Hong Kong newspaper Wen Wei Po said in a report.

In Xinjiang's worst ethnic violence in decades, Uighurs, Turkic-speaking Muslim people native to the region, attacked majority Han Chinese in Urumqi on July 5, after taking to the streets to protest against attacks on Uighur workers at a factory in south China in June in which two Uighurs were killed. Han Chinese in Urumqi sought revenge two days later.

It is unclear if there is an ethnic dimension to the syringe attacks.

A visitor to Urumqi, contacted by Reuters, said the atmosphere was tense with many ethnic Han Chinese citizens blaming the stabbings on Uighurs. Xinhua said victims came from nine ethnicities, including both Uighurs and Han Chinese.

The Hong Kong newspaper said 400 people had been injured by attackers who immediately fled. Most of the victims only realized they had been stabbed after the attacker had vanished.

Xinjiang government officials were not available for comment. One foreign visitor to the city told Reuters by telephone there was no obvious sign of tension.

Four of the 15 detained people have been formally arrested.

(The Guardian) New violence breaks out in Urumqi, witnesses say. September 3, 2009.

Witnesses today said fresh violence had erupted in the Chinese city of Urumqi, less than two months after vicious inter-ethnic violence killed 197 people and injured around 1,700. One source told the Guardian that around 2,000 Han Chinese had gathered in the city centre to demonstrate amid claims that the authorities – who flooded the city with a 20,000-strong security force following July's violence – had not protected them from attacks by Uighurs.

The source, who is not Uighur, said some Han had assaulted passing Uighurs, adding that a security force numbering up to around 1,000 had gathered in the area.

However, one protester contacted by the Guardian said: "We are here in People's Square peacefully. "We are just giving the government some advice. There are over 10,000 people here [this number is often used figuratively in China], but among them are many ethnic groups, not only Han. We do this because terrorists are making some incidents to break people's peaceful lives." A third source said Han were protesting about their personal security, and another said there had been a smaller protest by Han yesterday.

The new unrest follows claims of syringe attacks, which appear to have sparked new concern among residents. The government of the autonomous Xinjiang region said it had no information about such events. However, the state news agency Xinhua reported that police had arrested 15 people for stabbing members of the public with hypodermic needles, citing a senior local official.

Zhu Hailun, the head of the political and legal affairs commission of the Communist party committee in Xinjiang, said four of those had been officially arrested and prosecuted and would face court in the near future. Members of nine ethnic groups, including Han,Uighurs , Hui, Kazaks and Mongolians, had reported stabbing incidents to police, Zhu said. Yin Yulin, the deputy director of the region's health department, told the agency nobody had so far been infected or poisoned as a result of being stabbed.

(Associated Press) New protest in city torn by July riot September 3, 2009.

Chinese residents protested deteriorating public safety on Thursday in the western Chinese city of Urumqi where deadly ethnic rioting in July killed nearly 200 people, eyewitnesses said

People living near the city centre reached by telephone said hundreds, possibly thousands of members of China’s majority Han ethnic group had 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 riot among members of the region’s main Uighur ethnic group who targeted Han, residents said.

Han resident Zhao Jianzhuang said he had 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 kilometres) 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.

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.”

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 in which 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.

(Wen Wei Po) September 04, 2009.

At 13:50 or so on September 2, there was a demonstration by the businessmen and residents of the Little West Gate area of Urumqi. They marched in the streets for about an hour. According to what our reporter learned from those present at the scene, the reason of the demonstration was that the people had nabbed a suspect who was using a syringe to stab people and took him down to the police station. However, due to lack of evidence, the police station "had to release the suspect." This outcome upset the people.

At 10:40 or so on September 3, there was yet another "syringe attack" in the Little West Gate area of Urumqi. By 10:50 or so, about 1,000 people had gathered to demonstrate again.

From 11:00 on, there were many different groups gathered at various places in Urumqi. At around 12:00 or so, several tens of thousands of people converged on the Autonomous Region Party Committee office in People's Plaza, Urumqi. These people carried Chinese national flags, and banners with words like "Defend our homes, severely punish the rioters" and so on.

At People's Plaza, Autonomous Region Party secretary Wang Lequan addressed the crowds. He said that the government will severely punish the criminals involved in the 7.5 incident in Urumqi in accordance with the law; he said that the government will severely punish the criminals involved in the series of syringe attacks in accordance with the law; he said that the Urumqi government has set up an investigative team to study the compensation scheme for all the businesses that have suffered losses due to the 7.5 incident.

Our reporter noted that during Wang Lequan's speech, some of the marchers were emotionally excited adn even threw water bottles at the speakers.

There were no major violent acts (such as destruction of public property) during the demonstration march.

(NewMatilda.com) Lockdown in Xinjiang. September 4, 2009.

More than 1000 people have been arrested in Xinjiang since riots broke out in early July. A Xinjiang traveller filed this report on the Chinese Government's tightening grip on the province.

"Safeguarding security and unity, loving people of all ethnic groups" — banner on army vehicle.

In a shady patch, near the main entrance to Kashgar's Id Kah Mosque, armed police wearing military fatigues and helmets, and carrying riot shields, watch worshippers as they file in for prayers. Soldiers look out from various points throughout the city and armed mobile units circle the streets in trucks bearing red and white banners.

Hotel staff here are friendly, very friendly. Why are you here, what is your itinerary, where have you just come from, what were you doing there, what do you do for a living?

While the Government opened Urumqi up to journalists just after the riots and offered them the luxury of internet access in a city that was otherwise an information blackhole, Kasghar remains pretty much off limits to anyone with a journalist visa. What's the difference? In Urumqi, China's Muslim Uighurs are a minority. In Kashgar, and further south, Uighurs make up about 90 per cent of the population.

Travelling around this southern area by road makes for an arduous journey punctuated by frequent police checks. Posters at the checkpoints show photos of Uighurs wanted over the July riots. Police officers electronically check the IDs of Uighur passengers. Add in prayer stops, and a break for the end of the daily Ramadan fast, and a nine-hour express trip becomes a 12-hour exercise in getting on and off a bus.

Many in Xinjiang are, for now, thankful for the level of security. Some have even questioned why the army wasn't called in sooner to stop the July 5–7 bloodshed when at least 197 people were killed during riots and retaliatory attacks. (Uighur groups say the death toll is much higher.)

But there are other restrictions which have not been so welcomed. Since the riots, SMS and international calls have been cut off and the internet restricted to a few sanitised local sites. In today's optical-fibre-connected world, it's truly awe-inspiring to travel across a piece of land the size of Pakistan, three times the size of France, which has been disconnected and mostly submerged in an information blackout.

No-one seems to know when communications will be back to normal — after China's 60th anniversary celebrations, some speculate. Some younger people I spoke with said it's been a particularly long and dreary summer. No Ramadan greetings from friends overseas, no online games, chat, music or video downloads. "I need to check my exam results, and then I'm supposed to also enrol in my next course over the internet," one student told me. When he called his school, they had no suggestions other than to just wait.

As fax machines make a comeback, there's an air of resignation. This is a region and a population already used to strong controls. For a long time, the Xinjiang regional and local governments have had a close say in how Uighurs live their lives: where and when they can pray and how often; if, when and how they can travel both domestically and overseas; in what situations women can wear a headscarf; what style of facial hair men can keep; who can become an Imam; who can and cannot observe Ramadan.

In the evening, as men recite the Koran inside a small mosque in the old city, a Uighur man outside says that he cannot participate because he works for the Government. His job on this evening is to note down the names of those who attend the prayer sessions.

Outside a school, a student tells me that because he is under 18-years-old, he is only allowed to pray once per day instead of the usual five. Older school children who want to observe the Ramadan fast have been given food and water by teachers, he said.

But resignation is not exactly acceptance, and among people I spoke with — Han and Uighur — there were signs of growing frustration and resentment.

Much of this has been directed at long-serving Xinjiang Communist Party Chief, Wang Lequan, the Government's poster-boy for ethnic-minority management. For 15 years, Wang's restrictive policies and frequent strike-hard campaigns targeting Uighurs have built up resentment within the Uighur community.

Now, post-riots, Wang has also become the target of many Han Chinese who accuse him of failing in his duty to maintain stability and security.

Tens of thousands of mostly Han Chinese took to the streets of Urumqi last Thursday, calling for the dismissal of several government leaders, including Wang, after reports of syringe attacks against residents again raised tensions.

The protesters were offered two heads — the Urumqi Communist Party head Li Zhi, and Xinjiang's police chief Liu Yaohua were both sacked. For those who wanted to see the end of Wang Lequan, it's a major disappointment. But his supporters might ask: if frequent crackdowns, heavy surveillance and re-education campaigns are not enough to keep the peace in Xinjiang, then what is?

"Strengthen ethnic unity, oppose ethnic separatism" — banner beneath Mao Zedong statue in downtown Kasghar.

In Beijing, following the riots, I heard many of the old stereotypes about Uighurs reiterated, often by well educated Han Chinese. Uighurs are hot-headed, their religion makes them violent, they don't wash, their food is not clean, they wouldn't be called thieves if some of them weren't.

Outside the Id Kah Mosque in Kashgar, a large television screen showed footage of the children of exiled Uighur leader, Rebiya Kadeer, condemning their mother and asking her to give up her separatist activities. The Government has labelled Kadeer a separatist, and said that she orchestrated the July unrest.

For many Chinese living outside Xinjiang, it's convenient to digest this "truth", one which confirms that the clashes which left almost 200 dead, had nothing to do with them or their attitudes.

From the Uighur side, there is also prejudice against Han Chinese, and a palpable resentment — they're all money-hungry, lacking in morals, uncultured and brainwashed, they discriminate against us.

In Kashgar, where many of the post-riot arrests took place, some wonder why the government isn't doing more to address this stereotyping.

"Why is no-one really asking why Uighurs hate Han Chinese? Most people here don't want independence, they just want equality and to be treated fairly by the rest of China," said a Uighur businesswoman, who believes Chinese state media has reinforced a negative view of Uighurs.

In a café, a Uighur tour guide laughed as he told me how some Han Chinese in major cities like Shanghai would ask him which country he was from and praise his excellent grasp of the Chinese language. Sometimes he would play along, and pretend he was a foreigner.

Why can't students be sent on compulsory excursions to places like Xinjiang, he asked, so they can interact with some of the country's 56 ethnic minorities?

It's something I also wondered once back in Beijing as I watched buses carrying thousands of university students to rehearsals for the upcoming national day celebrations.

This was where the central Government had directed the students' energy over the summer break, into shaking pompoms for the PRC's 60th birthday party.

"Defending the interests of migrant workers" — banner on army vehicle.

One evening, watching television in my friendly Xinjiang hotel, I caught part of a new drama series depicting the lives of Uighur migrant workers who have taken up factory jobs in China's east. In this particular episode, set in a garment factory, a Han Chinese supervisor noticed that a young Uighur woman was having back pain. The kindly supervisor whisked the worker away to the hospital for a check-up, and quickly encouraged other Uighur workers to speak up about their health problems.

I thought it was one of the more interesting pieces in the Government's arsenal of propaganda tools, one which directly addresses an incident which sparked the Urumqi riots. In Shaoguan, in China's east, there was an earlier clash between Uighur and Han Chinese migrant workers at a toy factory which left two Uighurs dead according to official reports.

The Government says misinformation about this incident spread over the internet and SMS and was exploited by overseas separatist groups to fuel the events in Urumqi. Hence the current restrictions on communications.

But rumours have always spread and there were still many floating around when I was in Xinjiang, passed on by neighbours, friends, or friends of friends. In the short term, it might make it more difficult for people to organise a mass protest, but they can't keep Xinjiang blacked out forever, can they?

As I watched television, I began to worry that this was it, that this was the Government's answer to the bloodshed. Close the hatches, plaster the towns in slogans and soldiers, put out a politically correct television show and assume that people will suddenly change their thinking.

Of course, it's not that simple, and no doubt there are all kinds of political manoeuvring taking place behind the scenes.

One person I spoke with said that at least now the central Government knows it can't just ignore the problems in Xinjiang. But that's assuming it has been ignoring them all this time. In truth, the top leadership has been complicit in the local government's hardline approach — there's a lot at stake in Xinjiang, including a wealth of natural resources and a border shared with eight countries including Afghanistan and Pakistan.

So, maybe they will put some more money towards improving Uighur education and work opportunities. Perhaps they will encourage more Han Chinese to visit Kasghar and its tourist-friendly reconstructed old city. They might even begin tolerance campaigns in factories which take in both Han and Uighur workers. But they'll never scale-back the overall level of control, or the restrictive policies and web of surveillance and security that underpin it.

(Apple Daily) September 04, 2009.

"To retaliate against the authorities for cracking down on them,
the Uighurs recently used poisoned syringes to randomly attack people."

"On September 2, a large number of syringe attack victims
were sent to hospitals for treatment, including a young boy who died."

"During the demonstration, certain Hans and Uighurs threw rocks at each other."

Wang Lequan (right) and other Autonomous Region/Urumqi leaders on the balcony

(YouTube)

　

　

　

　

(Apple Daily) September 04, 2009.

Central University of Nationalities (in Beijing) Uighur associate professor Ilham pointed out that the 7.5 incident had been violently suppressed and Xinjiang is now under high-pressure policies now. Therefore, it can be expected that the Uighurs should use methods such as syringe attacks to take revenge. He believes that it is not enough to use force to heal the hurt in the hearts of the Uighur people.

The Han writer Huang Zhangjin who studies the Xinjiang problem pointed out the authorities have failed to recognize their mistake after the 7.5 incident and continues to lock down information. "The syringe revenge attacks have been circulated around for quite some time and the citizens are scared. They wouldn't allow this to be reported until after the attacks exploded. How can this satisfy the anger of the citizens?" Huang Zhangjin believes that in order to calm down the tense situation in Xinjiang now, the best thing is to relief Wang Lequan from his job. "The mistakes in the ethnic policies may not have been created by him, but only he can be the scapegoat that can relieve the angers of the Uighurs and the Hans and bring them down the road to reconciliation."

(Global Times) Urumqi imposes rules to ban unlicensed demonstrations September 04, 2009.

Authorities in Urumqi City have banned unlicensed marches, demonstrations and mass protests, a municipal government spokesman confirmed Friday. The announcement was publicized by the city government Thursday night, shortly after tens of thousands of people took to streets during the daytime to protest against syringe attacks in the city, said the spokesman. "The leaflet is meant to safeguard public order, and protect the lives of the public and guarantee property safety," said the spokesman.

The five-article announcement bans all gatherings, marches or protests on roads or other public venues in the open-air without having first obtained permits from the public security department. Also banned are weapons, knives with restricted uses, and explosives, or use of violence, and disturbances at such events, said the spokesman.

In case of violations, the public security department will disperse those gathered, and detain those who disobey the order. Acts violating the administration of public security will be penalized, while criminal responsibility will be pursued for those suspected of having committed crimes in those gatherings, according to the announcement.

Police said that attacks with syringes against innocent people have been carried out in Urumqi since Aug. 17. The regional health department said 476 people have sought treatment for stabbing as of midday Wednesday, of whom 89 were showing obvious signs of needle injuries. As of Wednesday, there had been no deaths reported and no symptoms have been found of infectious disease viruses or toxic chemicals.

Police had seized 21 suspects, of whom six are in custody and four have been arrested for criminal prosecution, said the regional information office in a mobile phone text message to the public Thursday. It also said that the court would hand down severe punishments to those found guilty.

The attacks came less than two months after the July 5 Urumqi riot when 197 people, mostly from the Han ethnic group, were killed, and 1,600 others injured.

(South China Morning Post) Thousands protest over Urumqi syringe attacks By Kristine Kwok. September 04, 2009.

Tens of thousands of Han Chinese protested in the Xinjiang capital Urumqi yesterday to demand the resignation of the region's top Communist Party boss for failing to protect their safety as reports of mysterious syringe attacks triggered fear among city residents.

In the biggest rally since ethnic rioting in July, protesters waved home-made banners and shouted slogans as they marched in the streets before gathering at a square outside the government headquarters, several participants and witnesses said.

Police and armed officers were deployed, especially in Uygur-populated districts. Xinhua late last night put the number of protesters at tens of thousands.

"Among the slogans that we shouted, the loudest was, 'Wang Lequan step down,'" a protester who only gave his surname, Ma, said in a reference to the party boss. "I didn't know there would be a protest, but when I saw them, I decided to join them. We are very disappointed that the government can't protect our safety."

The protest was triggered by mysterious syringe attacks on the public by a group whose identity has not been disclosed.

Xinjiang Television reported that by noon on Wednesday, hospitals across Urumqi had reported treating 476 people, the victims of attacks by hypodermic needles. Of these, 433 were Han Chinese, 19 Uygurs and the remainder from other ethnic groups.

Zhu Hailun , head of the party's political and legal affairs commission in the region, said none of the needles were contaminated by infectious disease or poisoned by chemicals.

But many residents, including Ma, the protester, said they were not convinced by the government's accounts of the number of victims.

The Xinjiang government first alerted the public about attackers using hypodermic needles by sending out mobile-phone text messages last week.

But as more reports of attacks emerged, and with access to information still limited because the internet remains shut down after the July riots and phone text messaging is still unavailable to the public, residents started to panic and staged a smaller protest on Wednesday.

Last night, Xinhua said 21 suspects had been detained for the syringe attacks, without identifying their ethnicity, and said the attacks were continuing.

Six have been officially arrested and four charged.

But instead of calming fears, the announcement led to increased speculation. In the absence of a credible source of independent information, the public had to choose between believing state media and rumours.

Ma said: "We don't have any other access to information apart from text messages and state media reports. But the government is not telling us all the truth; they are misleading us. We don't believe only 476 people were attacked - I heard there were at least 800."

Yesterday's march was largely peaceful, with protesters waving banners carrying phrases such as "Severely punish criminals" and "We want stability", and shouting slogans. But Ma said that at one point he saw some protesters badly beat up a Uygur man they believed had just attacked a pedestrian with a hypodermic needle.

Xinhua reported that Wang and the Urumqi party secretary, Li Zhi , went to the scene and called for calm.

(Reuters) Han Chinese unrest tests security troops' mettle By Lucy Hornby. September 4, 2009.

Unrest in Urumqi, the capital of China's frontier Xinjiang region, is testing Chinese security forces as Han Chinese demonstrators impugn their loyalty, two months after deadly ethnic rioting on July 5.

On Saturday, the city center was once again under heavy security and roads were blocked to cars after three days of protests this week. Troops used tear gas on two occasions on Friday to stop the crowds, after five people died in demonstrations on Thursday when crowds called for the regional party secretary to resign for not ensuring better security after a spate of syringe attacks.

Han Chinese seeking to break into Uighur neighborhoods or march on government offices called security forces "traitors" and "turncoats" for blocking their way, with older men often making emotional appeals directly to police and paramilitary troops to let them through.

The unrest this week in Urumqi is unusual in that it is a sustained challenge by the Han Chinese who make up the majority of China's population.

Security forces have been patrolling Uighur neighborhoods since July, and occupied Tibetan areas for months in a show of force after demonstrations against Chinese rule in March 2008.

"When they curse us, we feel wronged and heartbroken," a plainclothes military cameraman said on Friday. "We are also here to protect the people. Still, they ask why we are suppressing them when we didn't protect them on July 5."

Four paramilitary armored vehicles were removed from one intersection after Han Chinese crowds vociferously complained, but troops and police broke up crowds wherever they coalesced.

On Thursday, crowds severely beat a Uighur man they accused of syringe attacks, and then attacked the ambulance that had tried to extract him from the crowd. It is not known whether any of Thursday's casualties died in that incident.

Some of the units blockading roads in Urumqi, a city where most of the population is Han Chinese, used bullhorns to plead with the crowds for their understanding. "We understand and sympathize with you, but please cooperate in maintaining order and security in the city," one group announced to a crowd attempting to march to People's Square, site of the regional government.

Most of the 197 people killed when Uighurs, a Muslim people with cultural ties to Central Asia, rioted on July 5 were Han Chinese. Han Chinese launched revenge attacks on Uighur neighborhoods two days later.

Uighurs in Urumqi complained of harassment by police and civilians alike, saying they are subject to regular harassment and have to carry additional identity cards. "Look at how the security forces are allowing the Chinese to protest. If a Uighur does anything at all, any Chinese citizen can call the police," said a Uighur man, Ali, who said he had been detained for 48 hours in late July. In the Uighur neighborhoods behind the barricades, patrol groups stood watch with fixed bayonets.

Han Chinese complained about the security measures. "On July 5, the Uighurs were allowed to rampage as they liked, but troops intervened with us before we were even allowed to do anything. They should at least let you kill someone and then arrest you," said a Chinese shopkeeper surnamed Du.

(The Guardian) Chinese police use teargas to break up deadly protests in Urumqi By Tania Branigan. September 5, 2009.

Five people have been killed and 14 injured in protests in Urumqi, state media said tonight, after thousands of Han Chinese took to the streets for a third day of demonstrations. They claimed officials had not protected them from syringe attacks and had failed to tackle the perpetrators of earlier violence. The announcement from the state news agency Xinhua came shortly after the public security minister, Meng Jianzhu, blamed separatists for the reported assaults with hypodermic needles, as he arrived in the capital of China's restive north-western region of Xinjiang "to direct work to defuse ongoing unrest".

Security forces used tear gas to disperse protesters as they marched towards government offices again today, Xinhua reported. Yesterday tens of thousands of demonstrators demanded the resignation of the region's hardline Communist party chief, Wang Lequan.

News of the deaths underscores the seething distrust which remains between Uighurs and Han in Urumqi two months after the region's worst communal violence in decades. The unrest is particularly alarming to authorities as they prepare to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Communist party rule in China on 1 October.

Zhang Hong, the city's deputy mayor, offered no details of the dead and injured. Witnesses reported attacks by Han on Uighurs, with one describing how police intervened to rescue a man. Han in the city blame Uighurs for the syringe attacks, though as yet there is no information on who was responsible. China has previously experienced unfounded rumours of Aids patients attacking people with hypodermic needles.

Meng alleged the syringe attacks were "premeditated … and instigated by ethnic separatist forces" in a continuation of the 5 July riots. He did not offer evidence for the allegation. Xinhua said that 531 people had reported syringe attacks to hospitals since mid-August, with 106 showing "obvious signs of needle attacks", but added that no infections or poisoning had resulted. It said police had seized 21 suspects and four would face trial. The minister also pledged to speed up the process of dealing with those detained over the earlier riots and severely punish the murderers, in answer to the demonstrators' complaints of a sluggish response by officials. But he added that those involved in violence, disorder or the undermining of ethnic unity would be punished whatever their ethnicity.

More than 200 people were killed and 1,700 injured in vicious inter-ethnic violence in July, with most dying in murderous attacks on Han Chinese. Those were followed days later by revenge attacks on Uighurs. China has accused the exiled Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer of orchestrating the riots, but she denies the claim and alleges authorities cracked down brutally on people protesting peacefully against the earlier killings of two Uighurs in southern China.

Reuters said an angry Han crowd confronted anti-riot police, stopping them from entering a Uighur neighbourhood this morning. "They have no right to block off the road like this. These Uighurs have been stabbing us with needles," one of the men said. "We need to take care of the problem." Another resident told Associated Press: "These people making trouble, we catch one, we kill one."

A Uighur woman, Arwa Quli, complained: "There have been many Uighurs beaten up … if you just brush against someone, they might think that you tried to stab them."

Loudspeaker vans toured the city ordering crowds to disperse and "think of the nation". But one Han Chinese man, Ji Xiaolong, told Associated Press: "They should be catching the terrorists, not harassing the people … I have to wonder if [the Chinese president] Hu Jintao really knows what is going on here."

Xinhua said last night that 196 suspects had been charged over the July riots and 51 faced trials. But a Han shop owner told Reuters: "I think the government has been way too lax towards the Uighurs." Muslim Uighurs make up almost half of Xinjiang's population of 23 million. Many chafe at growing Han immigration and controls on their religion, and a small number seek independence.

Dilxat Raxit, a spokesman for the World Uyghur Congress, told Reuters: "The Chinese have never been told to respect the Uighur people. Uighurs have no feeling of security, not even at home."

The Associated Press said that armed police had seized video and cameras from their staff, and three Hong Kong journalists said in a statement released by the Foreign Correspondents Club of China that they had been punched, kicked and beaten with batons while running away to escape teargas, and then detained.

(South China Morning Post) Five killed as protests continue to rock Urumqi By Mimi Lau. September 5, 2009.

Five people have died in the massive protests against syringe attacks in the restive Xinjiang city of Urumqi, an official said last night.

Xinhua quoted the city's vice-mayor, Zhang Hong, as saying: "On Thursday, 14 people were injured and sent to hospital and five people were killed in the incidents, including two "innocent people", later defined as members of the public. He gave no further breakdown of who the dead were. The vice-mayor was speaking after Beijing said for the first time yesterday that the syringe attacks were instigated by "ethnic separatist forces". Thousands of Han Chinese continued to protest yesterday despite a massive police show of force. Beijing had not previously identified those responsible for the attacks or said whether they were ethnically motivated.

The public security minister, who has arrived in Urumqi to take charge of the situation, said the attacks were premeditated, a continuation of the July 5 ethnic violence between Han Chinese and Uygurs, and aimed at undermining ethnic unity. The authorities say nearly 200 died in July. The protesters, angered by the lack of security, after the syringe stabbings took to the streets for a second day, although in smaller numbers compared with the protest on Thursday, when tens of thousands rallied and called for the resignation of the region's communist leader Wang Lequan . Police used tear gas and public appeals to break up the crowds as some Han tried to break into Uygur-populated districts. There was no ethnic violence, but the atmosphere was tense.

Three Hong Kong TV journalists covering the protest were detained, handcuffed and roughed up by armed police yesterday. TVB senior reporter Lam Tsz-ho, his cameraman Lau Wing-chuan and Now TV cameraman Lam Chun-wai were tied up and detained by police for hours before being released. They all had valid credentials for reporting on the mainland. The incident was widely condemned in Hong Kong. Last night, Chief Executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen said he was deeply concerned about the incident and promised to look into it. Both TVB and Now TV protested over the arrests. All five journalists' associations in Hong Kong expressed deep concern. A female employee at the Urumqi media centre said the Hong Kong reporters were detained because they had entered police-restricted areas, but said they would ask the officers to refrain from using violence. "We will communicate with the armed police and ask them to be more civilised with reporters," she said. The rough handling of Hong Kong reporters also raised questions over whether the Xinjiang authorities had changed their media policy. When ethnic riots broke out in Urumqi two months ago, overseas media were allowed to cover the incident largely without harassment. This policy won praise from around the world.

The protests over the past two days have been essentially peaceful. But social unrest of such a scale taking place less than a month before the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic is a huge worry for Beijing.

Minister of Public Security Meng Jianzhu arrived in Urumqi yesterday to take in charge of the situation. He called on the local authorities to restore social order as soon as possible. Meng, who is also a state councillor, said the attacks were premeditated and a continuation of the July 5 ethnic violence that pitted the city's Han Chinese against Muslim Uygurs. He said the purpose of these attacks was to undermine ethnic unity. He vowed to hunt down those responsible for the attacks and restore order. But on the streets, few seemed to be impressed by the authorities' show of force.

Xinhua last night said the syringe attacks had continued despite a dozen people being arrested. So far, 513 people have been stabbed. Most of the victims are Han but some are Uygurs and from other ethnic minorities. The authorities tried to play down the attacks and said no one had been poisoned or infected with disease.

Thousands continued to gather in downtown Urumqi yesterday, shouting slogans demanding severe punishment for the syringe attackers and the restoration of law and order. "People are afraid to go to work and children dare not to go to school. We've heard that some of the syringes are filled with sulphuric acid. What if we were stabbed in the eyes and go blind? Who will be responsible for that," one protester asked.

The crowds also demanded the resignation of Wang, party chief of the Xinjiang autonomous region since 1994. They said he had failed in his job and could not provide protection to the city's people.

The authorities have arrested 21 suspects, but many victims, including Han and Uygur, said those who had attacked them were mostly young Uygurs. Witnesses said two Uygurs were caught stabbing innocent passersby with needles. The angry crowd turned on them for revenge. The two were saved after police intervened and separated them from the crowd.

In the afternoon, more than 1,000 Han protesters tried to break into Nanhu Square - a Uygur-populated area - apparently seeking revenge. They were blocked by armed police, and the two sides scuffled briefly. Some Han protesters were taken away by police.

The government did not disclose the number of casualties, although the clashes appeared to be mild. But footage from China Central Television's evening news showed that some police officers had been injured. Hong Kong television footage also showed that some members of the public had suffered suspected rubber bullet wounds.

Downturn Urumqi was virtually under military lockdown, with helicopters hovering and armed vehicles patrolling. Most schools and offices were closed, a local resident said.

The latest unrest was triggered by reports that only a dozen suspects had been arrested despite the official tally of victims of the syringe attacks reaching 513. Of those, 106 showed obvious signs of needle attacks.

Xinhua said residents had begun stockpiling food.

　

　

　

　

(China Daily) Protesters jostle cops in Urumqi September 5, 2009.

Urumqi residents on Friday confronted armed police during protests against more hypodermic syringe attacks as city officials said five people had died in Thursday's protests. Meanwhile, 14 others were injured and hospitalized in the massive protests on Thursday against the syringe attacks, the city's executive deputy mayor Zhang Hong said on Friday. Among the five dead, two had been confirmed as innocent civilians, while police are trying to identify the rest, Zhang said.

Zhang said investigation had showed that the syringe attackers were from the Uygur ethnic group while those who were attacked included people of Han and other ethnic groups. He also said no one died on Friday. More than 1,000 protesters faced policemen who blocked them from entering Nanhu Square in the center of the city around 1:40 pm on Friday.

Witnesses said two members of the Uygur ethnic minority were caught attacking people with syringes near a Carrefour supermarket on Friday and the victims sought revenge. But policemen sequestered the two suspects, which triggered angry responses from the public. That prompted the police to fire tear-gas shells to disperse the crowd.

Officials have appealed to people to keep away from the streets and not to repeat Thursday's incidents.

Another group of more than 100 youths marched on Jiefangnan Road around the city's bustling commercial area around 2:30 pm. About 100 armed policemen with shields moved along with the protesters.

All shops, banks and commercial facilities along the street were closed. A number of other smaller confrontations were reported as helicopters hovered over the city for the second time since the July 5 riots that left 197 people dead.

China's Public Security Minister Meng Jianzhu reached Urumqi on Friday to direct the work of defusing the unrest. Meng urged the local governments and the committees of the Communist Party of China at all levels "to restore social order as soon as possible". "Maintaining stability is the central task of overriding importance in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region at the present time," he said at a meeting with local officials upon his arrival. Meng warned that "those who were involved in the violence of beating, smashing, looting and burning, and those who broke social orders with different means or who undermine ethnic unity, shall be punished according to the law without exception, whatever his ethnicity is".

The municipal government said it had issued an order banning unlicensed marches, demonstrations and mass protests.

Police officers said 531 victims of syringe stabbings had been admitted to 24 hospitals. The victims include members of Han, Uygur and Kazak ethnic groups.

(FT.com) Ethnic groups united in hostility towards leaders By Kathrin Hille. September 5, 2009.

The government in Xinjiang has been caught off guard by the anger it faces from its own people.

For decades its rulers brought in millions of people from China's Han ethnic majority to colonise the ethnically diverse far western region. They kept a wary eye on the Uighurs, the biggest local ethnic group, as the main security risk. But since Wednesday it has been Han marching in the streets of Urumqi, the regional capital, calling for Wang Lequan, Xinjiang's Communist party secretary, to step down.

The protesters' wrath was triggered by fear over reported syringe stabbing attacks that most attributed to the Uighurs. But the unfolding complaints reflect broader dissatisfaction across ethnic boundaries. "The central government may have put the economy first for the past 30 years but, in Xinjiang, stability has always been first and the economy is a distant second," says a Han resident of Korla, a city in the region's south. The 35-year-old resident asked not to be identified for fear of government retribution. "We shouldn't be surprised that the Uighurs are making trouble. Even many Han are dissatisfied."

Xinjiang is different from other Chinese provinces where the leaders rotate every few years. Mr Wang has held senior positions there since 1991 and headed the regional party committee for 15 years. One popular joke in Xinjiang is that while highway railings elsewhere need poles every three metres, Xinjiang needs one every metre, "because Wang Lequan's family produces them". While his administration is determined to force rapid economic development, its approach has created a yawning income gap.

Until the mid-1990s, oil and gas exploration in Xinjiang was concentrated in the northern half of the region. But over the past decade PetroChina and other state-owned companies have begun to explore finds in the Taklamakan desert of southern Xinjiang.

In official propaganda, this benefits everyone. "Our strategy is to develop Xinjiang with large state-owned enterprises to make sure the development happens fast and on a large scale," explains a documentary on Xinjiang television. "Thus we are creating new job opportunities, and we are raising incomes fast." But in reality most Uighurs are missing out, as the oil companies in Xinjiang prefer employing Hans, who speak Mandarin and are often more likely to bring technical skills than local Uighur farmers. The wider public in Xinjiang shows discontent with rapid development as well. "They take our gas but they are giving nothing back," is the most frequently heard complaint.

In general, tax revenues paid by a local branch of a central government-owned state enterprise should be split between the local and central governments. But for the natural gas PetroChina sends through its pipelines, tax is paid at the other end, where it emerges in Shanghai. That is where the subsidiary running the pipeline is registered, according to a 2005 notice from the State Administration of Taxation. Queries about Petro-China's local tax payments were not answered by the Xinjiang government or the company.

In Xinjiang, natural gas is in short supply. In Aksu, midway between Urumqi and Kashgar, buses, taxis and cars queue for half a kilometre at a natural gas station almost every day. Petrol and gas prices in the region are among the highest in China. And homes in much of Xinjiang burn coal or wood for heating because most of the natural gas is sold to other provinces.

Xinjiang's economy has been growing fast despite such bottlenecks. Gross domestic product has risen at 11 to 15 per cent a year over the past five years.

In Korla, where most oil companies set up their regional headquarters for Taklamakan exploration, gleaming black Porsches and BMWs congregate every night as oil engineers and other affluent migrants from other provinces enjoy the fruits of this boom. Many feel left behind. A 35-year-old man complains that the rent he pays for the shop floor where he sells cheap accessories is more than 10 times that charged in a commercial area in Yiwu, a bustling coastal trading hub. "If this doesn't get better soon, I'll leave Xinjiang," he says.

(The Wall Street Journal) China Says Five Dead in Latest Xinjiang Unrest By Gordon Fairclough. September 5, 2009.

Five people have been killed and 14 injured in the latest bout of protests in this ethnically divided city, an official said Friday, as security forces moved in to contain mounting anger among Han Chinese who accuse the government of failing to protect them. The authorities' inability to quell public anger here despite two months of intensive security and propaganda efforts following July riots reflected the depth of China's ethnic problems, and revealed the potential for discontent to boil over.

The casualties came Thursday during antigovernment demonstrations by thousands of Han Chinese, according to Zhang Hong, the executive vice mayor of Urumqi. Two of the dead were "innocent" bystanders and authorities are looking into the circumstances of the other deaths, Mr. Zhang said. On Friday, smaller numbers of Han protestors continued to skirmish with police, who responded in some cases with salvos of tear gas. Witnesses said police dispersed a small crowd that gathered in front of the regional Communist Party headquarters. Thousands of police in riot gear, many armed with assault rifles, manned barricades in the center of Urumqi Friday. Armored personnel carriers guarded a main road and a helicopter hovered overhead.

Enraged Han Chinese say security forces have failed to guarantee their safety since ethnic violence killed nearly 200 people in the northwestern city in July. Demonstrators have called for the ouster of the top Communist Party official in the vast, strategically important Xinjiang region.

The trigger of this week's protests appeared to be a spate of stabbings in Urumqi by assailants armed with syringes. Han residents have blamed the attacks on Uighurs, and rumors have spread that they are an effort to infect Han Chinese with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Mr. Zhang said 21 people have been detained by police as suspects in those attacks. The government says more than 470 people have sought medical attention for suspected syringe stabbings; doctors were able to find obvious wounds in 89 of those cases.

The depth of Han Chinese animosity toward the ruling Communist Party, and the chasm that has grown between the majority Han and the predominantly Muslim Uighurs with whom they live in this part of the country, pose a major challenge for China's leaders. Underlining the seriousness of the situation, Public Security Minister Meng Jianzhu arrived in Urumqi and urged local officials to "restore social order as soon as possible," according to the state-run Xinhua news agency. Mr. Meng blamed the syringe attacks on "ethnic separatist forces."

By Friday evening, downtown streets, closed to traffic, appeared largely calm. Some groups of Han Chinese, the country's majority ethnic group, gathered on sidewalks and streets and complained angrily about what they say was the weakness of the government's response to the July unrest, in which rioting Uighurs attacked Han people, and revenge attacks by Hans followed. "We don't trust Uighur people any more, and we've lost confidence in the government," said a 54-year-old Han woman. "The government's security is useless," she said.

People on the street stopped to offer their views and castigate foreign reporters for, in their view, siding with Uighurs. "Uighur people are evil. They are terrorists," said a Han woman who was joined by a group of other people who angrily denounced the U.S. for what they said was its support of exiled Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer. China has blamed Ms. Kadeer, who lives in the U.S., for instigating the July unrest. She rejects the claims.

As a police truck equipped with loudspeakers called on residents to disperse, one group of mostly young Han men listened as one of their number said: "We don't need the police, we can protect ourselves."

Some in the Uighur community said they fear the protests could morph into attacks on Uighurs. "A lot of people want to leave because they are worried about their safety," said a Uighur small-business owner. Others say Urumqi has become much more polarized since the July riots. "It's rare to see Han Chinese in this neighborhood these days," said a Uighur butcher whose shop is in the center of a Uighur shopping area.

Police ringed Uighur neighborhoods downtown in an effort to prevent more violence. Thursday's protests, which Xinhua said involved tens of thousands of people in multiple parts of the city, appeared largely aimed at Xinjiang Communist Party chief Wang Lequan, a member of the party's ruling Politburo. Demonstrators shouted "Down with Wang Lequan," a remarkable show of defiance -- especially in a city already under heavy security after July's riots -- in the run-up to the politically sensitive 60th anniversary of the Communist Party's takeover of China on Oct. 1.

(Xinhua) Urumqi party chief, Xinjiang police chief sacked. 2009.09.06

The party chief of Urumqi and police chief of northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region were removed from their posts Saturday. The removal came after the July 5 riot in Urumqi which left 197 people dead and following syringe attacks in the city that caused panic among the public.

Li Zhi, 59, secretary of the Urumqi Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), was replaced by Zhu Hailun, 51, secretary of the CPC Xinjiang Autonomous Regional Political and Legislative Affairs Committee, according to a decision by the CPC Xinjiang Autonomous Regional Committee and approved by the CPC Central Committee. Li was appointed the Urumqi party chief in November, 2006. Also on Saturday, Xinjiang's police chief Liu Yaohua was replaced by Zhu Changjie, party chief of Xinjiang's Aksu Prefecture.

Fresh protests broke out this week after hundreds of Urumqi residents reported that they were stabbed by syringes. Five people were dead and at least 14 people hospitalized over injuries in the protests. Tens of thousands of people took to the streets to protest against the syringe attacks and demand security guarantees. By Thursday, local hospitals had dealt with 531 victims of hypodermic syringe stabbings, 106 of whom showed obvious signs of needle attacks.

Chinese military medical experts on Saturday ruled out the possibility that radioactive substance, anthrax and toxic chemical were used in recent syringe attacks in Urumqi City. "According to the preliminary test results, such possibilities can be ruled out," said Qian Jun, director of Disease Control and Biological Security Office with China's Academy of Military Medical Sciences. Qian said he, along with other five medical experts from the military, had examined medical records of more than 200 victims since Friday. Samples had been sent to Beijing for further test, Qian added.

Xinjiang police has captured 25 suspects amid the syringe scare, of whom seven are in police custody, four were arrested and four others were referred for criminal prosecution. Four suspects, three men and one woman, have been prosecuted for endangering public security, said Wutkur Abdurahman, procurator general of the city's procuratorate Saturday. The four, all from the Uygur ethnic group, were involved in three cases.

Two suspects threatened a taxi driver with a syringe and robbed him, one suspect allegedly inserted a pin into a woman's buttock at a roadside fruit stall, and the other injured police when resisting arrest with a syringe that contained drug.

(South China Morning Post) Urumqi party boss fired in wake of unrest. By Chloe Lai & AFP. September 6, 2009.

The party boss of Urumqi and the city's police chief were sacked yesterday after days of mass protests in the restive region. Xinhua announced last night that Communist Party chief Li Zhi had been removed along with the top police official in Xinjiang , Liu Yaohua . Li was replaced by Zhu Hailun , a top Xinjiang party official, while Liu was replaced by Zhu Changjie , party chief of Xinjiang's Aksu prefecture. But at a press conference the agency and propaganda officials refused to comment on why they had been replaced, saying Li was removed "due to work requirements".

The sackings come in the wake of mass protests by mostly ethnic Han Chinese that have left five people dead. Since Wednesday, angry people have taken to the streets demanding the government stop a number of mysterious syringe attacks. These have come just two months after riots by the city's Muslim Uygurs left nearly 200 people dead, mostly Han.

While an uneasy calm returned to the city yesterday, security remained tight - police stopped any gatherings and armed vehicles were out in Uygur-populated areas to keep the two ethnic groups apart. But the needle attacks continued. On a busy downtown street, a Han boy was attacked by three Uygurs, and stabbed in the stomach. Twenty-five people have been arrested for stabbing attacks, most of them Uygurs. Officials said four people would be formally charged.

There were no big riots yesterday but some protesters gathered outside the government office. Cable TV said police had fired tear gas to disperse crowds in a couple of incidents. Police said on Friday that at least five people had been killed in the protest on Thursday. Local hospitals had dealt with 531 victims of hypodermic syringe stabbings.

Authorities said it was not clear if victims of the stabbings would face health problems. Speaking at a press conference, a PLA medical team said 22 samples from victims had been sent to Beijing for further tests. However, Urumqi city prosecutor Udgar Abdulrahman said a Uygur man assaulted police with a syringe containing heroin. Residents said pharmacies had been banned from selling syringes to the public.

(Reuters) Calm returns to China's Urumqi after officials sacked. By Lucy Hornby. September 5, 2009.

Residents of China's far western city of Urumqi, in turmoil over a spate of needle attacks, expressed grudging satisfaction that two high officials were fired as the city recovered from angry protests. Elderly residents practiced taichi in front of rows of military trucks in People's Square, where on Thursday tens of thousands of Han Chinese gathered to call for the resignation of provincial party secretary Wang Lizhi, saying he had failed to ensure their security.

New information cast doubt on government warnings that separatists wielding syringes had attacked hundreds of residents.

On Saturday, two officials -- Li Zhi, the city party secretary, and the regional chief of police -- were sacked. The Xinhua news agency did not give a reason, but both had been in office on July 5, when 197 people, mostly majority Han Chinese, died in deadly rioting by Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking Muslim group native to the region. "I support this move. I think the stability of Xinjiang should be paramount," said a Han Chinese woman, surnamed Gao.

Han Chinese took to the streets this week in fear and anger, saying the government had failed to prosecute the rioters and had also failed to protect their safety, as rumors of needle attacks swirled around a city that has been cut off from the Internet and has had limited phone access for two months. "Li Zhi was fired. People aren't going to be satisfied with this alone," said one food seller, who declined to give his name.

The city's procurator said four Uighurs had been indicted for "endangering public security" in connection with the needle attacks, and four others were to be formally arrested.

Police have detained 25 Uighurs over the attacks. Of those indicted, two were heroin addicts who used a syringe to rob a taxi driver, and a third addict used a syringe to fight off police trying to arrest him. The fourth stuck a needle into a fruit seller's buttock. None of the cases, or the charges, seemed to support government assertions that the needle attacks were coordinated by separatists bound on fomenting unrest.

Government reports said 513 people had lodged reports of needle attacks as of September 4, but only 106 showed any physical signs. Doctors said 22 were being monitored for signs of infection, but dismissed as unlikely the possibility that any would have gotten AIDS or other diseases. Even the official Xinhua news agency acknowledged late on Saturday that "some of those who said they had been stabbed actually suffered from mosquitoes' stings or other psychogenic reasons."

Five people died in the protests on Thursday, and vigilante mobs of Han Chinese had tried to break through paramilitary barricades into Uighur neighborhoods on Friday. Troops used tear gas on Friday and Saturday to disperse demonstrators seeking to approach the People's Square, site of the regional government, and the city government.

(AFP) Kadeer buildings loom as next Xinjiang flashpoint By Dan Martin. September 6, 2009.

Broken glass crunched under the Uighur man's feet as he sneaked up a dim stairwell, careful not to be seen in a building that could become the next flashpoint in China's restive Xinjiang region. The building, part of the Rebiya Trade Centre complex of now-exiled Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer, has loomed for years in this regional capital as a reminder of the support she commands among her restive Muslim ethnic minority. But following repeated recent ethnic unrest here, China has targeted the buildings for demolition in an apparent bid to banish Kadeer's shadow, say local Uighurs, who warn that such a move could spark a new round of violence.

"The Communist Party is rotten to the core," said the man, whose name was withheld to avoid possible police reprisals. Along with many other Uighurs, he had lived in this decrepit and now-deserted building until an eviction notice last month. He had returned to salvage some meagre belongings. Crouching in front of a window to hide from a heavy Chinese police presence outside, he traced the name "Rebiya" on the dusty floor, then abruptly wiped it away. "They are trying to erase her name entirely!" he whispered angrily in Mandarin.

Kadeer is a former retail magnate and philanthropist who was once China's richest woman. She was held up by the Communist Party as proof of the success of its ethnic minorities and was even named a delegate to parliament. But Beijing quickly turned on Kadeer after she dared to question China's policies toward its eight million Uighurs, a central Asian, Turkic-speaking people who have long complained of Chinese religious and political oppression. Jailed for six years in 1999, she was then sent into exile.

China blames Kadeer for instigating July 5 unrest in Urumqi that left nearly 200 people dead, mostly members of the country's ethnic Han majority. The city was seized anew in recent days by mass Han protests against a wave of mysterious syringe attacks blamed on Uighurs. Five people died in the violence.

Reports have circulated for years about plans to demolish Kadeer's buildings -- still topped by large Chinese characters reading "Rebiya Trade Centre" -- and evict residents, including at least 30 of her relatives. But the plans have been fast-tracked following the July violence, Uighurs say.

Tenants of the main Trade Centre, many of them female Uighur merchants doing business under a women's empowerment programme launched by Kadeer, were told to leave by September 5, a timetable delayed by this past week's unrest. "Tenants are all moving out. Soon the building will fall," said a Uighur security guard at the building.

Local Uighurs said the three buildings would be replaced by an open square. "Uighurs will be very angry," an elderly Uighur man interjected as others murmured quietly in agreement.

The Washington-based Uighur American Association revealed the new demolition plan last month, warning it could spark a new round of bloodletting. "Uighurs are likely to be dismayed over the destruction of the Kadeer buildings, and UAA fears that public expression of discontent... would be met with brutal force (by China)," it said.

Several of Kadeer's 11 children have been jailed by Chinese authorities, including a son sentenced in 2007 after he allegedly publicly discussed the demolition plans, the UAA has said, illustrating the issue's extreme political sensitivity.

Urumqi government officials declined to comment on the issue when contacted by AFP.

Kadeer's relatives, who had lived in one of the buildings, survived on income from a restaurant there, the UAA said. Kadeer herself issued a statement last month saying the plan to raze the building was aimed at silencing her. "How long will the Chinese government hold my children and grandchildren hostage in retaliation for my human rights advocacy?" she said.

Asked how his people feel about Kadeer, the evicted Uighur man clenched his jaw and gave an emphatic thumbs up as he led an AFP reporter to a darkened exit of the doomed building. Wiping tears from his eyes, he disappeared back into the gloom.

(Xinhua) Xinjiang sends 2,100 officials to neighborhoods: official. September 6, 2009.

The regional government of northwest China's Xinjiang has sent 1,500 officials and police officers to communities densely populated by ethnic Uygurs in wakeof a deadly riot on July 5 to help solve public disputes, said a top regional official on Sunday.

Wang Lequan, secretary of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Regional Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), said the officials, mainly from ethnic minority groups, have been sent to explain government policies and solve disputes. "These officials have done a great deal of face-to-face educational work in communities and maintain social orders," he said.

Wang said the regional government would continue to send another 600 experienced senior officials -- 100 bureau level and 500 section chief level officials -- to communities in the north part of the city, which is heavily populated by Han people. "These officials along with officials to be sent by the city government of Urumqi will go door to door to explain policies and solve disputes," he said.

The move is an important "treasure" to smash the separatist sabotage of the "three forces" of extremism, separatism and terrorism both at home and abroad, the regional party chief said.

Wang made the remarks at a meeting for mobilizing civil servants to go to the grassroot neighborhoods to help solve public disputes and maintain social stability. He reviewed the unrest in Urumqi since the riot on July 5, which left nearly 200 people dead, mostly ethnic Han people. He said four suspects stabbed a Han woman with syringe needles in Xiaoximen Shopping Area in Urumqi on Sept. 3, sparking mass protests that demanded security guarantees.

The protests left four dead and 14 others hospitalized. "The incident has seriously affect the normal public life, and caused social disturbance," he said.

The situation in Urumqi is on the whole stable, but it is also fragile as demands of some residents have not been met and the sporadic occurence of needle attacks continue to ignite sentiments, Wang said. The control and mandatory measures, which bring inconvenience and ignite people's sentiment, could spark mass gatherings anytime, he said.

By Friday, local health and police authorities had confirmed 531 victims of hypodermic syringe stabbings, 171 of whom showed bvious signs of needle attacks. The majority of the victims are of the Han ethnic group and the minority are from the ethnic groups including Uygur, Hui and Kazak, Wang said.

Medical experts have ruled out the possibility that radioactive substances, anthrax and toxic chemicals were used in recent needle attacks in Urumqi. He also called on local residents not to believe and spread rumours and to express their demands through legal channels.

The social order had returned to normal in the wake of the July 5 riot, but the enemies at home and abroad were not reconciled to ailure and so they conducted the needle attacks to spark public panic and anger, Wang said.

The mass protests have affected normal life and production in Urumqi and put to test the unity, stability and harmony that people of all ethnic groups have been seeking and longing for for years, the official said.

(Times Online) China warns those convicted of needle attacks may face the death penalty September 7, 2009.

In an effort to curb renewed unrest in the restive northwestern city of Urumqi, China has warned that anyone convicted of using a syringe in an attack could face the death penalty.

Harsh punishment would be meted out to those found guilty of using hypodermic needles containing harmful substances as weapons, the Government said.

It also said that 7,000 officials — described as “harmony makers” — were being sent to the city to help to defuse tensions. The authorities fear that public anger over the attacks could spill over into ethnic rioting.

More than 200 people died in July during days of unrest in Urumqi between the Han Chinese and the local Uighur population. It was the most deadly riot in China for 50 years and security in the city remains tight.

In an attempt to defuse the situation, two top ruling Communist Party officials were dismissed on Saturday after three days of protests over the attacks left five people dead last week. Thousands marched in the city on Thursday to demand better protection after a spate of assaults involving hypodermic needles.

Residents called for further action yesterday after it emerged that 530 people had been treated in hospital in the last few weeks for injuries that they claimed to have sustained after being stabbed by needles.

Officials said that some of the injuries may have been mosquito bites. The authorities also emphasised that both Uighurs and Han had been victims of the attacks. No one is believed to have been seriously injured or contracted a disease from the attacks.

In one case two drug addicts, a Uighur man and woman, are alleged to have threatened a taxi driver with a syringe before robbing him. In another, the city prosecutor said, police were assaulted by a Uighur, 47, with a syringe containing heroin.

Meng Jiangzu, China’s Public Security Minister, has said that the attacks are a continuation of July’s unrest. Up to 25 people are believed to have been detained in connection with the attacks.

Government lorries mounted with loudspeakers toured the streets telling residents that the bizarre attacks were part of an organised separatist plot to spread terror. Last week thousands of Han Chinese gathered in Urumqi’s central square to demand better protection from the authorities, and the resignations of the region’s top police official, Wang Lequan, and the city’s party secretary, Li Zhi.

Mr Wang was shouted down after attempting to address the protesters. Both officials have now been dismissed. Mr Wang has said that the protests were triggered after four people stabbed a Han Chinese woman with needles in one of the city’s shopping areas. Local residents warned that the authorities may not yet have done enough to placate the restive population.

Thousands of armed police remain a visible presence in the city. They conducted spot searches of pedestrians’ bags in the traditionally Uighur area of Urumqi.

The ethnic make-up of the city of 1.8 million is evenly split between Turkic-speaking Uighurs, who are Muslims, and make up most of the region’s population, and the Han, China’s dominant ethnic group. (ESWN Comment: This is incorrect because the Han percentage is more like 75% compared to 12% for Uighurs (see Sun Bin).)

(Washington Post) All Eyes on Regional Official After Latest Unrest in W. China By Kathrin Hille. September 7, 2009.

When the Zhang family's more than 150 wedding guests gathered at the Phoenix Hall restaurant in Urumqi on Saturday night, there was only one topic of conversation: Will he stay or will he go?

The person in question was not the groom but Wang Lequan, the regional Communist Party chief.
Wang's position as the strongman ruling Xinjiang, the multiethnic region in western China, had been uncontested for 15 years. But last week, tens of thousands of people took to the streets demanding his resignation. The protesters were mainly from the Han majority, outraged by a series of syringe stabbing attacks attributed to the minority Uighurs, and complaining that Wang had botched the response to ethnic riots in early July that the government said left 197 people dead, mostly Han Chinese.

The unpopularity of Wang is bad news for China's central government. At the Central Party School, which trains high-ranking officials, Wang was a classmate of Hu Jintao, China's president and Communist Party general secretary. The two are still considered close allies today.

Beijing has long relied on Wang to make sure that the long-standing discontent among Xinjiang's Muslim Uighur population does not spread and thus pose a threat to broader political stability in China. The July riots and the ongoing protests have damaged that trust. The Communist Party is even more determined to maintain stability than usual as it prepares to reaffirm its grip on power with celebrations of the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China on Oct. 1.

That is why on the streets of Urumqi, the theory is that Wang has less than a month left in office. Many Xinjiang residents believe he must be in trouble with Beijing since he has not appeared on state television since last week's protests.

But analysts say removing Wang would be close to impossible. "As a provincial party chief, you will only be demoted if you're corrupt or if you're dead," said Russell Leigh Moses, a Beijing-based political analyst.

As a member of the Politburo, the pinnacle of political power in China, Wang could be removed only through a majority vote in the Communist Party's central committee, followed by a Politburo decision. And removing an official as senior as Wang could send a signal beyond Xinjiang that the Chinese people have the power to expel officials -- a concept at odds with the very core of the country's political system.

An increasing number of officials across the country have been replaced in the past year for mishandling local grievances, but the government has taken care not to widely publicize that these moves followed sometimes violent protests.

That leaves the government with the task of winning back the trust of Urumqi's unhappy Han residents, many of whom believe the government has not been tough enough with Uighur participants in the July riots. Although the city has returned to an uneasy calm under heavy police presence, some Han in Xinjiang remain defiant.

Authorities sought to appease Urumqi's Han residents over the weekend by firing the city party secretary and the regional police chief. Just as the Zhangs' guests started arriving for the wedding reception, news broke that Li Zhi, the party secretary, had been replaced with Zhu Hailun, head of Xinjiang's law and order commission.

But that was not enough, according to Que Wei, one of the wedding guests. "Wang Lequan has to go," he said. "I trust Li Zhi and I trust Zhu Hailun, but I don't believe a word Wang Lequan says."

(TVB HD) (in Cantonese)

　

(CCTV 9) (in English)

　

(Global Times) Urumqi vows to stem syringe attacks By Guo Qiang. September 8, 2009.

A crackdown on needle stabbings in Urumqi has life returning to normal in the capital of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. As armed police kept patrolling the streets, people are trying to go about their daily business as seen before the July 5 riots.

On one stretch of the Nanhu Plaza, more than 60 people, mainly senior citizens, were dancing to the tune of Paso Doble, while on another a father played badminton with his teenage son. Dozens of other senior citizens were enjoying the serenity and angling on a pond at the other side of the plaza. Traffic is nearly back to normal on the streets in Urumqi, with some buses again packed with passengers.

Financial establishments such as outlets of Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), Agricultural Bank of China, and the Urumqi Commercial Bank were all open for business Monday. Some schools in the city remained closed. An official from the educational department of Urumqi city said kindergartens, primary and middle schools, as well as privately run schools, were told to stay closed.

Wang Lequan, secretary of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Regional Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), Sunday ordered more than 7,000 government officials to walk door-to-door in Urumqi to calm people after five people died and 14 were injured during riotous protests last week by people demanding that something be done to stop the stabbings.

Urumqi officials said at least 531 people had reported being stabbed with medical syringes as of Friday. Military medical staff examined 217 victims and found no signs of toxic or radioactive contamination, according to Xinhua. Most of the victims were women and elderly residents, and the attacks were carried out in heavily populated public places with an aim to raise public concerns and fears, according to public security authorities.

The Hong Kong-based Apple Daily newspaper reported yesterday that assailants had started indiscriminately poking people in Korla and Shihezi, an almost entirely Han city, with dirty needles. The result was dozens of people going to hospitals for testing. Shihezi is one of the best-known cities in Xinjiang. Known as the "Pearl of the Gobi Desert" for its fine environment, it is also a model of supporting and cultivating the construction of the border areas.

A Shihezi press official dismissed the report yesterday, saying no confirmed stabbing cases had been reported and local social order is as normal as usual. "Although 16 residents in Shihezi contacted authorities and claimed they had been stabbed between Thursday and Saturday, health departments found no supportive evidence," an official surnamed Zhang told the Global Times. He attributed the situation to mounting public fears following incidents in Urumqi. Calls to the Korla city government and public security bureau went unanswered yesterday.

"Sporadic syringe stabbings and rumors will continue in the near future as a result of strained nerves among the public, but that does not mean a spread of the needle attacks across Xinjiang," an expert on ethnic issues, who declined to give his name, told the Global Times. "I believe a majority of the Xinjiang people are longing for peace and stability instead of ethnic conflict and turmoil," he said. "Uygur assailants are spiritually motived by overseas forces, and it will be easier for the government to deal with the aftershock if the Western media abandons its support of these Uygurs and (alleged Uygur separatist) Rebiya Kadeer."

Urumqi officials issued a stern warning Sunday to those behind the bizarre spate of needle attacks: If convicted, they face harsh sentences, including the death penalty. And it warned residents that they could face possible jail sentences of up to five years for spreading rumors about the stabbings.

The stab-and-run needle attacks have dealt a severe blow to a Xinjiang tourism industry already hurting from the deadly July 5 riots. An employee surnamed Ou from the Xinjiang branch of the China Youth Tourism Service told the Global Times that her clients have canceled most of their meetings that were initially scheduled to take place in Urumqi in August and September. September is traditionally a booming season for tourism in Xinjiang, but not this year, she noted. Yinamu Naisierding, head of the Xinjiang Tourism Administration, assured yesterday at a tourism promotion seminar in Xiamen, Fujian Province, that tourists would be safe if they are willing to travel to Xinjiang, according to the China News Service.

The Urumqi government announced yesterday that it is implementing traffic-control measures from 9 pm last night to 9 am today on the city's main streets.

(Toronto Star) Was needle panic a fake frenzy? By Bill Schiller. September 8, 2009.

Were rumours the spark that sent thousands of angry Han Chinese protesters in Urumqi pouring into the streets last week? Demonstrations by frightened Chinese erupted in the Xinjiang capital last week amid claims that the region's native Uighurs had launched a wave of politically motivated syringe attacks against Han Chinese. But days after reports of the attacks in state media, credible evidence seems in short supply. Some are questioning whether there were any organized attacks at all.

"I don't think there's very much evidence to support the idea that there was any sort of campaign," says Gerald Groot, a specialist in Chinese studies at the University of Adelaide. "I've seen reports suggesting there could have been as many as 500 people who were stabbed. But there's really been nothing to show for it." The government said more than 500 people claimed to have been attacked, but only 170 show any signs of injury. Of those, 22 were being monitored and none were expected to suffer repercussions, it said. "It seems more like mass hysteria than reality to me," observed Groot.

Even China's state-run Xinhua News Agency dialled down its reporting of the alleged attacks. "Some of those who said they had been stabbed actually suffered from mosquito stings and other psychogenic reasons," Xinhua said. Other agency reports noted that of the four people officially charged last week, most were drug addicts involved in acts of plain criminality.

A man and a woman threatened a cab driver with a syringe while robbing him of about $100 to buy drugs. A man, 47, scuffled with police while trying to resist arrest and pricked an officer with a drug-filled syringe. And a 19-year-old man confessed to poking a woman in the buttocks "with a pin" at a fruit stall, Xinhua reported. The incidents occurred between Aug. 28 and 31.

"It's not clear why these incidents reported by Xinhua were considered `political' as opposed to `criminal,'" says Nicholas Bequelin, a keen observer of events in Xinjiang and senior researcher with Human Rights Watch. He said Chinese authorities had not substantiated claims the attacks were political. But the fact rumours appear to have triggered last week's protests is proof positive tensions in Urumqi still loom large – despite upbeat reports in state media that the crisis of the summer has passed.

In July, the city was the scene of bloody rioting that claimed 197 lives – mostly Han Chinese – when local Uighurs exploded with fury. They were angered by reports that three Uighur workers had been killed in clashes with Han Chinese at a factory in southern China. Rumours on the street suggested many more Uighurs had died there. In the subsequent riots, Uighurs killed scores of Han Chinese in Urumqi. Then Han Chinese set out to avenge their dead.

Since then, Urumqi has been in a communications lockdown: the Internet has been suspended, text messaging has been interrupted and calls in and out of the region are sporadically blocked. That, says Bequelin, has created an atmosphere ripe for rumour mongering. He said the Chinese authorities' "chokehold on information" has been a critical factor in the ongoing crisis. "This has not only frustrated people, but helped spread rumours," he says, calling the communications clampdown "the first real-live test of what happens if you suspend Internet services for too long." Bequelin says the Internet is a key security valve, allowing people to let off steam. Without it, "people decided they had to take to the streets to make themselves heard."

Last week, thousands publicly called for the firing of the region's strongman, Communist Party Secretary Wang Lequan – a friend and ally of President Hu Jintao. Wang has hung on, but two lesser figures were sacrificed: the city's Communist Party Secretary Li Zhi and the region's top police official, Liu Yaohua, were sent packing Sunday.

Angry Han Chinese in the city have claimed since the summer Chinese authorities have been too soft on Uighur rioters, who had the upper hand in the July clashes. But authorities are also aware how important it is to try to maintain harmonious inter-ethnic relations in a country with at least 56 officially recognized minorities – the Han Chinese by far the biggest.

Against this backdrop, rumours of organized "syringe stabbings" were a powerful force in a vacuum of reliable information – especially in the tense aftermath of July's riots. But reports yesterday suggested the Urumqi rumour mill is still running hot. "This is not over," one newspaper vendor in the city told a British journalist. "They are going round pouring sulphuric acid in people's faces now."

(Reuters) China to demolish buildings in restive Urumqi. By Royston Chan. September 8, 2009.

Three buildings owned by the family of exiled Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer in Urumqi will be demolished, Xinhua news agency said, as the Chinese government sought to reassert control over the ethnically-divided city.

The government ordered shops and businesses in central Urumqi to close early on Monday, giving rise to a wave of rumours of new unrest among citizens panicked by mysterious needle attacks.

Police received 77 new reports of needle attacks on Sunday and Monday, despite threatened punishments for both attackers and rumour-mongerers, Xinhua said. A Han Chinese crowd tried to beat up a Uighur on Monday after another alleged needle attack.

Streets were empty on Monday evening, under heavy security.

Xinhua, quoting the regional government, also reported that people buying "dangerous chemical products" in Xinjiang would face more stringent checks. The report gave no explanation for the tougher checks or link them to the unrest in Urumqi.

Thousands of Han Chinese protested in Urumqi last week, demanding the removal of regional party secretary Wang Lequan for failing to ensure their safety. Two other officials were sacked.

Last week's protesters also denounced the failure to proceed with trials for demonstrators charged after unrest on July 5, when 197 people died in rioting by Muslim Uighurs.

The Akida Trade Center, a building full of Uighur shops owned by the Akida Industry and Trade Co founded by Kadeer, were slated for demolition due to cracks in the walls and sunken footings, Xinhua said. The announcement confirmed a report on Aug. 19 by the Uyghur American Association. More than 30 members of Kadeer's family, including siblings, children and grandchildren, had been living on upper floors of the building, the UAA said. The Akida company building and the Tuanjie, or Unity, theatre, would also be torn down, Xinhua said. Those properties were also owned by Kadeer and her family.

China has repeatedly accused Kadeer, once a successful businesswoman, of triggering the deadly July unrest in the strategic and energy-rich northwestern region of Xinjiang. At least two of Kadeer's sons who are still in China are in jail, while a daughter is under house arrest. Her oldest son manages her business interests in China.

(Reuters Blogs) Misinformation age in Urumqi. By Lucy Hornby. September 8, 2009.

Urumqi is a city cut off from the outside world. There has been no Internet access for two months. Phone links in or out of the region are sporadic. Text messaging is limited. And so people gather in the streets to listen to rumors.

Walking through the streets of Urumqi these past days, the main sounds I heard were of human voices. The snatches of conversation carried rumors of syringe attacks, and outbreaks of rebellious outrage. The words floated from open shop doors, from knots of people gathered at a bus station, and from people talking on cell phones as they passed me on the sidewalk.

It was unusually quiet for China, and so the voices carried. Construction sites halted work on Friday and Saturday and road blocks kept cars out of the city so that demonstrators wouldn’t flood in, after thousands gathered in People’s Square on Sept 2 to demand the resignation of the region’s most powerful official. He came out on a balcony to address the crowds through a bullhorn; they threw bottles and stones at him.

On Friday evening, at an intersection where police and paramilitary had disbursed thousands of ethnic Han Chinese trying to force their way to People’s Square, a knot of people gathered to listen to a grim woman, her voice clear and defiant.

“China is democratic and scientific now, but they have taken away our democracy by keeping us down.” Urumqi was swept by talk of syringe attacks, which the government blamed on separatists, and gripped by a resurgence of racial hatred, two months after 197 people were killed during a riot by Uighurs. Terrified of the mysterious syringe stalkers, Han Chinese took to the streets in disgust and fear to demand more security from the government. Troops were stationed at the entrance to Uighur neighborhoods, to prevent bloodshed by the angry crowds.

The rumors varied with each group clustered on the sidewalks – some versions claimed Uighur women, in their distinctive headscarves, were sticking people with syringes. Others said men were targeting Han women and children. Still another blamed “Uighurs wearing suits.” On Saturday morning, about 20 men huddled around a Chinese man who was busy conveying the story of how a boy had been pricked with a needle, and how troops had prevented the crowd from beating up a nearby Uighur. Then an older man began a litany of complaints about mistreatment by the police and paramilitary. The others nodded in agreement.

The syringe scare was started by a police department text message last Monday, warning residents against attackers with syringes. Based on the indictments so far, some drug addicts had robbed a cab driver by threatening him with a syringe; another tried to fend off police who were trying to rescue them. And then there was a teenager who stuck a needle in a fruit seller’s buttock.

The government warned of a coordinated separatist attack. The effect of the text message, especially in buses crowded with Urumqi residents who are fearful and suspicious of each other, was panic. Over 500 people have gone to the police saying they were attacked; only 106 of them had a clear mark, bump or rash on their skin, official figures show.

But it’s not all hysteria. Those 106 people were pricked with something. Xinhua, the state news agency, said some were mosquito bites. But others were indeed injured, albeit slightly. Doctors, who reassured reporters that it was unlikely the attacks could spread AIDS, said that at least some of the verifiable injuries could be pin or sewing needle pricks.

So who is sticking needles into people? Angry copycats who got an idea from that text message? People who want to enjoy the fuss? People who want to arouse tension and strife in Urumqi, the divided city?

If the government wanted to reduce tensions, it has a tough job now. Its claims of a separatist plot have inflamed tensions, but it is so invested in them it would be difficult to back off now. If it said nothing was happening, people would believe a cover-up was going on.

“The propaganda they put in the newspapers is all designed to trick and cheat us!” a Han woman told me, as several men vehemently tried to convince the police that, as fellow Han Chinese, they should be helping and not blocking the crowds.

As I wrote this, the government ordered work units in central Urumqi to close at 6 pm, but gave no reason for the order. Instantly, more wild rumours flashed through the city.

(The Standard) Media anger at police abuses. By Beatrice Su. September 8, 2009.

About 40 Hong Kong journalists protested outside the Central Government Liaison Office to decry the "shameful" treatment of fellow reporters covering the unrest in Urumqi. They demanded that mainland officials respect media freedom, while chanting: "Violence against reporters is shameful" and "No assault to press freedom."

Among the protesters were TVB reporter Lam Tsz-ho, who was beaten by mainland policemen on Friday, and Now TV reporter Wong Ka-yu, whose hotel room was searched, preventing her from covering quake activist Tan Zuoren's case in Sichuan last month. Lam said he suffered muscle pain but fortunately he not suffered any broken bones. A reporter for 10 years, Lam said he was treated like a criminal. "I could do nothing when they pointed the gun at me. I clearly understand the risk of working in the mainland, but it was the first time I was treated like a criminal," Lam said. He hoped the authorities will give a clear explanation over the incident.

Hong Kong Journalists Association chairwoman Mak Yin-ting called for the incidents to be investigated, and described the "brutal intervention in media coverage is unacceptable. "That was an unreasonable excuse to interrupt the coverage," Mak said. "We request the mainland authorities stop all violent behavior towards reporters and respect press freedom." She also questioned Sunday's incident in which five journalists were brought to the police station even after they showed their authorized reporter's passes.

The journalists were released after being detained for 30 minutes.

(Asia Times) Beijing scrambles to find scapegoats. By Wu Zhong. September 9, 2009.

In need of a scapegoat over massive protests by the Han Chinese community in Urumqi, Xinjiang province, against a string of bizarre syringe attacks supposedly orchestrated by Uyghur separatists, the government at the weekend sacked Li Zhi, Urumqi's Communist Party chief.

Li, a vice-ministerial-level official, became the first Chinese official to fall victim to new government regulations that hold local officials accountable for "mass incidents" - the official term for mass demonstrations - which came into effect in mid-July.

Li, 59, may have taken a fall to quell growing public anger, particularly among Han residents, over worsening public security in the region. But the main target of criticism from the Han

Chinese protesters is Wang Lequan, the party secretary of Xinjiang since 1995.

Analysts agree that Li's removal will secure the position of Wang, also a politburo member and reportedly a protege of President Hu Jintao, for the near future - unless the situation in Xinjiang gets too out of control.

The eruption of massive street protests in Urumqi last week was a major embarrassment for the central government and Hu personally, especially as Beijing is preparing grand celebrations for the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China (PRC) on October 1.

The ongoing unrest in Xinjiang makes it harder for Beijing to boast solidarity and the harmonious co-existence of ethnic groups as being among the major achievements of communist rule over the past six decades.

Hu paid a four-day visit to Xinjiang from August 22 to 25 to inspect the situation in the aftermath of July 5 violence in Urumqi that left 197 people dead and another 1,600 injured.

In Chinese tradition, when violent unrest occurs in an ethnic-minority region, the supreme Chinese leader - traditionally the emperor - would not inspect the area unless he was assured that order had been restored and that the situation was fully under control.

Similarly, it seems that Hu was assured that the ethnic conflict in Xinjiang was a closed chapter. During his inspection trip, the president expressed gratitude to the armed forces and the police for "ending the violence of the July 5 riot in Urumqi", according to the state-run Xinhua News Agency.

Indeed, both before and during Hu's Xinjiang visit, Xinjiang and Urumqi officials had stressed that "life was becoming normal" and that tourists were again visiting Urumqi.

But last Thursday, tens of thousands of angry Urumqi residents, mostly ethnic Han, took to the streets in protest against the government's failure to stop hypodermic syringe attacks on Han pedestrians, allegedly by Uyghurs.

Urumqi residents feared the syringes contained poison, or blood from HIV/AIDS-infected patients. Such attacks have previously been reported in the country.

Minister of Public Security Meng Jianzhu, who flew to Urumqi at dawn on Friday to personally oversee the handling of the incident, said the fresh unrest was a continuation of the July 5 incident. He blamed "overseas separatists" for attempting to further instigate hatred and conflict between the Han and Uyghur ethnic groups.

But the September 3 protests were most likely prompted by the government's inaction over initial reports of syringe attacks. Some protesters told Hong Kong media that as early as August 17, Han Chinese had complained to local police of syringe stabbings, allegedly by Uyghurs. These were said to have continued "almost every day" since then - even during Hu's visit, and Urumqi police now admit that attacks had taken place since August 17.

Police inaction could be explained by a mistaken belief that the incidents were isolated. However, it is more likely that the authorities were afraid to launch high-profile searches that could have intensified ethnic conflict and made a mockery of claims that law and order had been restored.

But the inaction led Han residents, who account for 75% of Urumqi's 2.3 million population, to take matters into their own hands by staging protests, with the first major demonstration taking place last Thursday. According to Xinhua, these protests were attended by "tens of thousands of people" and they "crippled city traffic and forced shops in major commercial streets to shut".

Syringe stabbings occurred even during the protests and one attacker was caught at the scene, Xinhua said, with only police intervention saving her from being lynched. Armed police prevented the crowd from going to Uyghurs areas, but five people were killed and more than a dozen injured during the September 3 protests, Xinhua reported.

Both Wang Lequan and Li Zhi made public appearances on different occasions during the protests. "Wang Lequan, step down!" the protesters shouted. On Hong Kong television, some protestors were seen throwing plastic bottles at him. "This government is unable to protect people's lives. It must be changed," one protester said.

Han residents are not happy with Wang, whom they accuse of mishandling the July 5 incident. (See 'King of Xinjiang' faces blame for riots, July 16, 2009, Asia Times Online) In Washington, exiled Uyghur leader Rebiya Kadeer has also called on Wang to step down, blaming him for intensifying ethnic conflict in Xinjiang. For once, the Han and Uyghur ethnic groups in Xinjiang seem to have some common ground.

Wang, however, will likely remain in his post. He is a politburo member and "there is no precedent of a politburo member being sacked for his mistakes", according to a sociology researcher with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) in Beijing.

Two former politburo members, ex-Beijing party chief Chen Xitong and ex-Shanghai party chief Chen Liangyu have previously been jailed over corruption, but only as a result of power struggles. If Wang were to be replaced, Beijing would have to find someone suitably experienced in handling ethnic issues.

"At this stage, dismissing Li Zhi is the proper move. The current unrest has only [occurred] in Urumqi, and as party chief of the city, Li certainly is the first person to blame. But if the whole situation in Xinjiang gets out of control, then Wang cannot shirk his responsibility," said the CASS researcher.

Li's dismissal was announced on Saturday, and he was immediately replaced by Zhu Hailun, 51, the secretary of the CPC's Xinjiang Committee of Political and Legal Affairs. Zhu commands all law-enforcement forces in the region and this replacement shows that Beijing places top priority on restoring law and order in Urumqi.

Xinjiang's police chief Liu Yaohua was also dismissed on Saturday and replaced by Zhu Changjie, party chief of Xinjiang's Aksu prefecture.

For the time being, the street protests in Urumqi are under control after police reportedly used tear gas to disperse the crowds. Hospitals in Urumqi are reported to have dealt with 531 victims of syringe stabbings, 106 of whom showed obvious signs of needle attacks. Chinese military medical experts on Saturday ruled out the possibility that radioactive substances, anthrax or toxic chemicals were used in the attacks, Xinhua reported, adding that samples had been sent to Beijing for further tests.

By Friday, Xinjiang police had detained 25 suspects, seven of whom had been held in police custody, four of them had been formally arrested and four others had been referred for criminal prosecution, Xinhua said.

Since the leadership reshuffle, the Urumqi government has announced a "strike hard" campaign against syringe attacks. Attackers will be prosecuted quickly and punished harshly, with convicted attackers possibly being given the death penalty. Even one who spreads "rumors" about syringe attacks can be jailed for five years. Meanwhile, unauthorized assemblies and demonstrations are banned and armed police have been deployed across the city.

The government has also announced the "soft" measure of sending 7,000 officials described as "harmony makers" to residential communities in Urumqi to help ease panic and tension.

(Xinhua) Xinjiang officials says "regretful" over row involving HK journalists. September 8, 2009.

    A top media official in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region expressed Tuesday regrets over an alleged beating of three Hong Kong journalists in the regional capital of Urumqi last week, but noted that they had violated local regulations.

    "We are regretful over the incident," said Hou Hanmin, director of the Xinjiang Autonomous Regional Information Office, during a meeting with a group of Hong Kong journalists who came to Urumqi to cover the aftermath of the riot on July 5.

    "Of the three journalists, only one had a temporary press card that allowed him to conduct interviews in the city, but the other two didn't have. They violated our regulations," she said.

    After the July 5 riot in which 197 people were left dead and more than 1,600 others injured, local authorities stipulated that journalists who came to cover the incident should first obtain temporary press cards issued by the regional information office.

    Citing an investigation about the alleged beating of the three journalists on Sept. 4, Hou said security personnel found some people were following and filming a group of demonstrators on a road in the city that afternoon, and suspected them of instigating the demonstrators when witnessing that they made profuse gestures before the demonstrators.

    "Security personnel asked them to show ID cards and leave the scene, but they refused to do so and continued to film the protests among the demonstrators," Hou said.

    "Security personnel repeatedly asked them to leave but failed. Under such circumstances, they detained three of them," she said.

    Hou did not specify whether a beating, as claimed by the three journalists, was involved in the detention process, but said "something that everybody doesn't want to see took place".

    She also criticized some unspecified media and individuals for making "irresponsible remarks" after the incident without knowledge of the truth of the fact.

    But Hou also stressed local authorities would maintain the media openness policy that has been employed after the July 5 riot and security personnel would also provide protection for journalists who conduct interviews while complying with local regulations.

    "We reiterate here that journalists must abide by relevant laws and regulations, and refrain from doing anything that goes against their identity of being journalists," she added.

(AFP) China official regrets 'beating' September 8, 2009.

AN OFFICIAL in China's Xinjiang region voiced regret on Tuesday over last week's alleged beating of three Hong Kong journalists during ethnic unrest in the regional capital Urumqi, state media said. The three journalists were tackled and detained by paramilitary police while trying to escape tear gas fired to disperse crowds on September 4 when Han Chinese protested inadequate security in the city.

'We are regretful over the incident,' Hou Hanmin, Xinjiang spokeswoman told Xinhua news agency. Xinhua said Ms Hou was expressing regret over what it described as an 'alleged beating.' 'Of the three journalists, only one had a temporary press card that allowed him to conduct interviews in the city, but the other two didn't. They violated our regulations,' he said.

The mass protests were sparked after reports that hundreds of people had been stabbed with syringes in Urumqi, with demonstrations on Thursday leaving at least five dead. Ethnic majority Han Chinese blamed minority Uighurs for the needle attacks, sparking fears of more ethnic unrest after violence in July left nearly 200 people dead, most of them Han.

According to the Foreign Correspondent's Club of China, the Hong Kong journalists were punched and kicked by the police, then detained face-down on the ground with their hands tied behind their backs for up to 20 minutes. The journalists repeatedly asked the armed police to check their central government-issued press identification cards but the requests were ignored, the club said in a statement.

Spokeswoman Hou's comments suggested that Xinjiang officials did not recognise the reporters' central government press credentials. The incidents stood in contrast to the relatively open and safe reporting conditions foreign correspondents experienced while covering the July unrest that also ended with nearly 1,700 people injured.

'The beating and harassing of journalists must stop. The local authorities in Xinjiang must ensure that journalists are able to do their jobs without fear of attacks,' FCCC President Scott McDonald said in a statement.

(The Wall Street Journal) Xinjiang on Pins and Needles September 9, 2009.

When mosquito bites are routinely confused for race-based syringe attacks, you know you have a problem. Welcome to China's western province of Xinjiang, where security has gone from bad to worse thanks in part to ham-fisted government policies.

Racial tensions between the Han Chinese, China's majority ethnic group, and the Uighurs, a Muslim and Turkic ethnic group, have probably never been worse. On July 5 a Uighur demonstration turned into a violent riot that left 197people dead, most of whom were Han Chinese. Last Thursday tens of thousands of Han protesters took to the streets asking for better state protection and the resignation of Xinjiang Party Secretary Wang Lequan. State media reported five dead after those demonstrations, with no official explanation given.

For much of the last six decades Beijing has steadily built up the Han presence in Xinjiang and solidified its control there. This process was sped up by the "Strike Hard" campaign launched in 1996 that targeted criminals and supposed "separatists" who might support political freedoms for Xinjiang. The province is important to Beijing because it occupies one-sixth of China's land mass and is home to the country's largest oil fields. While state-directed investment has poured into the province, Uighurs often feel left out of the economic boom and complain their way of life is being destroyed.

The man at the heart of many of these policies is Mr. Wang, a politburo member who has been Xinjiang Party Secretary since 1995. His vision for the province—economic development combined with gradual tightening of religious and cultural freedoms—tracks closely with the way Hu Jintao governed Tibet when he was Party Secretary there, and the two men are seen as allies.

Today, more than two months after the July 5 protests, life has hardly returned to normal. All schools are closed—officially as a swine flu precaution—and university campuses are sealed. Traffic restrictions at night act as a curfew and business has ground to a standstill. All Internet in the province is cut off, as is most text messaging and international calls, and people are stockpiling food. Soldiers patrol the streets and stand guard around Uighur neighborhoods to prevent Han vigilantes from taking justice into their own hands. This is hardly the stuff of the "harmonious society" that Mr. Hu likes to talk about.

The mob mentality of two ethnic groups that are at each other's throats is difficult for any government to deal with; but an information blackout has made things worse. Dangerous rumors have sprung up in place of reliable information, which contributed to the mass hysteria of the syringe attacks. (In hundreds of cases, no puncture mark has been found by doctors.) The government inadvertently acknowledged this problem Monday by announcing possible jail penalties for rumor-mongers.

So far there are no signs that policy change is on the way. A high-ranking Chinese official, Jia Qinglin, suggested Monday that improving the living standards of ethnic minorities was an important part of ethnic unity. But this is precisely the approach that got Xinjiang where it is today. Beijing has poured money into the province and guided its commercial development through a pseudo-military corporation known as the Bingtuan. But higher living standards or not, the Uighurs who have inhabited Xinjiang for centuries want to hold onto their basic religious and cultural freedoms, like fasting during Ramadan or educating their children in Uighur instead of Mandarin.

Rather than considering small policy changes like these, Xinjiang officials have blamed an elderly Uighur woman living in the United States, Rebiya Kadeer, for masterminding the riots and spent considerable energies going after her family and her properties in Xinjiang. In the tradition of the Cultural Revolution, her children have been forced to issue written denunciations of their mother. Ms. Kadeer's landmark shopping center in Urumqi, where many of her extended family live, is due to be razed to the ground.

But Xinjiang needs more than just a new, non-Kadeer-affiliated shopping center if its people are to live in peace. Beijing did fire two provincial party leaders over the weekend, and it would do well seriously to consider the protesters' calls for Mr. Wang's resignation. That would take a special meeting of the politburo—and serve as a sign that the leadership in Beijing is prepared to hold its own members accountable in response to the demands of its citizens.

(China Daily) Syringe attacks persist in Urumqi September 9, 2009.

Police said they received 77 reports of syringe attacks between 5 pm Sunday and 5 pm Monday in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, despite authorities warning attackers they might face the death penalty. So far, police have caught 45 suspects during the syringe scare, of whom 12 remain in police custody. The procuratorate has approved the arrests of four. Eight people have been sent to drug rehab, according to Urumqi police authorities. Despite signs of recovery in the city after assaults caused fear among residents and triggered mass protests, the Urumqi municipal government implemented traffic control Monday night on the city's main streets. Shops and businesses in the city center were ordered to close early. The control lasted from 9 pm Monday to 9 am Tuesday.

The Public Security Department of the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region reiterated syringe attackers must be given punishment in order to protect residents and maintain social order, according to a public notice released late Monday. The pledge followed a joint notice on Sunday of the court, the prosecutor's office and the police bureau of Urumqi, which said an attacker may face a life sentence or even the death penalty. The department emphasized that those who stab others, no matter what means they use, are considered to have committed crimes and must be punished according to law.

Those who pretend to suffer syringe attacks and cause fear among the public will also face punishment, according to the public notice. As well, citizens are allowed to take to the police any suspects who commit syringe attacks or flee from the scene, the notice said. But it prohibited beating suspects.

The building built and named by Rebiya Kadeer in Urumqi will be demolished as it has serious security risks, local authorities said Monday. The building has cracks in the wall and the ground has sunk, said an official with the municipal government. Kadeer, the leader of the separatist World Uyghur Congress, was accused of being the mastermind behind the July 5 riot, which left 197 dead and more than 1,700 injured. The time of the demolition hasn't been revealed but a notice was sent to vendors in the building on July 22 by the Akada Industry and Trade Company, founded by Kadeer. The building is also considered a fire risk by the fire department as its wires are old and the fire exits are used as stores by vendors, said the official. Although the municipal government spent a large amount of money to repair the electrical system in 2006, it is still not safe, the official said. The building, with more than 500 stores in the four floors and covering 1,720 square meters, was built when Kadeer ran a business in the Erdaoqiao area and belongs to the Akada Industry and Trade Company. Other aging buildings, including the Akada company building and the Tuanjie Theater, are also listed to be demolished.

(South China Morning Post) Tempers flare over beating of journalists By Ng Tze-wei. September 9, 2009.

The row between Xinjiang authorities and Hong Kong media continued to escalate yesterday, with mainland officials defending the beating of three Hong Kong journalists in Urumqi last week. Hong Kong television stations have rebutted the officials' defence as "factually incorrect".

Three Hong Kong journalists - TVB reporter Lam Tsz-ho, a TVB cameraman and a Now TV cameraman - were covering the aftermath of a mass protest by Han Chinese in Urumqi after a string of hypodermic-needle attacks, which the central government has blamed on Muslim separatists. They were pinned to the ground by People's Armed Police officers, kicked and punched before being tied up and taken away.

A top media official in Xinjiang expressed regret over the rough handling but said the three journalists were suspected of inciting a disturbance and that they had broken local regulations. "In the process [of detaining the trio], something we all didn't want to happen did happen, and we are deeply regretful about this incident," Xinjiang Information Office director Hou Hanmin said in a meeting with Hong Kong journalists in Urumqi.

Citing a police investigation, Hou said the journalists were found "giving orders" to protesters in Tianshan district. After the three had refused to present their journalist's licences to police, ignoring repeated requests from the police, they were detained. Two of them were then found to have been working without proper credentials, Hou said. "Of the three journalists, only one had a temporary press card that allowed him to conduct interviews in the city, but the other two didn't. They violated our regulations."

Since February, Beijing has required all Hong Kong journalists to apply for temporary reporting licences whenever they wish to report on the mainland. "Some media then irresponsibly hyped up the incident and some people made irresponsible comments without knowing what really happened," Hou said, adding that journalists "should not do anything that they are not authorised to do".

In response, TVB and Now TV issued statements yesterday saying their journalists were properly accredited. TVB said Hou's comments were "partial" and "factually incorrect". Now TV said Hou was "making up facts" and police had never asked for credentials.

The meeting between Hong Kong journalists and Urumqi officials yesterday was tense. The four media outlets whose journalists were beaten up or detained last week - TVB, Now TV, RTHK and Commercial Radio Hong Kong - were not invited to the meeting but showed up anyway. Commercial Radio reporter Yeung Tung-tat was asked to apologise after the meeting for shouting out: "The government is shameless."

Meanwhile, at the Foreign Ministry's regular press conference yesterday, spokeswoman Jiang Yu also stood by the actions of People's Armed Police officers. "During their handling of the emergency, I believe it was proper and necessary for the police to implement some contingency measures at the scene in accordance with the law," she said. "I hope reporters can co-operate and understand."

The beating drew sharp criticism from Hong Kong journalists and legislators, who were further enraged by the brief detention of five Hong Kong television and radio reporters in Urumqi on Sunday when they tried to interview people.

(China Daily) Syringe suspects seized in Xinjiang By Cui Jia and Cai Ke. September 11, 2009.

Nine suspects believed to be responsible for syringe attacks in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region communities of Hotan, Altay and Kashgar are in custody. The arrests follow reports of syringe attacks in several cities in the autonomous region after a spate of similar attacks in the region's capital, Urumqi, that led to massive protests.

Six of the suspects were caught in Hotan, according to the Hotan public security bureau on the local government's website on Wednesday. Of the six, two have already been officially detained.

By Sunday, nine syringe attacks had been reported in Hotan, but only three had been confirmed, the bureau said. Among the three hospitalized victims, two were Han Chinese and the other was Uygur. So far, none of the victims is believed to have contracted a disease or been exposed to poisoning.

Police are offering a 5,000 yuan ($735) reward for information about the attacks, Hotan police said.

An official from the public security bureau of Altay region confirmed on Tuesday that two syringe attack suspects were in custody there. "Five possible syringe attacks were reported to the public security bureau by Tuesday, four of which were false alarms. The other case is genuine. The victim did not show any abnormal symptoms," said Ahlebeck, deputy director of the public security bureau of Altay region.

Ahlebeck said police apprehended a 35-year-old and a 21-year-old in connection with the attack. Further investigation is under way.

A syringe attack suspect was caught on Monday in Kashgar, according to Wang Jianhua, spokesperson for the local government. "We have received five syringe attack reports from Han residents, of which three turned out to be false alarms," Wang said. There were no other confirmed reports of syringe attacks in other parts of Xinjiang. Ten such attacks were reported in Ili and 10 more in Hami, but none have been proven.

Tens of thousands of people took to the streets in Urumqi, last week calling for an end to the attacks. Local authorities said late Tuesday that police had apprehended 45 suspects in connection with the recent flurry of syringe attacks in Urumqi. By Monday, the prosecution of eight of them had already begun.

The attacks, which have targeted innocent people, are believed to have been orchestrated in a bid to scare residents and create further unrest, said Du Xintao, an official with the regional public security department. "The attacks are terror attacks," Du said.

By last Friday, Urumqi health and police authorities had confirmed 531 people had been stabbed by hypodermic syringes in the city, 171 of the victims showed obvious signs of the attacks. The majority of the victims were from the Han ethnic group. Others were from ethnic groups including Uygur, Hui and Kazak.

(South China Morning Post) Journalists to march over Xinjiang claim Gary Cheung, Eva Wu, Albert Wong and Kristine Kwok. September 11, 2009.

A group representing the city's journalists will organise a march on Sunday to voice anger after Xinjiang authorities accused three Hong Kong journalists beaten by police in Urumqi last weekend of inciting protesters there. The move by the Hong Kong Journalists Association came as former National People's Congress Standing Committee member Tsang Hin-chi and former chief executive Tung Chee-hwa called for understanding and calm.

The association, which has demanded an apology from Xinjiang over arrests and beatings - which came as reporters were covering unrest over syringe attacks in Urumqi - called on journalists joining the march to dress in black. Chairwoman Mak Yin-ting said they would tie red ribbons to the gates of the central government liaison office to show their anger and then march around the building. "We urge Xinjiang authorities to launch a thorough investigation into the incident and respect press freedom," Mak said.

But Tsang said he hoped Hong Kong journalists would take national interests into account and play down the row. "Our country has struggled hard in the past six decades and the achievements did not come easily. I hope Hong Kong journalists will show understanding if something unhappy happens." Tung, now a vice-chairman of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, said the best way forward was for everybody to calm down, and urged people to see the events in light of the tense situation and need to restore social stability.

The march, from Western police station to the liaison office, will start at 1pm on Sunday. Mak said the association was urging other groups representing Hong Kong journalists to take part. It will also write to President Hu Jintao and Xinjiang authorities to express its concern.

Chris Yeung Kin-hing, chairman of the News Executives Association, said his group had no plan to join the march. "Different groups have their own ways to express concern about the incident." Instead, his group will hold a seminar on Sunday afternoon to discuss the incident in Urumqi.

Tsang, speaking after attending the opening ceremony of a photographic exhibition at the Convention and Exhibition Centre on the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China, said he hoped the central government would respond to the controversy, adding that the Xinjiang authorities' handling of the matter had not been satisfactory.

Liaison office deputy director Li Gang said the office had conveyed the views of various sectors in Hong Kong to relevant central government departments. "I believe that the row will be resolved in a peaceful and rational manner after further communication," he said. Li said mainland authorities would continue to protect the rights of Hong Kong and overseas journalists to cover news on the mainland.

Last Friday, TVB senior reporter Lam Tsz-ho, his cameraman Lau Wing-chuen and Now TV cameraman Lam Chun-wai were tied up, handcuffed and beaten by police while covering protests in Urumqi over the syringe attacks.

On Tuesday, Hou Hanmin , director of the Xinjiang Information Office, accused the three journalists of inciting protesters.

Tung told 400 students at an event organised by the Federation of Youth Groups that he believed in Hong Kong journalists' professional conduct. "I sympathise very much with what they experienced in Urumqi." However, he also said the restoration of social stability was of the utmost importance to the Xinjiang regional government.

Cheng Yiu-tong, executive councillor and a Hong Kong deputy to the National People's Congress, said Xinjiang authorities should apologise to Hong Kong journalists if their accusation against the trio was found to be unsubstantiated.

Twenty-three pan-democratic legislators yesterday wrote to Hu and the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office, demanding a full investigation and saying that those involved should apologise to Hong Kong journalists if they were found to have wrongly handled the incident. The camp also called for Chief Executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen to reflect Hongkongers' concerns over the row to the central government.

A Hong Kong official said there were limits to what the city government could do on the issue because it happened outside Hong Kong.

At a regular Foreign Ministry press conference in Beijing yesterday, Hong Kong reporters fired at least five questions at spokeswoman Jiang Yu over the Urumqi incident. But Jiang did not comment on the Xinjiang government's accusation. Asked whether the ministry would agree on the Xinjiang authorities' accusation, and whether Beijing had evidence that the syringe attacks were a terrorist plot, Jiang said only: "Your question is out of my capacity to answer. Please check with relevant authorities in Xinjiang."

(Reuters) Needle attacks and rumours spread in China's Xinjiang. By Lucy Hornby. September 11, 2009.

A police text message was the spark that ignited the rash of reports in the divided city of Urumqi. Five people died in unrest last week and tens of thousands poured into the streets to demand the ouster of the powerful regional Party Secretary, Wang Lequan. "Recently, several residents were attacked by hypodermic syringes. Local police security departments have also uncovered a case in which assailants used syringes to attack passers-by," read the text message, sent to Urumqi residents on Aug. 31. "Please don't panic over the incident, and inform police officers if you find any suspects."

Panic they did.

By Sept. 4, 513 people had turned up at police stations to report they had been jabbed, stabbed or pricked. They were tested for HIV, hepatitis and sexually transmitted diseases, adding to fears that the attacks would spread AIDS. At least another 77 attacks have since been reported. On Sept 3, Han Chinese crowded into People's Square demanding Wang's resignation for not ensuring their safety during the July riots, or against the mystery stabbers. The five died on Sept 3, when crowds beat up a Uighur man accused of jabbing a woman, and then attacked the ambulance ferrying him to hospital.

New orders punishing rumour-mongers and forbidding citizens from beating up suspects imply that the city government is trying to dampen the firestorm it started. Most of the stabbings appear to be simple hysteria. Only 106 victims had shown signs of jabs, bumps or rashes as of Sept 4. Some were pricked by sewing needles or pins, not syringes, doctors said. Other marks might be insect bites.

Authorities have revealed details of four crimes that appear to have prompted the syringe warning.

On Aug. 28, a 19-year-old Uighur followed a fruit seller home and stuck a pin in her buttocks. The next day, two Uighur drug addicts, a man and woman aged 22 and 34, used a syringe to mug a cabbie, stealing 710 yuan ($100).

On Aug. 31, a Uighur addict used a syringe with heroin in it to fend off arresting officers, some of whom were injured.

On Sept 3, four men jabbed a woman in the neck with a syringe loaded with an unidentified dangerous substance.

Authorities have not explained how the crimes by junkies and molesters comprise an organised plot. It is possible that those who were actually pricked, many on crowded buses, were targets of people seeking revenge or trying to stir up hatred, or just bored people looking for drama.

(Times Online) Panic over syringe stabbings spreads to Beijing. September 11, 2009.

The Chinese authorities are anxious that mysterious syringe stabbings that have caused panic in the restive far west have now reached the capital.

The threat of such needle attacks comes as an enormous security blanket has been thrown across Beijing to ensure that a huge military parade to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Communist Party rule passes off without a hitch on October 1.

Indications that the bizarre attacks may have extended from the mostly Muslim, riot-torn region of Xinjiang to Beijing came in the form of directives from internet service providers to clients to prevent any mention of such violence on websites.

Managers of websites said that they received notification today to delete any discussion or mention of syringe stabbings in Beijing as soon as these are spotted.

In a country where the media are carefully monitored by the propaganda authorities, the internet has become the most important outlet for relatively free discussion of almost every topic. News often breaks first on smaller sites that have escaped the eagle eye of China’s cyber police.

One website manager, who declined to be identified for fear of retribution, told The Times that he had been given no indication of where or when such attacks might have taken place in Beijing. He said: “We don’t even know what is in the syringes. But I’m not worried. I’ll just make sure I only go out in my car and don’t walk in the streets.”

The attacks in Xinjiang have spread from the capital, Urumqi, where 200 people were killed in July when ethnic Uighurs turned on Han Chinese, to smaller cities in the region where many chafe under Beijing rule.

According to officials more than 600 people in Urumqi say that they have been stabbed, although many incidents have turned out to be nothing more serious than mosquito bites. More than 40 people have been detained in the city in connection with the attacks.

State media said that nine suspects have now been detained in the smaller Silk Road cities of Khotan, Altay and Kashgar.

Such is the level of suspicion in China, where people are accustomed to suppression of news in the state-run media, that rumours can easily set off panic. A police text message ignited the panic last week in Urumqi when tens of thousands of Han Chinese marched through the streets to demand government action to stop the attacks.

The message said: "Recently, several residents were attacked by hypodermic syringes. Local police security departments have also uncovered a case in which assailants used syringes to attack passers-by. Please don't panic over the incident, and inform police officers if you find any suspects." People then panicked.

(Xinhua) Suspects sentenced over needle attacks in Urumqi. September 12, 2009.

Three suspects were sentenced to up to 15 years in jail Saturday over syringe stabbings that triggered public scare in Urumqi, capital of northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

Court hearings on two cases involving the three Uygur suspects began at about 10 a.m. at the Municipal Intermediate People's Court of Urumqi and ended at about 1 p.m., the first of its kind since many innocent civilians were injured in a series of hypodermic needle attacks from mid-August.

The court sentenced Yilipan Yilihamu, 19, to 15 years in prison for "deploying false dangerous substances" as he was convicted of inserting a pin into a woman's buttock on Aug. 28, Shi Xinli, president of the court, told a press conference soon after the court hearing completed.

The young Uygur was captured on the day hours after the victim reported to police that she was stabbed at a roadside fruit stall.

"His action violated the Criminal Law and caused public panic and a grave consequence, so he deserved the penalty," said Chen Jing, a professor with the Law School of Xinjiang University.

In a separate trial in the same court, Muhutaerjiang Turdi, a 34-year-old man, and Aimannisha Guli, a 22-year-old woman, were sentenced to 10 years in jail with a fine of 5,000 yuan (732 U.S. dollars) and seven years in prison with a fine of 3,000 yuan respectively for robbing a taxi driver on Aug. 29, Shi said.

The two jointly threatened a taxi driver with a syringe and robbed him of 710 yuan for buying drugs. The woman was captured on the same day of the robbery and the man surrendered to police three days after.

The man was given a 14-year jail term for robbery in 2001 and was set free in September last year. The woman was sentenced to one year in prison in January 2007 for theft and was released in October in the same year, according to court investigations.

More than 200 people, including family members of the defendants and victims and reporters, were present at the court hearings Saturday, which proceeded in Uygur language according to the defendants' wish with simultaneous interpretation in mandarin.

"The court verdict was very accurate," said Xu Chun, a lawyer with the Gonglian Law Offices based in Urumqi.

The court hearings strictly punished crimes and alleviated people's scare, contributing to the recovery of the social order, Xu said. "The suspects did not hire any lawyers themselves so the court arranged some for them, which is an effort to protect the rights of the defendants," he added.

"The court made a fair judgment and I think Urumqi people will feel satisfied with it," said Li Yuying, a saleswoman in the city. She expressed the belief that the government is capable of maintaining social stability and protect people's security. She called on relative authorities to launch quick actions against any possible security threats in the future.

"Only harsh punishment of criminals according to law and return of a safe living environment could cure people's psychological trauma," said Shi Shuhong, a teacher with the No. 35 Primary School of Urumqi.

"In the view of Muslims, the word Muslim means solidarity and stability. A complete Muslim must love the country and the religion, and contribute to the national prosperity, to people's health and welfare," said Ma Wenxu, an imam with the Luyuanjie Mosque in the city. "The court hearings and sentences were timely and correct, I fully support and welcome them," he said.

Hundreds of people have been stabbed by hypodermic syringes or needles in Urumqi, triggering public angst and wrath.

Tens of thousands of residents took to the streets early this month, demanding security guarantees. Five people died and at least 14 were hospitalized for injuries during the protests.

No death nor any case which needs anti-virus drugs has been reported.

The city's public security authorities announced last week that police had caught 45 suspects amid the syringe scare, of whom 12 are in police custody.

Syringe attackers may face harsh punishment in accordance with the law, including life imprisonment and even death penalty if convicted of causing grave consequence, the city's judicial and police authorities have said.

(CCTV9 in English)

　

(China Daily) Syringe attacks get up to 15 years in jail. By Cui Jia and Cai Ke. September 14, 2009.

No radioactive, toxic or viral substances, such as AIDS, were found in blood samples taken from victims of the recent spate of syringe attacks in Urumqi after being tested at a laboratory in Beijing, an expert said Sunday. But Qian Jun, director of Disease Control and Biological Security Office with China's Academy of Military Medical Sciences, said: "Although no radioactive or toxic substances were found, some patients showed various levels of anxiety and depression and have been recommended for psychological counseling."

On Saturday, the first group of syringe attack suspects went on trial in Urumqi, capital of the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, following a series of attacks on at least 500 people in the city since mid-August.

Two men and a woman were given sentences ranging from seven to 15 years in jail for syringe stabbings or robberies in which they threatened their victims with needles. Both trials took place in the Uygur language according to the defendants' wishes, with interpretation in Mandarin.

The court sentenced 19-year-old Yilipan Yilihamu to 15 years in prison for injecting a hypodermic needle into a woman's buttocks on Aug 28 at a roadside fruit stall. Yilihamu initially denied the charge but later changed his plea to guilty after evidence was shown in court. He plans to appeal.

"The penalty given to Yilihamu is appropriate because his action caused public panic and led to grave consequences. He violated the Criminal Law," Chen Jing, a professor with the Law School of Xinjiang University, told China Daily. "It's only been just over two weeks between the arrest and sentencing of the suspect. The speedy trials showed the government's determination to crack down on crime and to foil any attempts to undermine social stability."

In a separate trial in the same court, Muhutaerjiang Turdi, a 34-year-old man, and Aimannisha Guli, a 22-year-old woman, were sentenced to 10 years in jail with a fine of 5,000 yuan ($732) and seven years in prison with a fine of 3,000 yuan respectively, for robbing a taxi driver on Aug 29. The two threatened a taxi driver with a syringe and robbed him of 710 yuan in order to buy drugs. Guli was captured on the day of the robbery and Turdi turned himself in to police three days after.

The court also found that Turdi was given a 14-year jail term for robbery in 2001 and was released in September last year. Guli was sentenced to a year in prison in January 2007 for theft and released in October of the same year. "The court made a fair judgment," Xu Chun, a lawyer with the Gonglian Law Office based in Urumqi, told China Daily.

But some Urumqi residents believe the suspects should have received harsher sentences. "I think all three of them should get at least life imprisonment as they have caused a massive scare among people and everyone in the city has been deeply affected," a 27-year-old Urumqi resident speaking on condition of anonymity said Sunday.

On the other hand, people with comparatively wider knowledge of law believe the punishment was accurate and appropriate. "Given the consequences of the criminals' crimes, objectively speaking, such a result is enough to punish them as well as sound an alarm to the general public", said 72-year-old Ma Wenxu, an imam with the Luyuanjie Mosque in the city.

(Xinhua) Police capture 75 suspects of Xinjiang syringe attacks. September 15, 2009.

Seventy-five suspects involved in recent syringe attacks in Urumqi, capital of northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, had been detained as of Tuesday, a local police officer said.

"As of Tuesday, police have arrested 75 suspects, cracked seven criminal rings and 36 cases related to the syringe attacks," said Huang Yabo, a senior officer with the regional public security department. The 36 cases of syringe attacks involved 16 in Urumqi, 13 in Hotan, and two in Turpan, two in Kashgar and one each in the Changji Hui Autonomous Prefecture, Aksu and Altay. Huang said that criminologists had been sent to the region to direct investigations. There were still a few lawbreakers attacking local residents with syringes, the police officer said. "The police will intensify the fight against the criminals."

Zhang Jun, deputy head of Urumqi Public Security Bureau, said in one case, two Uygur youngsters had been detained for stabbing a local resident named Zhang Yun in the arm on Sept. 12 in a supermarket. "The two suspects, who are now under detention, have confessed they attacked Zhang with unused syringes to create panic in society," said Zhang.

In another case, Tursunjiang Turdi, along with seven others were seized for organized attacks on Urumqi residents with needles, pins and toothpicks. "They have confessed their aim was to undermine ethnic unity in Xinjiang and to create ethnic hatred," said Zhang.

Three Uygurs have already been given heavy sentences ranging from seven to 15 years in jail on Sept. 12 for syringe stabbings or threatening to use syringes during robbery.

Hundreds of people have been stabbed by hypodermic syringes or needles in Urumqi during the past three weeks which triggered mass public anger. Tens of thousands of residents took to the streets earlier this month, demanding security guarantees. Five people died and at least 14 were hospitalized for injuries during the protests.

The city's public security authorities announced earlier this month that police had caught 45 syringe scare suspects. Tests of victims' samples had found no dangerous viruses or chemicals, medical experts said last week.

(Xinhua) Xinjiang police capture terror gang and explosives. September 16, 2009.

Police in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region have captured a terror gang together with materials and tools to make explosives, the country's anti-terrorist authorities said Wednesday.

Six suspects, including ringleaders Seyitamut Obul and Tasin Mehmut, were captured, and "a large quantity" of materials and tools to make explosive devices were seized during police raids in the suburbs of Aksu city in Xinjiang. Police did not say when the suspects were seized.

Initial investigation showed the gang had made more than 20 explosive devices in three places in the suburbs of Aksu after the July 5 riot, and planned to carry out terrorist attacks, the police said.

(China Daily) 'Terror gang' rounded up in Xinjiang. By Cui Jia. September 17, 2009.

Security forces said Wednesday raids, which ended late last month, broke up a terrorist bomb-making operation in Xinjiang in Northwest China.

The six alleged terrorists taken into custody during the pre-Aug 26 swoops were hoping to ramp up violence and panic in the troubled region by carrying out suicide bombings and other outrages, police said Wednesday.

Investigators uncovered a large cache of bomb-making material when they conducted operations in Aksu, in the southern part of the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, said a notice posted on the Ministry of Public Security website Wednesday.

Police believe the gang made more than 20 bombs that were hidden in three locations around Aksu in the aftermath of the July 5 riot in Urumqi. The authorities say the group was preparing to carry out suicide bombings, motorbike explosions and detonate car bombs.

Police named two of the six people in custody as Seyitamut Obul and Tasin Mehmut. The pair were described as the ringleaders of the cell.

Li Wei, director of the center for counterterrorism studies at China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, warned that terrorists are looking for new ways to spread fear. "Terrorists have gone underground to organize different forms of terror attacks in Xinjiang, after the July 5 riot in Urumqi, such as the recent syringe attacks in the region and plotting bomb attacks," said Li.

(Associated Press) Four syringe attackers sentenced to between 8 and 15 years. September 17, 2009.

A court in Xinjiang sentenced four men accused of jabbing a pedestrian with a hypodermic needle to prison terms of eight to 15 years on Thursday, as authorities move swiftly to assuage panic over a string of such attacks.

The men were the second group of attackers to be sentenced over the bizarre syringe attacks, which that have further raised public anxiety in Xinjiang, already on edge over July rioting that marked the country’s worst ethnic violence in decades.

Hundreds of attacks have been reported, although authorities say only a few dozen people have shown definite signs of having actually been jabbed with hypodermic needles. Instruments used in attacks have reportedly also included safety pins and even tooth picks, and no serious injuries have been reported.

The public security minister has called the attacks an organised terror plot orchestrated by the same Muslim separatists blamed for July violence between Han Chinese and Uygurs, a minority Muslim ethnic group native to Xinjiang. No evidence has been shown to back up the government’s claim.

The sentences handed down by the Intermediate People’s Court in Urumqi came five days after a first batch of three accused needle assailants were sentenced to up to 15 years. All the convicted have been Uygurs.

Two of the men were given 15 years imprisonment, one 12, and the other eight over an attack in an underground pedestrian crossing on the morning of September 3, state broadcaster CCTV said. One man jabbed a pedestrian in the neck while the others acted as lookouts, but all were caught after being restrained by passersby.

CCTV showed the four standing before a panel of judges looking downcast and wearing civilian clothes.

The speed of the trials, and the high degree of publicity given to them, appears aimed at calming fear and anger that exploded into mass street protests earlier this month in which five people were killed.

Prosecutors said the original four put on trial included three drug addicts and that at least one attack was a robbery. All of the suspects were Uygurs, while victims of the attacks are mainly Han.

(Global Times) Taiwan denies entry to Rebiya Kadeer By Liang Chen. September 27, 2009.

Taiwanese authorities announced their refusal Saturday to issue a visa to Rebiya Kadeer, a separatist Beijing believes to be connected with East Turkistan terrorists, diffusing tensions across the Straits.

Taiwan residents were divided in their reaction to the decision.

Analysts said the move shows that Taiwan has "learned its lesson" after inviting the Dalai Lama into Taiwan and the screening a documentary about Kadeer earlier this month.

"If Rebiya wants to enter Taiwan regardless of the government's decision, we will send her back on the original plane in accordance with immigration laws," Hu Jing-fu, the deputy director of Taiwan's immigration agency, told reporters yesterday after the authority said it would deny her visitation rights.

A survey released Saturday by the United Daily News showed that 28 percent of 792 people polled supported the authorities' rejection of Kadeer's entry, while another 28 percent opposed the decision.

The remaining voters said they did not care one way or another.

On the same day, Wu Den-yih, the new head of Taiwan's "Executive Yuan," told reporters in the southern city of Kaohsiung that the authority decided not to allow her visit based on security concerns and public interest.

"I respect and support the decision," Wu said.

Wu said intelligence information shows that the World Uyghur Congress, headed by Kadeer, is "closely connected with East Turkistan forces," according to the Taiwan-based United Evening News.

East Turkistan groups are widely believed to be involved in extremist and terrorist activities.

Wu's statement came one day after Jiang Yi-huah, the internal affairs head of the Taiwan region, said Kadeer wouldn't be allowed "in consideration of Taiwan's interests."

The statements followed reports about Kadeer wanting to visit Taiwan later this year. She was invited by rock band vocalist Freddie Lin, an advocate for Taiwan independence.

Kadeer held a press conference in Washington Saturday to ask Taiwan to apologize for "accusing her of being a terrorist," which was later refused by Wu, according to the Taiwan-based Chinese News Agency.

Separatist forces in Taiwan have expressed their dissatisfaction with the government's decision, as Lin made a statement Friday that the resolution to invite her to Taiwan will never change.

The DPP also blasted Taiwan authorities, asking for a clear definition of what makes a terrorist.

An editorial by the pro-DPP Freedom Times criticized the authority's move and called Ma "a surrenderer to the Chinese mainland."

People in Taiwan responded positively to the authority's decision Saturday as "lots of Taiwan merchants are thrilled to learn about the news, and agree that is unworthy to sacrifice the development of Taiwan for a separatist," Ye Huide, the executive vice president of the Association of Taiwan Enterprises, told reporters, according to the Cross-Straits Metropolis Daily.

An editorial in the China Times, a Taiwan-based newspaper, approved the ban and accused the "separatist forces" in Taiwan of "intentionally increasing the tension across the Straits to achieve their own political aspirations."

A Wall Street Journal reported yesterday said that the relationship between Beijing and Taiwan "has improved significantly" since Taiwan leader Ma Ying-jeou took power last year.

Xiu Chunping, a professor of Taiwan studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said, "Ma shrugged off pressure of the opposition Democratic Progressive Party and made a wise decision that is in line with the mainstream public opinion."

"The mainland will stoutly boost the cross-Straits ties and never loosen its stance on fighting against the separatists in Taiwan and Tibet," Xiu said.

And Li Jiaquan, a senior researcher of the Institute of Taiwan Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said that Taiwan authorities don't want to further rock the boat.

(South China Morning Post) The grandmother branded a terrorist. By Mark O'Neill. September 27, 2009.

Three months ago, few people outside the Uygur community had heard of Rebiya Kadeer. Now, she has become a household name, thanks in part to Beijing's vilification campaign, which blames her for riots in Urumqi on July 5.

The 62-year-old grandmother has become a media star, meeting members of parliaments in Japan, Australia and the United States, and earning hitherto record prominence for the World Uygur Congress (WUC), of which she is president. Sales of her autobiography, Dragon Fighter, are soaring in the US and Europe.

"It is not out of the question that she will receive the Nobel Peace Prize," said Dr Dru Gladney, president of the Pacific Basin Institute in Claremont, California, and an expert on Xinjiang. "She stands for non-violence and peaceful resolution of conflict. She mimics the Dalai Lama. She is charismatic, intelligent, warm, deeply caring and has high integrity. The Uygurs adore her and call her their mother."

Beijing sees a different personality: she is the "black hand" behind the July 5 riots, in which nearly 200 people died and more than 1,000 were injured. "Evidence shows that the riot was organised, instigated and masterminded by the WUC led by Kadeer," Xinhua news agency said on July 8.

In the 60 years since the People's Liberation Army took over Xinjiang, the Uygurs in exile have never had such a leader nor been so united.

Official figures show 8.87 million Uygurs live in China, 98 per cent in Xinjiang. About 600,000 live abroad, with 300,000 in Kazakhstan, 50,000 each in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, and others in Mongolia, Russia, Germany, the US, Australia and Turkey. The largest exodus, of 67,000 from Xinjiang to the Soviet Union in April 1962, was sparked by the shortages of the Great Leap Forward and the promise of food supplies. It was encouraged by the KGB. In the 1990s, many refugees applied to return home but were refused because they had lost their Chinese citizenship.

The WUC, established in Munich, Germany, in April 2004, lists affiliated organisations in 13 countries. It receives some of its funding from the National Endowment for Democracy, a bipartisan organisation created by the US Congress.

It was in 1953 and 1954 that two former leaders of the East Turkestan Republic, Mehmet Emin Bughra and Isa Yusuf Alptekin, founded the East Turkestan Overseas People's Association in Istanbul. It published magazines and campaigned for the region's independence. The two men died in 1964 and 1995 respectively. Disputes among different exile groups, mainly over the issue of whether to use violence, prevented formation of an effective opposition to China.

The exiles' headquarters used to be in Istanbul, but pressure from Beijing forced them to move in the late 1990s to Munich. Since its foundation, the WUC has operated like other lobby groups, with 60 websites, petitions, briefings of parliamentarians and media activities, which have intensified since July. Its mission statement does not contain the word "independence". "The main objective of the WUC is to promote democracy, human rights and freedom for the Uygur people, and use peaceful, non-violent and democratic means to determine their political future ... It declares a non-violent and peaceful opposition movement against Chinese occupation of East Turkestan," it says.

Beijing disagrees, regarding the WUC as a terrorist organisation. "It is wholly dedicated to masterminding secessionist activities in the name of human rights and democracy," Xinhua has said. "After her release from prison in China in 2005, Kadeer arrived in the United States and immediately became involved with overseas terrorists, separatists and extremist forces." She denies the charges.

Professor Yitzhak Shichor, from the East Asian studies department at Israel's University of Haifa, said the WUC was a powerless and divided body, infected by informers and internal rivalries, without the ability to organise even small riots in Xinjiang. "WUC and Uygur telephone calls and e-mails from abroad are constantly monitored by the Chinese," he said.

Beijing issued a white paper on terrorism in Xinjiang in January 2002, saying "East Turkestan terrorists" at home and abroad were involved in at least 200 instances of violence between 1990 and 2001, killing 162 people and wounding more than 440".

"The 'East Turkestan' forces in China's Xinjiang and relevant countries plotted and organised a number of bloody incidents of terror and violence, including explosions, assassinations, arson, poisoning and assaults, seriously jeopardising the lives, property and security of the Chinese people of various ethnic groups and social stability in Xinjiang, and posing a threat to the security and stability of the countries and regions concerned," a May 2003 white paper said.

Beijing sees the same "black hands" behind recent needle attacks. "They are a continuation of the July 5 incident, plotted by unlawful elements and instigated by ethnic separatist forces," Minister of Public Security Meng Jianzhu said on national television.

The outside world is sceptical. Beijing has failed to produce evidence linking the WUC to the killings and needle attacks in Xinjiang. Nor has it persuaded the world that those who commit violence in Xinjiang are linked to al-Qaeda.

In 2002, 22 Uygurs were taken from a village in Afghanistan and sent to the US military prison in Guantanamo, Cuba. After years of court rulings in their favour, the US government ruled that none were terrorists and that they should be released.

"The Uygurs are not terrorists," Susan Baker Manning, a lawyer for two of the Uygurs, told a subcommittee of the US House Committee on Foreign Affairs in June. She said the administration of former US president George W. Bush had accepted Beijing's branding of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) as a terrorist organisation as a trade-off for China's support of the Iraq war.

Last year, a US appeals court in the District of Columbia found no credible evidence that ETIM was associated with al-Qaeda or the Taliban, nor that it had ever fought the US.

Shichor said a minority of Uygur diaspora organisations considered the use of force the most efficient means to change China's policy. "The majority of Uygurs prefer the use of peaceful means," he said. "Beijing's repeated attempts to link Uygurs to international terrorism have been mostly dismissed as sheer unfounded fabrication. Its tough reaction reflects its growing concern about the effective activities of Uygur diaspora organisations. It keeps blaming the WUC and its leaders as well as Uygurs inside Xinjiang for terrorism to give it a justification to go on cracking down on them."

Since July 5, Kadeer has moved quickly to develop world support. Foreign governments and NGOs are increasingly sympathetic to her calls for improved human and religious rights in Xinjiang.

"But she is not close to the status of the Dalai Lama," Gladney said. "She is a woman in a patrimonial culture and she is not a religious leader. She is a Muslim and not a Buddhist, and her cause does not have the support of stars in Hollywood."

She speaks Uygur and Putonghua, which she rarely uses. Her English is poor, so this limits her ability to speak directly to an international audience.

Her chief adviser, Erkin Alptekin, son of Isa Yusuf Alptekin, is more cosmopolitan. He was the first president of the WUC in 2004. Living in Germany, he speaks Uygur, Turkish, English and German. But he left Xinjiang in 1949 with his father, at the age of 10, and has not returned.

Kadeer is in better contact with the grass roots. A mother of 11, she was one of the richest people on the mainland in the 1990s, a philanthropist and delegate to the Chinese People's Political Consultative Congress in 1993. In March 2000, she was convicted of "leaking state secrets", served two years in solitary confinement, and was released on medical grounds in March 2005 and allowed to go to the US.

The exiled Uygurs are fighting a losing battle against a rising China. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 seemed to present them with a golden opportunity. In Central Asia, a single country was replaced by five republics formed on the basis of their ethnicity. All have substantial Uygur populations, which raised hopes they could become support bases for the independence struggle. This was especially the case with Kazakhstan, which has a 1,500 kilometre land border with China.

But Uygurs abroad were unable to build the kind of global support the Dalai Lama has won. Beijing also moved swiftly to set up close economic and military ties with the republics. They were ruled by former officials of the Soviet state rather than dissidents of the independence struggle, as in Eastern Europe and the Baltic states.

In 1996, China and Russia formed the Shanghai Five with three of the Central Asian states, including Kazakhstan. With the addition of Uzbekistan, in June 2001, it became the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation. Its priority has been a common security policy, fighting "terrorism, separatism and extremism", with joint military exercises.

The bloc has been a diplomatic triumph for Beijing. Instead of becoming a base for Uygur activism, Kazakhstan has been co-operating in fighting it. No Central Asian country supports the Uygurs and some have handed back to Beijing those accused of violent activity. Since the five republics are also fighting Muslim fundamentalist groups, they are more sympathetic.

Beijing has also moved to increase economic ties with the five, becoming a major buyer of their oil, gas and other natural resources, and exporting consumer and manufactured goods.

(Xinhua) 21 suspects involved in Urumqi riot prosecuted. September 25, 2009.

    The local procuratorate on Friday brought charges against 21 suspects in the Urumqi riot. The July 5 riot in the capital city of northwestern China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region left 197 people dead and more than 1,600 injured. The city's procuratorate said it has instituted public prosecutions in the Intermediate People's Court of Urumqi against 21 suspects involved in six cases including homicide, arson and robbery.

    The six cases are:

    -- Alleged intentional homicide and arson committed by Abdukerim Abduwayit;

    -- Alleged intentional homicide, arson and robbery committed by four suspects whose leader was Gheni Yusup;

    -- Alleged intentional homicide, arson, robbery and intentional damage to properties, committed by 11 suspects led by Ahmatjan Moming;

    -- Alleged intentional homicide, robbery and arson committed by Alim Metyusup and Tayirejan Abulimit;

    -- Alleged intentional homicide and arson committed by AzizijanYasin;

    -- Alleged intentional homicide committed by Han Junbo and Liubo.

    Further public prosecutions are to be instituted against other suspects in the Urumqi riot, said the Procuratorate.

(The China Beat) The Ethnicization of Discontent in Xinjiang By Rian Thum. October 2, 2009.

One of many disturbing long-term effects of the recent violence in Urumqi is an increased ethnicization of anger on all sides. Ethnic tensions are of course nothing new in Xinjiang, and ethnically targeted state policies have long made it difficult to distinguish between anti-government and ethnic discontent, but until now Uyghur resistance has been aimed at the state. The recent Urumqi uprisings represent a significant redirection of anger along more clearly ethnic lines.

The interactions between Uyghur and Han citizens vary with the uneven demography of Xinjiang. In the provincial capital, Urumqi, Uyghurs are a minority. This means that Urumqi Uyghurs frequently encounter intense racism, but also that they deal with the Han in a wide variety of contexts, many quite friendly. Uyghurs in Urumqi often draw clear distinctions between grievances against the Han and the government. However, it is important to remember that most Uyghurs do not lead the daily lives of minorities. In Southwestern Xinjiang, where most Uyghurs live, Uyghurs constitute the majority. In rural Uyghur areas, the sight of a Han person is rare, outside of interactions with officials and police who have been sent from elsewhere to implement state policies. It is not surprising then, that in the traditionally Uyghur areas of Southern Xinjiang, the line between anti-government and anti-Han discontent is thoroughly blurred. When expressing grievances, it is not uncommon for Uyghurs in the South to name the Han (khӑnzulӑr), the government (hökümӑt), or even the Communists (komunistlӑr) interchangeably as the targets of their anger.

In many ways, the increasing ethnicization of Uyghur grievances is not surprising. A small number of the state policies that anger Uyghurs, such as the ban on religious education before the age of eighteen and strict regulation of speech, technically apply across ethnic boundaries, though they are enforced more vigorously for Uyghurs. However, most of the controversial state policies are, in fact, ethnically defined. Police confiscated the passports of Uyghurs (and not Han) in 2007, and continue to require enormous cash deposits from Uyghurs who want to travel abroad. New educational policies have been announced, and partially implemented, that will force Uyghur children to receive all of their elementary schooling, including subjects like math and science, in the Chinese language, while Han children in Xinjiang have no requirement to learn any minority languages. Although state policies toward Islamic practices among the Hui have loosened up dramatically in recent years, Uyghur Islamic practices are increasingly circumscribed. In the last ten years, for example, the major shrines of Orda Padishahim (near Yengisar), Khüjӑ Padishahim (near Yengisar), and Üjmӑ (near Khotӑn) have been closed to worshippers. The hajj has become much more difficult for Uyghurs, while the number of Hui hajjis has skyrocketed. Meanwhile, the two major policies that benefit minorities alone – exceptions to the one-child policy and lower university admission standards for students who did not attend Chinese-language schools – stoke Han resentment. Further complicating ethnic policy is the fact that the powers that design these policies are disproportionately Han, as Uyghurs, who are underrepresented in the ranks of officialdom anyway, tend to occupy lower posts.

Yet somehow, in spite of all the entanglement between ethnic and policy grievances, acts of resistance over the last two decades have been remarkably focused on the government, rather than ethnically specific targets. The initially peaceful anti-government protests that took place in Baren (1990) and Ili (1997) both escalated into clashes with security forces, but no reports of anti-Han actions have emerged. Politically motivated bombings, shootings, and knife attacks over the last two decades have tended to be directed against police stations, party officials (very often Uyghur), and infrastructure. Relatively rare attacks on civilians, such as the Urumqi bus bombings of 1997, have claimed Han and Uyghur victims, at least according to official accounts. The overall pattern of resistance suggests that, until now, mobilized Uyghurs have viewed the government as the primary source of their frustrations.

Thus, the brutal July attacks on Han civilians represent a new form of Uyghur resistance. The causes for this shift are unclear. It is hard to imagine that violence on such a scale can be explained simply as a response to the Shaoguan incident, in which Han factory workers beat to death two Uyghur coworkers near Guangzhou. This is even more doubtful considering that the Urumqi uprising started as a peaceful protest against the government’s handling of the Shaoguan incident.

Whatever the reasons for the shift, the ramifications are troubling. Since the uprisings, both Han and Uyghur residents of Urumqi have been carrying out informal boycotts along ethnic lines, showing that some members of both groups continue to act on ethnic animosity in the wake of the violence. However, for each of the two groups, increased ethnicization has different implications. Uyghurs in Urumqi, who were less predisposed to lump the Han and the government into a single enemy, and more skilled at navigating the intersections of Han and Uyghur society, are now more alienated than ever. Urumqi has for decades, if not centuries, been a place where Uyghurs came to participate in a Han-dominated world, an endeavor which always involved some measure of compromise and even assimilation. Yet there are thousands of Uyghurs who are increasingly recognizing that no matter how well they speak Chinese or how well they toe the party line, they will always be Uyghur. Now more than ever, Urumqi Uyghurs are sensing that they are, by virtue of their ethnicity, suspected as enemies within.

Perhaps more significantly for the future of Xinjiang, the ethnicization of Uyghur discontent has widened the scope of conflict by drawing in the Han population at large. The Han demonstrations that took place in September in Urumqi are the work of a newly disgruntled segment of Xinjiang’s population, which had until now remained relatively silent. The state now finds itself confronting two conflicting pressures from its citizens, with Uyghurs demanding greater freedoms, and Han citizens insisting that the violence was a result of government laxity toward the Uyghurs.

The mobilization of both Han and Uyghur ethnic anger also threatens to spread beyond the capital, for if the focus of the trouble was Urumqi, inhabitants throughout Xinjiang have felt the effects. On July 30th, wanted posters appeared in towns throughout the province, promising to bring the “fearsomeness of the dictatorship’s power” to bear on anyone involved in the Urumqi uprising. Roadblocks, random searches, and identification checks are now commonplace. For over one month after the uprisings (and likely still today), parades of army trucks full of armed Han soldiers circled the streets of even small towns like Qaghilik (Ch. Yecheng) and Shule (Uyghur: Qӑshqӑr Yengishӑhӑr). For the Han they mean security, and for the Uyghurs they represent tightening government controls, but they also advertise to both Han and Uyghurs a continuing state of conflict, which is assumed to involve members of both ethnicities throughout the province.

Worst of all, the ethnicization has made the very policies that could have prevented such violence that much harder for the government to enact. Over the last ten years there have been no signs that either Beijing or the Xinjiang government were considering positive moves like the enforcement of anti-discrimination laws or the elimination of those cultural, speech, and travel restrictions aimed only at Uyghurs. Now such policies seem even more unlikely, as crowds of Han demonstrators demand that their government take a tougher stance against the Uyghurs.

The controversy over the Uyghurs’ place in China remains much more than an ethnic conflict. To write it off as simple us-versus-them hatred, a phenomenon viewed in the West as irrational and barbaric, would obscure many legitimate grievances. Unfortunately, though, the ethnic vector of discontent is now an increasingly important feature of Xinjiang’s political landscape.

Rian Thum is a PhD candidate in the Inner Asian and Altaic Studies program at Harvard University.

(The China Beat) Islamic Fundamentalism: An Ignored Specter in the Xinjiang Riot By Liang Zheng. October 6, 2009.

It’s been three months since the city of Urumqi was plunged into chaos and terror by the deadliest ethnic bloodletting in the history of the People’s Republic. The riot on July 5^th this summer erupted right after a mostly peaceful demonstration organized by Uyghur youths in Urumqi called to demand the government thoroughly investigate a brawl in southern China, which had left two Uyghur workers dead and dozens more injured. At that point, no one anticipated the demonstration would be followed by a horrible massacre in Urumqi that took at least 197 innocent lives, most of them members of the Han ethnicity (a group to which the vast majority of PRC citizens belongs). There have been scores of headline-grabbing stories about these events and a variety of different kinds of explanations, but an important dimension of the massacre of Han Chinese–the role that Islamic fundamentalism played in it–has been ignored so far by both the Chinese government and most of those writing for the Western press.

Demonstrations are not uncommon in China today. The country’s breakneck economic growth and rampant corruption involving ignorant and greedy local officials combine to create a breeding ground for local discontent, which usually targets economic marginalization, environmental degradation and acts of official malfeasance. However, attributing the root cause of this violent crime in Urumqi to the same mix of grievances is to miss a crucial part of the real situation on the ground. This misleading generalization also reinforces a simple government versus the people dichotomy (very popular in the West), which neither helps us fully understand the situation in Xinjiang nor contributes to the effort to find meaningful solutions to the problems there.

Xinjiang today is facing the same problems as other provinces, problems generated by the modernization drive that features mass migration of peasant workers, pollution of the environment, and economic marginalization of the socially vulnerable, problems that have been critical ones for China since the1980s. Uyghurs living in Xinjiang not only have to deal with the downsides of the modernization drive; they also suffer from a systematic discrimination in employment and obstacles placed in the way of practicing Islam. These real issues, too, cause upset among Uyghurs in Xinjiang. As citizens of the PRC, Uyghurs certainly are entitled to speak out, have their voices heard and their concerns addressed. However, the killing of innocent people should not be justified as a way to express discontent or anger. The unfair state policy and the indiscriminate killing of innocent people are matters of entirely different natures, and the loss of innocent lives can’t be justified by any political arguments.

July 5^th shocked Urumqi, the most prosperous city in Central Asia. Organized riots broke out at the same time in 50 different places across the city, according to the Chinese police emergency 110. Local residents, who live in apartment buildings along the streets, recorded those bloody moments with their cell phones and cameras. Those images and videos have yet to make it to the world simply because all communications with the outside have been cut off since the riot, especially the Internet. Those who have witnessed violence or watched the video clips taken by surveillance/personal cameras are seriously traumatized and some had to seek counseling to get to sleep. People have to ask who could actually commit such horrific crimes.

One Uyghur interviewee on television suggested that people on the street that day sounded different because they spoke Uyghur with the accents of southern Xinjiang. This suggestion is confirmed by many of my Uyghur friends, who believe that the Uyghurs of Urumqi could never have committed acts like decapitation, throwing pregnant women off overpasses, or setting innocent people on fire, because the Uyghur and Han of Urumqi had lived together peacefully for decades. Another Uyghur interviewee told a reporter that rioters not only beat up and killed Han Chinese, they also behaved in a way that suggests their fundamentalist beliefs when they roughed up Uyghur women merely because those women were wearing skirts and sleeveless shirts.

In an interview with a Hong Kong newsweekly Yazhou Zhoukan, Heyrat Niyaz, a Uyghur journalist and AIDS activist from Urumqi, suggested that the terror on July 5^th showed the fingerprints of Hizb ut-Tahrir, an Islamic fundamentalist organization that is active in Central Asia. As a witness of the violence, Heyrat also notes the strong Kashgar accent of rioters and that they were chanting slogans like “Kill off all Hans” and “ We want an Islamic State; we want Sharia Law.”

Several days before the riot, many Urumqi taxi drivers also reported a sudden increase of new arrivals from cities in southern Xinjiang like Kashgar and Hotan at the Urumqi transportation center. Round-trip tickets to Urumqi were found in pockets of many detained suspects after the riot, according to local police.

Looking at a map of Central Asia, southern Xinjiang shares a border with Pakistan and Afghanistan, hotbeds of Islamic fundamentalism. Extremists have been trying to infiltrate southern Xinjiang for decades to widen their influence and recruit young operatives. It is highly likely that the disillusioned youths in southern Xinjiang took example from their counterparts across the border. When it comes to the Urumqi riot, this dimension has been downplayed or ignored by both the Chinese government and Western media. As an authoritarian government, the top priority of the Chinese government is to maintain social stability and multi-ethnic unity and in turn its legitimacy. Two days after the deadly riot, the state media was mobilized to propagate stories of how Uyghurs saved Hans from killers and at the same time to ignore the threat of fundamentalism. On the other hand, Western media continued reporting the event as a confrontation between a repressive government and members of an oppressed minority who lost out in a rapidly changing economy. Two months after the riot, the Chinese government is still imposing an information blackout and only letting government-sanctioned stories out, which renders it impossible to know what really happened. The Western media’s own ideological frameworks, coupled with the Chinese government’s information blackouts, illustrate the limits of the international media’s ability to clearly and accurately portray the July events.

Based on some of the indicators I have mentioned above, it does not appear that the vicious killers in Urumqi were local. The indiscriminate killings of Hans (usually non-Muslims), the crimes committed against skirt-wearing Uyghur women, and the appeal for an Islamic state with Sharia Law appear to be messages from fundamentalists. When China is battling against the infiltration of Islamic fundamentalism on its western-most border, the background of this riot is certainly not as simple as “government vesus the people”, and further investigations are seriously needed to ascertain the role of Islamic fundamentalism in the Urumqi riot. Uncovering such dimensions is critical not just to the security of China but to that of the diverse peoples of Xinjiang, Han and Uyghur alike. As one of my moderate Uyghur friends said at a dinner party, “When they kill off all Hans in Xinjiang, they will come after us.”

(The China Beat) Response to “Islamic Fundamentalism: An Ignored Specter in the Xinjiang Riot”. By Mark Elliott. October 16, 2009.

China Beat has run several pieces recently on the Xinjiang riots. On October 2, we featured Rian Thum’s “The Ethnicization of Discontent in Xinjiang,” which argued that the riots had raised ethnic tensions in the region. A few days later, we published ”Islamic Fundamentalism: An Ignored Specter in the Xinjiang Riot,” written by Liang Zheng. Zheng argued that the foreign media had ignored indications that the riots were instigated by fundamentalists from southern Xinjiang, an argument that preserves the notion of ethnic harmony in Urumqi itself.
Today we run a response to Zheng’s argument from Mark Elliott, Professor of Chinese and Inner Asian History at Harvard University. Further responses may be sent to thechinabeat <AT> gmail.com.

By Mark Elliott

With great interest and no little concern I read the recent post by Liang Zheng (“Islamic Fundamentalism: An Ignored Specter in the Xinjiang Riot,” 6 October), arguing that Islamic fundamentalism is behind the violent protests that took place in Urumqi this past July. If Mr. Zheng’s claims were true, that would indeed be cause for alarm on more than one level. Yet, because this is such a contentious point – dovetailing as it does rather neatly with the government’s line on discontent generally in Xinjiang and the justification given for “striking hard” against Uyghur dissent – the evidence should be examined extremely carefully. As far as I can tell, the evidence presented by Mr. Zheng seems to be little more than hearsay.

Disregarding the argument that Xinjiang’s shared border with Afghanistan and Pakistan is prima facie evidence of fundamentalist influence, the assertions in the post regarding the spread of Islamic extremism to Xinjiang and the July violence are based mainly on the comments of the journalist and blogger Gheyret Niyaz, quoted in an interview in the August 2 issue of Yazhou zhoukan (English translation here). Gheyret says first that during one street protest in Urumqi he heard slogans being shouted for the imposition of Shari’a law and the establishment of an Islamic state. One would like to have independent verification of these claims, and to know whether similar calls were made at other locations. I myself am unaware of any confirmed accounts that this was the case, but perhaps other readers of China Beat have information they can provide? Gheyret goes on to say that since these goals coincide with those of Hizb ut-Tahrir (Islamic Liberation Party, or ILP), that organization must have helped to organize the protests. This seems to be mere inference. As further evidence of this involvement, he points to the fact that the people in the crowd of one hundred he observed that day were all wearing tennis shoes; that “they came together and dispersed in unison, in a highly organized way”; and that they spoke with accents identifying them as coming from Kashgar and Khotan. On this last point he is tentative, since, as he says, “I could not see if they had knives” (!). None of this seems convincing to me as evidence of a link to outside fundamentalist organizations. (A perusal of ILP’s UK website turns up no indication of any special interest in events in Xinjiang or support for the Uyghur cause. Quite the contrary: it approvingly reports the Pakistani president’s praise of the Chinese government’s handling of the unrest.)

It is well known that people often resort to conspiracy as a way of explaining how otherwise inexplicable and terrible events come to pass. That earlier in the same interview Gheyret alleges that Rebiya Kadeer was also involved in helping to organize the protests (this, of course, being another claim made by the government, which so far also lacks independent confirmation) demonstrates, I think, his susceptibility to this very tendency. I will say that I have heard, but cannot confirm, that a broadcast on Radio Free Asia’s Uyghur language service shortly before the violence included remarks by Rebiya that might be characterized as provocative. Even if this were so, it is hardly proof that she or those around her helped organize the protests; indeed, had she been so directly involved, it seems unlikely that she would have taken the trouble to advertise the fact on the radio.

Mr. Zheng also cites local witnesses among his friends and acquaintances to the effect that there were a lot of people from Kashgar (or elsewhere in Altishahr) in Urumqi at the time. I suspect that others may also have heard these rumors. But as Mr. Zheng must know, there are always many people from the southern part of Xinjiang in Urumqi at any given time. Who is to say if the number was higher than usual? Assuming it were, how are we to know whether these people were there in response to a call from fundamentalist imams to take to the streets, protest the treatment of Uyghur workers in Guangzhou, and exact a bloody retribution? If many of Urumqi’s Uyghurs deny involvement in the violence, this is to be expected. For one thing, doubtless relatively few indeed were involved; for another, it would make sense for them to shift the blame to people from outside (“It wasn’t us!”). All these considerations encourage skepticism of reports that Urumqi was secretly infiltrated by organized columns of extremist Kashgarliks in early July.

While Mr. Zheng is doubtless well-informed as to the situation generally in Xinjiang, his observations on the July unrest as reported in China Beat appear to be based on unconfirmed reports and second-hand information. He does not seem to have been in Urumqi when the events occurred or to have witnessed anything firsthand. While the post is largely sympathetic to the plight of Uyghurs, it seems to me that it serves also as a Trojan horse for a more sinister interpretation of the situation in Xinjiang and the “danger” there of Islamic fundamentalist influence and terrorism, an interpretation that ultimately only facilitates government policies of repression.

No one approves the violence, obviously. One can concede the likelihood that there has been some increase of fundamentalist beliefs in segments of Xinjiang society. But spreading unsubstantiated stories about the ties of fundamentalist organizations to the July demonstrations adds nothing to our understanding of events. On the contrary, for the reasons stated here, I see it as quite harmful. In my view, this post falls short of the usual high standards maintained by China Beat.

(China Daily) 108 stand accused in Urumqi riot October 9, 2009.

Accusations have been brought against 108 suspects allegedly involved in the riot in Urumqi in July, the capital of the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, the city's deputy chief procurator said. Among accused suspects connected with 55 cases, only 21 suspects involved in six cases were charged with homicide, arson and robbery and will be prosecuted in the Intermediate People's Court of Urumqi. The 21 will be the first batch of riot suspects to stand trial, Liu Bo, the city's deputy chief procurator, told Xinhua.

"The police and procuratorate have made a lot of effort to collect solid and legitimate evidence against each suspect allegedly involved in criminal activities in the riot. The effort includes crime scene investigation, collection and analyzing evidence as well as identifying victims," Liu said. "It's a time-consuming task for the police force due to the number of people and the amount of evidence involved," Liu said. "That's why we have only instituted public prosecutions against 21 suspects so far, but the procuratorate will speed up the process of public prosecution for the rest of the suspects."

In response to the July 5 riot, which left 197 people dead and more than 1,600 injured, local police have so far requested the procuratorate approve the arrests of 575 suspects thought to have been involved in 366 cases. Among the 575 requests, 430 have been granted, Liu said. Police have previously said that 825 people have been detained so far in connection with the riot. The procuratorate also published brief details of the first six prosecuted cases, which left 25 people dead. All 21 suspects involved are charged with intentional homicide, which could lead to death sentences.

In one case, Abdukerim Abduwayit is charged with intentional homicide and arson for kicking and stabbing five people to death at Tuanjie Road and torching several buildings. In another case, four suspects, led by Gheni Yusup, were alleged to have beaten five people to death in four different locations. The group also torched a grain and oil distribution center, which caused five people who were trapped inside to burn to death. They are charged with intentional homicide, arson and robbery.

Liu also cleared the rumor that suspect Han Junbo's wife was brutally killed in the riot and that was why Han killed one person as revenge. "Han's wife and three children are safe and sound," said Liu. Han is charged with intentional homicide.

Police have also confirmed the arrest of the suspect who killed armed police Wan Jingang during the riot. The suspect was detained on Sept 19 and will be prosecuted as soon as possible, said Su Yanbing, the vice-chief of Urumqi public security bureau. Meng Jianzhu, state councilor and public security minister, has urged no leniency in the punishment of those who took part in the Urumqi riot.

(South China Morning Post) The deep roots of Uygurs' frustration. By Mrk O'Neill. October 11, 2009.

Three months after the worst ethnic violence in Xinjiang for 12 years, tens of thousands of troops remain on duty in cities across the region that accounts for one-sixth of China's land area. The transport of security forces from different provinces was so large that it caused cancellations and delays of civil air flights.

On September 26, Beijing announced the first charges against those involved in ethnic riots that struck the regional capital Urumqi from July 5, killing 197 people. Twenty-one people were charged with murder, arson, robbery and damaging property. The city's Communist Party chief and the regional police chief were fired to take responsibility for the riots.

In late July, Beijing announced spending of 4 billion yuan (HK$4.5 billion) on poverty relief and economic development in the three districts of southern Xinjiang where most of the rioters came from. But nothing else has changed. The worst ethnic violence in 12 years - since up to 100 were killed in anti-government protests in Yining in February 1997 - has resulted in no change of policy or self-reflection. Beijing has left in place Wang Lequan, the party chief of the region since 1994, the longest-serving leader of any part of China.

"Through the past decades, our ethnic policies have proved to be correct and effective, and we must stick to them for a long time," Yang Jing, minister of the State Ethnic Affairs Commission, said on September 21.

Many Uygurs do not agree, saying that the violence reflected long-standing grievances over employment, education and religion that would cause similar protests again.

Hailaite Niyazi, one of two moderate Uygur intellectuals who present the case of their people to the Chinese public through their Putonghua websites, said two grievances lay behind the July violence.

"One is the movement of Uygurs to the east to work and the other the introduction of double-language education. Both were opposed by many Uygur officials, but anyone who dared to say 'no' was immediately dealt with. It is no laughing matter to send Uygur girls of 17 and 18 away to work," he said.

It was the killing of two of these migrant workers, at a factory in Shaoguan, Guangdong province, on June 26 that was the spark for the July 5 protest.

"The second policy is double-language education," Niyazi said. "This will mean dismissal for tens of thousands of minority teachers whose Mandarin is not good enough, and has shaken people's faith in grass-roots education."

For Ilham Tohti, formerly a professor of economics at the Minorities University in Beijing, the key issue is employment. In an interview with Radio Free Asia this year, he criticised the policy of encouraging Han Chinese to migrate to Xinjiang. "When I was doing research for the government in the 1990s, I found that there were 1.5 million unemployed out of a population of 20 million in Xinjiang. But 1.3 million migrant workers went to Xinjiang in 2008. There are abundant employment opportunities in Xinjiang, but why not for Uygurs?"

On July 8, the authorities detained Tohti at his home in Beijing and released him on August 23 after intense lobbying on his behalf at home and abroad.

The government's most detailed response to these grievances came in the white paper issued on September 21, a passionate defence of its policies since the People's Liberation Army took over Xinjiang in 1949. Since then, it said, the central government had invested 386 billion yuan in Xinjiang. Last year, the income of a farmer reached 3,503 yuan (HK$3,980), 28 times the level of 1978, and that of an urban resident 11,432 yuan, up 35 times.

"Before 1949, Xinjiang did not have one metre of railway and no large-scale agriculture. Its industry was of a very small scale. Last year its GDP reached 420.3 billion yuan, an average annual increase of 8.3 per cent since 1955. It has 3,000 kilometres of railway and eight major expressways, with a total of 147,000 kilometres of roads. It is self-sufficient in grain, China's top producer of cotton and sugar beet, the top exporter of tomatoes, the biggest producer of gas and second-largest of oil."

It said that last year the average rural resident had 22.8 square metres of living space, up from 10 in 1983, and that the average urban resident had 27.3 square metres, up from 12.

The white paper presented the movement of Uygur labour to cities in the east as an important step to fight unemployment, especially in rural areas, and raise incomes and skill levels. It started in the early 2000s, with fewer than 300,000 in 2002 and rising to 1.5 million last year. The white paper cited the county of Jiashi , which had since 2006 sent 19,000 workers to firms in the rest of China, earning nearly 200 million yuan and increasing the average income to more than 7,000 yuan a year. At the same time, it said, hundreds of thousands of migrants went to Xinjiang each year from other parts of China to work on the cotton crop.

While such migrant work brings in more money for Uygurs, it is a challenge to conservative Muslim families who want to keep their children, especially their daughters, close at hand and not expose them to an unfamiliar life thousands of kilometres away.

"Anger over unemployment was the biggest factor behind the July 5 riots," said a report in August in Nanfeng Chuang, one of China's boldest weeklies. "Minority families were large in the 1980s, with less strict birth control. Xinjiang does not have a private economy like Guangdong and Zhejiang . Uygurs are handicapped by poor language and scholastic standards. In the past, minority quotas on employment were strict but have become increasingly lax. Every minority family we interviewed complained of a shortage of jobs. There is a big gap in the unemployment level between the different races."

Education and language are also points of friction. "Of the 10 million minority people in Xinjiang, 70 per cent do not understand Chinese characters, which is disadvantageous to them and the region," the white paper said. "From 2004, the government introduced double-language education in minority schools. An increasing number of minorities want to learn Chinese; 24,000 minority students are attending secondary schools in 28 cities" in other parts of China.

This switch to Putonghua threatens the jobs of tens of thousands of older teachers whose Chinese is not good enough to use as a teaching medium. Putonghua is the dominant language of government, education and business; mastery of it is essential to a successful career.

The white paper also said different races were living closer to one another. In the southern areas of Kashgar, Hotan and Aksu, the Uygur proportion of the population had fallen from 84.6 per cent in 1944 to 71.5 per cent in 2007. In Yili , the Kazakh proportion of the population had fallen from 83.4 per cent in 1944 to 76.8 per cent in 2007.

Religion is another point of friction. The white paper said Xinjiang had 24,800 mosques, churches and temples, with 29,000 professional religious and two religious schools. Since the 1980s, more than 50,000 people had made the pilgrimage to Mecca and 47 people had gone to Egypt, Pakistan and other Muslim countries for higher study.

The state had printed more than a million copies of the Koran and last year spent 33 million yuan to repair an important mosque and cemetery.

But critics reply that official controls on Islam are too rigid - the state does not allow public officials and students to enter mosques and does not allow private activities in running religious schools, constructing religious buildings, printing religious material or accepting donations from abroad; everything must be approved and controlled by the state, which proclaims itself atheistic.

Intermarriage among the races is increasing but rare. In Urumqi, there were 218 such marriages in 1980, accounting for 2.1 per cent of the total, rising to 811, or 5.9 per cent, in 2003, the white paper said. Intermarriage between Han and Uygur is rare, mainly because of family opposition and the difference in religion.

(Xinhua) Six sentenced to death over Xinjiang riot October 12, 2009.

Six men who were convicted of murder and other crimes in the July 5 riot in Xinjiang were sentenced Monday to death after a first-instance trial, and another man was jailed for life. Abdukerim Abduwayit, Gheni Yusup, Abdulla Mettohti, Adil Rozi, Nureli Wuxiu'er, and Alim Metyusup were sentenced to death at the Intermediate People's Court in Urumqi. Tayirejan Abulimit was given life imprisonment, a lesser punishment as he confessed to crimes of murder and robbery and helped the police capture Alim Metyusup. All seven men had been convicted of murder, and some of them were also convicted of arson or robbery. The seven were the first to be sentenced over the riot, which left 197 people dead and more than 1,600 injured in Urumqi, capital of northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

Abdukerim Abduwayit killed five innocent people with dagger and pipe wrench during the riot. He also set fire to a downtown building, forcing 13 people to jump off the building to escape and causing an economic loss of more than 260,000 yuan (38,067 US dollars). In the second case, Gheni Yusup led Abdulla Mettohti, Adil Rozi and Nureli Wuxiu'er in beating four people to death and injuring another. Abdulla Mettohti and others also set a grain and oil shop ablaze, killing five people who were hiding inside and causing an economic loss of 1.37 million yuan. Alim Metyusup and Tayirejan Abulimit together killed three people and seriously injured one person. Alim Metyusup together with other mobs also killed another two people and set fire to houses, resulting in an economic loss of more than 50,000 yuan.

(CCTV 1 in Chinese)

　

　

(New York Times) China court sentences 6 to death in rioting. By Edward Wong. October 13, 2009.

A Chinese court sentenced six men to death and a seventh to life in prison on Monday for their roles in the deadly ethnic rioting that convulsed the western regional capital of Urumqi in July, according to Xinhua, the state news agency. All seven had names that suggested they were Uighurs, the largest ethnic group in the vast region of Xinjiang. All were convicted of murder, and some were also found guilty of arson and robbery, Xinhua reported.

The sentences were the first to be handed down by a court in response to the rioting of July 5, in which enraged Uighurs went on a rampage against Han, the dominant ethnic group in China, in the streets of Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang. At least 197 people were killed, most of them Han civilians, and 1,600 injured, the government announced. The ethnic rioting was the worst in decades in China and prompted cycles of retaliation as well as protests against the regional government. Uighurs in Xinjiang have long complained of discrimination against them and of mass migrations to Xinjiang by the Han that have changed society in parts of the region they once dominated.

The six sentenced to death by the Intermediate People’s Court in Urumqi were Abdukerim Abduwayit, Gheni Yusup, Abdulla Mettohti, Adil Rozi, Nureli Wuxiu’er and Alim Metyusup, according to Xinhua. The seventh, Tayirejan Abulimit, was given a life sentence because he had confessed to murder and robbery and helped in the arrest of Alim Metyusup, Xinhua reported.

The English-language version of the Xinhua report did not provide details of the crimes. However, the Chinese-language version said that Abdukerim Abduwayit killed five people by stabbing them or beating them with an iron pipe, and that he helped set fire to buildings that forced 13 people to jump from their windows. Most of the men were convicted of similar crimes, according to the Xinhua report.

The trial on Monday was held without any prior announcement. In late August, China Daily, an official English-language newspaper, reported that trials would start that week, but regional authorities quickly said after the article appeared that a trial date had not been set.

The sentences in Urumqi were handed down just two days after two courts in southern China sentenced 11 people for their roles in the ethnic melee at a toy factory that served as a spark of the Xinjiang rioting. Xiao Jianhua, a Han man identified by a court as the “principal instigator” of that brawl, received a death sentence, another man received life in prison and nine others were given shorter prison terms.

(Asia Sentinel) A Tourist in a Troubled Land. Paul Mozur. October 14, 2009.

Earlier this week, courts in Xinjiang sentenced six men to death and a seventh to life imprisonment for murder, arson and robbery during riots that swept the region in early July, leaving nearly 200 persons dead. Paul Mozur, a Taiwan-based correspondent, traveled through the area shortly after the riots. This is the first of a three-part report.

Xinjiang has become one of the worst parts of the world to have your bank account frozen. The Autonomous Region of China is now in its fourth month without text messages, internet and international calls, and I found myself in Kashgar with a security hold on my American bank account. At first I thought there must be some recourse, the Uighurs have dealt with brutal competition for their land from Mongols, Kyrgyz, Chinese and Russians for more than 1,000 years. Surely they could get around the communication shadow the government has cast over the province since the July fifth riots left 197, mostly Han Chinese, dead.

Within 45 minutes I found a contact who "knew a friend who might be able to help." Another half-hour later and I was in brightly lit office adorned with a large map of Xinjiang with a tour guide who knew a number in Guangdong through which he had been able to connect to the internet two weeks before. He began the connection, but after two cigarettes and a call to his wife about dinner, he turned and shrugged his shoulders. "I'm sorry, I don't know if this is legal or not, I tried once and it worked two weeks ago, but maybe they have shut it down. I don't want to try again."

Unlike the United States these days, my credit was satisfactory enough for a cash advance from Bank of China and I was able to go on my way. But Xinjiang's communication breakdown has affected the fabric of business in the region, crippled the tourist industry and changed the way information and rumors make their way across the province. Between cigarette one and two the helpful tourist agent complained of the bitter reality for Xinjiang's tourist season in the past two years.

"Last year was bad, you know, because of the Olympics, but we thought this year would be better and now, who would want to come to a place where we have to live like this," he motioned resignedly to his laptop. "The people in the old markets don't mind, but how am I supposed to run a business without internet?"

By all observations small businesses ran surprisingly smooth in this historically entrepot land, but the steady stream of tourists, both Han Chinese and foreign, that annually make it to this horizon of the Middle Kingdom had no doubt slowed to a trickle. Bargaining harder than ever, the many Han hotel owners across the province all admitted it had been a summer of vacancy. From Hami and Urumqi to Hotan and Yarkand, the bikes at guest houses collected cobwebs, the Western bars were silent and the karaokes loud and empty. And due to China's restrictions on journalism in Xinjiang, too few press cameras were around to snap these tumbleweeds of the Taklamakan.

Although there's no indication yet just what toll the blackout will have on the region's economy as a whole, the sad reality is it means a desperate financial situation could still get worse for many Uighurs who, due to discrimination or lack of opportunity are unemployed. Over the past six decades a large influx of Han immigrants - in 1949 about 6 percent of Xinjiang's population was Han Chinese compared with over 40 percent today - enticed with incentives such as easy access to land, better education for their children and subsidized housing have driven many Uighurs from jobs. In mid-afternoon a laghman vendor in Hami's market motioned to a group of Uighurs whispering around four sweaty beers, "they are all unemployed, so they stay around the market and try to make some money as middlemen." Clearly on this day spending eclipsed earning. Tellingly the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps or Bingtuan, a government-run organization used to first establish infrastructure in the region in the 1950s, counts 88.1 percent of its more than 2,500,000 workers as Han Chinese.

Though the Bingtuan is part of a long-term Sinicization campaign to drown out Uighur culture and by extension in CCP-think "separatism," very little actual integration has occurred. One Han proprietor of a Kashgar liquor shop and a tangle of underground rooms where both Uighurs and Han alike drank could not name one Uighur artist in the box of VCDs he regularly gave his Uighur patrons to play on his shop's televisions. "I don't actually know anything about the music, I can't even understand the language," he shrugged.

As senior Asia researcher for Human Rights Watch Nicholas Bequelin explains, Han migrants in Xinjiang today are more clueless than ever. "Whereas Han settlers previously had a strong sense that they were newcomers in an indigenous territory, many Han people who have moved to urban centers in Xinjiang over the past 10 years are oblivious to the recent character of Chinese migration into the region. This makes it very difficult for them to understand why Uighurs may feel disenfranchised and aggrieved." It's this cultural ignorance in potent combination with joblessness and draconian restrictions on Uighur cultural practices that has stoked tensions in Xinjiang for so long. And now in the critical months after July's riots Chinese policies are unsurprisingly errant anew, unnerving and aggravating both Uighur and Han alike.

Just as many small businesses in Xinjiang seemed to have grudgingly but easily retreated to telephone and post, the spread of information also reverted to this surprisingly antiquated early-1990's way of life. The proudly Sichuan owner of a computer store in Yarkand, a city inhabited primarily by Uighurs, updated me about the "situation" in Urumqi affirming Han protests were still going on and that "the Uighurs are stabbing people with needles infected with HIV." With no texting, let alone Twitter, he relied on his distributors in Urumqi for information. "If my orders come late I call Urumqi, they tell me what's going on." More shipments than usual had been delayed recently so he was a well-informed man.

As he shuffled to a cluttered backroom where he had been watching a movie with three friends also from Sichuan, he warned me, "be careful, if you're going to the Uighur part of town." On September third, Han Chinese had protested over reports that Uighurs had been stabbing Han Chinese with needles. The protests, which left several Han Chinese dead, resulted in the sacking of Urumqi party secretary Li Zhi and Xinjiang regional chief of police Liu Yaohua.

Though it took a day or two for the news to fully spread around Kashgar and southern Xinjiang, those words, "be careful," became as common a farewell from the Han Chinese as the traditional "go slowly." Since then the Chinese government has announced that none of the reported 400 plus cases of needle stabbings resulted in poisoning or illness and have already rounded up 75 suspects and efficiently sentenced seven to 7 to 15 years for involvement. Two other suspects also admitted they had been trying "to create panic in society." Given China's history of forced confessions, this should be taken with a grain of salt, but it should also be noted that if the accused were attempting to create panic, it was an exercise in restraint given most Uighurs carry knives.

Notwithstanding the tale of a British kitchen hand who used a needle filled with acid to defend her consulate during an outbreak of assassinations in Kashgar in 1912, the Chinese have maintained a paranoia about needle stabbings since 2002 incidents in Beijing and Tianjin. Gruesome rumors of AIDs-stricken Uighurs pouring blood into food at Uighur restaurants in Beijing have also been reported as far back as 2005. Still the response, in which residents of Urumqi called for the notoriously ruthless party regional secretary Wang Lequan to step down because he has not been punitive enough, has been paranoid at best. Tensions that have simmered for years have come to a full boil, and for Han settlers in Xinjiang the government's response has not brought any relief, in fact it has made things worse.

Living in the darkness of a communication black hole where cherubic PLA soldiers leer and grunt on every corner, it's no wonder the Han so protested so radically in early September. Though there is word that the internet may come back online soon, the damage done to the economy will not be so easy to redress. Combine this with recent threats from Al Qaeda regarding China's treatment of the Uighurs and the hopelessly tense situation in Xinjiang looks set to continue well into the future.

(Asia Sentinel) Han Chinese Uproot Uighur Culture. By Paul Mozur. October 15, 2009.

Kashgar's old city can be deceiving. Its airy, mud-brick courtyard houses show the dilapidation of their 400-year history, but many abodes are in fact quite comfortable. Still, unpatched cracks mark the outside of many walls and Spartan comforts are the rule. The Chinese government has cleverly cashed in on this perception to bulldoze whole blocks of the old city under the pretense of enhancing living conditions and providing earthquake-safe housing for the Uighurs.

But the stucco flaking from new apartment blocks outside the city where many have been or will be moved inspires little confidence in a policy many analysts have said is designed to continue to uproot Uighur culture and tighten security. Though it was unclear how severe an earthquake Merhum's house would survive, its luxuriant interior outdid the dim, stained hotel rooms that sit in unthreatened buildings in the city's Han quarter.

For now Merhum is not worried about his house, which is well away from the areas being razed. After catching my attention as I walked by the open entrance to his courtyard, he motioned me inside, opening a plain wooden door to reveal a room stippled with niches holding golden-framed, black-and-white photos, lushly colored pillows, copper teapots and other elegantly displayed baubles. Unmistakable on a minaret-shaped pillar in the center of the room were matching East Turkestan symbols, a crescent moon cradling a star. I pointed questioningly.

"East Turkestan," he nodded and assented to a photo.

Appropriated from the flag of the short-lived 1933-34 first East Turkestan Republic, the symbol is strictly forbidden in Xinjiang and is alleged to be the emblem of pro-independence "separatist" groups. Given that troops were routinely checking tourist cameras for pictures of sensitive most wanted signs and troop installations, allowing me to take a picture was about as risky as distributing Tank Man photos in Tiananmen Square. As I was about to press him about his behavior, his daughter finally emerged in response to earlier shouts up to the second floor. Unlike Merhum, she was unhappy and curtly refused to help translate for him.

For a few brief minutes of muffled argument the two disappeared from the room, when he returned he apologized in his halting Mandarin, "she does not want me to talk to foreigners. I do not normally invite guests like you into my home, but the situation is just so bad right now, we must speak out." As Merhum explained that he was a retired carpenter in his late 50s, his daughter dutifully but coldly returned to present the dastarkhan, or tablecloth, on which fruit, in my case nearly a full watermelon, is put out for guests to eat. After she parted he sternly asked: "Do people in the West know about our problems here? Do they know about the situation? You must tell them when you go back."

"I've seen too many people die, at least 50,000 are dead or in prison since the July 5th riots. We Uighurs are good to people who are good to us, but to those who wrong us," he broke off, "but we only have knives, if we had guns we could fight them." Although a number of Uighurs I spoke with reported this 50,000 statistic, most reliable sources estimate Uighur detentions since the riots between 1,000 and 2,000. But Merhum was insistent about his numbers, claiming to have heard them from a Uighur policeman.

When I asked where else he obtained information over the past months he drew close and mischievously motioned at the floor. "I have a radio I use to get the news, but I have to keep it hidden from the police," he replied, likely referring to the extra antennas or pieces of tin required to receive signals from media sources like Radio Free Asia, a U.S. government-run Uighur news service whose broadcasts are blocked in China. During our conversation Merhum had grown more emotional and finally fighting back tears he shook his head: "Many of my friends have been arrested, too many have died, and America, Germany, England what can they do? We have no hope."

As I stepped out from the cool darkness of his house to the blinding alley, he told me: "Keep the photo and show it to people abroad, they need to know about what is happening here." Merhum was not alone in his vocal denunciation of China, nor was he the first to admit he didn’t normally speak out. Shop owners, taxi drivers, tour guides and even a few state employees made clear in ferocious language their disgust with the current situation, often within earshot of dozens of passersby. When a bus I took from Hotan to Urumqi across the Takalamakan was stopped on the desert's edge for six hours until dawn, several men openly cursed the government to me as they clustered in a group, slurping down instant noodles and joking through the night.

On the other hand the large and undisguised presence of the People's Liberation Army at almost every cultural site did little to intimidate Uighurs. One old man, with the aid of his grandson for translator bristled at soldiers drilling in front of a new theater dedicated to Uighur Mukam music. "They're here to intimidate us," he shook, "but they're scared too, they know that we will not back down." When I asked him about the history museum next to the theater and how Chinese official history differed from his own understanding of it, he mounted his pedicart and laughed, "anything I say about that would be separatist," and without waiting for an answer he rode away with his grandson perched in the back.

That this strategy of occupying cultural spaces inflames as much as it intimidates seems to have eluded the authorities. In Urumqi a Uighur cab driver who had grown irate when he saw a public bus being searched by PLA grew angrier, when arriving at the Xinjiang Provincial Museum, he saw troops drilling in front. Thankfully for his sake he was long gone when later in the afternoon, due to rain, the troops took shelter inside the museum. While my bottle of water had to be disposed before entering, teargas canisters and dagger bayonets were blithely displayed as troops clogged the facilities and crowded around the exhibits - including the Beauty of Loulan a 3,000-year-old mummy whose long nose has been (against all scientific evidence) claimed by Uighurs as proof of their Indo-European roots and originary presence in the region.

In Hotan's central square in front of its anatomically questionable statue that shows a thick and tall Mao bending slightly to shake the hand of a short and emaciated Uighur, PLA troops rehearsed Kung Fu routines, their shouts echoing several blocks away. Even the signs the provincial government put up were more provocative than informative. Warnings of severe prison sentences for those who falsely reported being attacked by needles rang false beneath most-wanted signs that listed only a few Han fugitives amongst dozens of Uighurs. The only noticeable difference between Urumqi before the Han protests and after were more troops. Where about 30 troop transport trucks had sat in the city's People's Square before, after there were more than 60. Formerly empty corners were marked by new attachments of soldiers standing stolidly behind sand-bag barricades.

As the Chinese government not only continues, but intensifies the policies that have left it on edge for several months, more tragic flare-ups like July 5th will be the inevitable result. Han and the Uighurs alike are vexed and spooked. And when ragtag lines of Uighur and Han Chinese Militia, many of whom are sparsely trained State Owned Enterprise employees, patrol the streets of Urumqi with truncheons, one gets the distinctive feel that the government is smoking too close to the dynamite, and no significant change in policy must represent an at best complacent and at worst apathetic lack of executive imagination.

(CCTV in Chinese)

　

　

　

(Asia Sentinel) Xinjiang's Bleached Bones and Turquoise Tombs. By Paul Mozur. October 16, 2009.

For all practical purposes Iparhan might have been better off studying the Abakh Khoja mazar for four years. Though the 26-year-old graduate of Beijing Normal University has an undergraduate degree in chemistry and can seamlessly jump between English, Mandarin and Uighur, she has been unable to find a steady job since graduation. Instead she makes money to help her family by taking tourists to the tomb of the powerful 17th century Kashgar ruler Abakh Khoja. She lit up when she learned I used to live in Beijing, "I really wanted to stay there after graduation, the opportunities are better, but there aren't any jobs there for Uighurs."

"It's better this way anyway, I get to be around my family." She frowned when I put forth the prospect of finding a job in Xinjiang. "There's too much discrimination for me to find a job, even before July 5th people did not want to hire Uighurs." She admitted most of her Han classmates had found jobs by now, but tried to strike a positive chord claiming to be lucky to meet foreigners through her English and part-time job as a tour guide in Kashgar. Still she admitted, "right now the situation is very bad, whenever we see Han or Uighurs who have come to the city we do not know why they are here, we wonder if anyone is coming to start trouble."

Throughout our conversation Iparhan broke off to joke with her Han friend Mei, whom she had brought for an excursion outside the city. Iparhan is typical of more and more Uighurs, who are educated in Mandarin at an increasingly younger age and leave Xinjiang to attend college in eastern China. Though on the surface their integration would seem to neutralize them as potential threats, in many ways they are the greatest threat to China. As Human Rights Watch's Nicholas Bequelin explains: "The source of political and religious radicalism in Muslim societies has often been people who were both educated and disaffected."

Iparhan said there were many others like her. "It is this way everywhere, there is no chance of success opened to us." It is this fact, she told me, that helped her to see through the propagandistic side of her education. "Many of my Han classmates simply believe what the teachers or the government tells them. If they hear it is foreigners who caused a problem in Xinjiang, they believe it, they don't ask for proof and they don't ask why," she complained. "I think because growing up we know we are a minority and then we see discrimination everyday we learn not to listen to the government."

Even if the economic realities on the ground are addressed, Bequelin still believes the region will remain restive. "The promotion of economic development cannot make up for restrictions on cultural expression, and there is no look to change these cultural policies. Ultimately the party leadership is still clenching onto ideological clichés that encourage ethnic polarization." Across Xinjiang's urban areas young Uighur kids have become reliable speakers of crisp Mandarin. If in a matter of a decade the Chinese government can succeed in forcing the province's education system to switch from Uighur to Mandarin, it doesn't seem unrealistic that it could at least partially succeed in teaching cultural understanding, instead of falling back on banal socialist phrases.

But for now the government has shown itself content to simply squelch violence and retain stability at all costs. In doing so it is increasingly alienating an already incensed population of Uighurs and an unhappy majority of Han. And to make matters worse in shutting down communications, setting up checkpoints on roads, and placing militia and military on the streets it has multiplied potential flashpoints.

Right now it is up to the PRC government whether future Uighurs will build secret mazars (tombs) for martyrs or malls for their children. If the Chinese lose the Iparhans of Xinjiang, the newest generation of middle-class, eastern-educated young Uighurs, it will have passed a critical opportunity to inaugurate change in the region. And considering Al Qaeda's recent grumblings about the treatment of Uighurs, it may not even be the traditionally moderate Sufi-influenced minority who act in reprisal for this failure.

Xinjiang is already a land covered with the dead, Mummies and tombs are some of its greatest attractions and tales of horrible violence pepper its history. Unfortunately the 60-year history of the PRC, which in many ways rivals Xinjiang's own for brutality, has taught its leaders little regard for restraint and less for tolerance. Instead the Chinese government seems dead set on continuing the region's wealthy legacy of violence, and so it will remain a land of bleached bones and turquoise tombs.

(CCTV half-hour news story in Chinese; in three parts)

　

　

　

(People.com.cn) 乌鲁木齐“７·５”事件台前幕后 October 16, 2009.

　　天山的雄伟、草原的辽阔、戈壁的广袤、资源的富饶……在中国西部边陲，新疆如一颗璀璨明珠熠熠生辉，生活在这里的４７个民族的人民世代同呼吸、共命运。

　　然而，几个月前的一个夜晚，这里的平静和安宁被无情地打破。７月５日晚，乌鲁木齐市发生打砸抢烧严重暴力犯罪事件，造成１９７人死亡，千余人受伤……

　　震惊中外的严重暴力犯罪事件，彻底揭穿了一个叫做“世界维吾尔代表大会”的层层伪装。确凿的证据无可辩驳地证明，“世维会”极尽挑拨民族关系之能事，居心叵测煽动暴力恐怖活动，正是乌鲁木齐“７·５”事件的幕后操纵者。

　　广东韶关“６·２６”事件被“世维会”歪曲事实、借机炒作、造谣煽动，只为了一个目的——以暴力制造分裂

　　今年６月２６日，广东韶关发生了新疆籍员工和当地员工群殴事件。然而，绝大多数人不曾想到，这样一起刑事案件，会在此后的１０天内，被人为地不断歪曲和渲染，最终导致惨剧的发生。

　　从广东韶关“６·２６”事件，到乌鲁木齐“７·５”事件，“世维会”暴露了他们蓄谋已久的险恶用心。

　　“要重视这次事件，这是一个很好的机会。”在“６·２６”事件发生后，“世维会”主席热比娅在电话中和“世维会”副主席塞依提·吐木吐鲁克这样说。

　　网上歪曲事实，借机大肆炒作，极尽造谣煽动之能事……“世维会”很快便付诸行动——

　　６月２７日，“世维会”下属机构“东突信息中心”发表声明，肆意夸大韶关“６·２６”事件冲突程度，并诬称“维吾尔族人沦为内地汉族老板的奴隶，遭受严重剥削、屈辱和歧视”。

　　６月２９日，“世维会”秘书长多里坤·艾沙与“世维会”下属各机构领导层人员就在各国举行游行抗议活动进行商议。３０日，“世维会”发布了《在世界范围内举行抗议活动的号召书》，呼吁“全世界所有维吾尔人”在７月４日和５日“行动起来，向中国政府施压”。

　　７月１日，“世维会”专门召开紧急电话会议，要求境外“东突”分子通过网络聊天、打电话等多种形式，动员新疆维吾尔族群众——近期要以煽动境内、“特别是劳动力输出较多的喀什地区的维吾尔人闹事为重点”；“将国内同胞动员起来”，“号召他们不怕牺牲，积极开展活动”……这些极尽煽动之能事的“号召”，都是这次会议上炮制的。

　　在“世维会”的鼓动之下，７月３日之后，部分“东突”分子到我驻美国、法国、奥地利、土耳其等国家的２２个使领馆前滋事，总人数逾千人。

　　７月４日，“世维会”网站的一名评论员在“新唐人电视台”录制节目时公然叫嚣——“只能用暴力的方式把法律拿到自己手里来处理这个事情”。

　　……

　　煽动和唆使无所不用其极，这些言论通过互联网、手机短信传播，形成了一定的炒作氛围，其计划也步步深入，开始将言语煽动转变为实质行动。

　　“清风网”管理员艾合买提·吐尔逊通过其核心组织加紧与境外勾联，进行串联、煽动、密谋策划和制定了“７·５”非法聚集闹事活动计划，确定了时间、地点，明确了组织分工，并通过互联网进行煽动串联和组织指挥，成为“７·５”事件境内外勾联的组织指挥体系。

　　——积极搜集广东“６·２６”事件有关情报为“世维会”造谣提供“炮弹”。

　　６月２７日之后，“世维会”前宣传部负责人肖合来提分别与新疆乌鲁木齐、喀什、哈密、伊犁、吐鲁番、阿克苏和广东广州等地区的情报员联系，要求搜集有关“６·２６”事件的情报。

　　６月２９日，在广东的库尔班·喀依木通过互联网向肖合来提等“世维会”成员发送假信息。此后，肖合来提等“世维会”成员根据这些假信息，编造 “６·２６”事件中“有１８名新疆工人死亡，３００多人受伤”，并将一段CNN曾经播出的伊拉克库尔德族民众对本族女孩实施石刑的视频谎称为“维族红衣少女被汉人殴打致死”，在网络上广为传播，借机煽动民族情绪和民族冲突。

　　——建立境内外勾联的三条渠道。

　　艾合买提·吐尔逊本人与肖合来提和自由亚洲电台维语部通过网上进行联系；利用“清风网”网站与自由亚洲电台维语部、“世维会”网站等进行联系；通过古丽米拉分别与“世维会”副主席兼挪威维吾尔协会主席阿卜杜塞梅德·阿卜拉等以及“世维会”网站管理员艾尼瓦尔·吾买尔等进行联系……通过这些运作，艾合买提·吐尔逊的核心组织与境内外基本形成了勾联的组织体系。

　　——秘密策划煽动“７·５”非法聚集闹事活动。

　　６月３０日之后，艾合买提·吐尔逊连夜在电脑上制作了７月５日１７时在人民广场非法聚集的维文文字信息，然后拷屏制成图片信息。

　　为了制作、张贴“７·５”非法聚集闹事信息，吐尔逊·买海提指使其女儿艾迪亚·吐尔逊于７月４日凌晨上网找到了非法聚集的图片信息，并改成汉语文字信息 “明天下午５点，在广场有ｎａｍｙｉｘａ（游行），你们去吗？是维族就去把（吧）”于７月４日２２时１７分在“兄弟”ＱＱ群中发布。

　　据统计，该汉字信息至７月５日１７时共被１２４５名网民在３３５７个ＱＱ群中转发了４７２０次，受众达５万余人。此外，大量包含了许多煽动性暴力言语的信息在网络中传递，“以牙还牙、以血还血”等字眼充斥其间……

　　一起刑事案件，就是这样被“世维会”演绎并放大。而这一系列铺垫，都是为了一个目的——以暴力制造分裂。

　　在“世维会”的策划、组织和煽动下，数千名暴徒分散在乌鲁木齐市区多处猖狂地打砸抢烧，杀害无辜群众

　　７月５日１１时，热比娅与其乌鲁木齐的弟弟买买提·卡德尔联系，称“我们知道发生了很多事，晚上乌鲁木齐可能要发生一些事情”。

　　究竟是什么样的事情？

　　是１９７个生命的消失，是数千受伤群众的鲜血，是无数被砸坏的商店、烧毁的汽车，是笼罩在乌鲁木齐各族人民心头的惶恐不安……“７·５”乌鲁木齐打砸抢烧严重暴力犯罪事件最终揭开了这个电话的谜底。

　　７月５日晚，数千名暴徒分散在乌鲁木齐市区多处猖狂地打砸抢烧，杀害无辜群众。新疆公安厅指挥中心２１时许的信息显示，乌鲁木齐全市５０多个点先后爆发打砸抢烧，针对行人、公交车、私家车和商店、居民住所、政府机关、公安武警等进行暴力袭击。

　　其中，以阿不都黑力力·巴克为首的“伊扎布特”团伙在热比娅大厦率先打砸抢烧后，引领解放南路的打砸抢烧队伍向东南行进，沿途煽动、裹挟大量社会闲散人员参与，在解放南路、金银大道、后泉街形成３处犯罪重点区域，造成２２人死亡、７２辆汽车被砸烧……

　　不仅如此，一系列让人匪夷所思的行为也在打砸抢烧事件发生的现场同时出现。乌鲁木齐“７·５”事件一发生，有人专门在我军警驻地周围拍摄军警出动情况。此外，非法聚集现场的情况也有专人实时向外发送，部分照片被迅速编辑为幻灯演示上传互联网，几乎达到全程报道的程度。

　　“我无法想象一个人怎样用打火机引燃一个商店，你至少需要一小罐汽油去完成这样的事情吧，它使我想起了２００８年３月在西藏发生的骚乱。在这两个案件中，都是被训练好的煽动者制造了这样的事情。”对于“世维会”的一些狡辩，俄新社政治评论员科塞莱夫提出了这样的疑问。　

　　事实上，正是在“世维会”的煽动和唆使下，这一系列暴力行径才会在乌鲁木齐遍地开花。据有关部门调查了解，早在６月３０日１６时，艾合买提·吐尔逊便召集木合塔尔等６人在乌鲁木齐领馆巷附近的大盘鸡店开会，认为应响应境外号召，行动起来，制造大的影响，引起国际关注。他们甚至研究和策划了非法聚集闹事的具体方案——

　　一是确定非法聚集闹事时间为７月５日１７时。他们认为“周日游行参加的人会很多，而且警察休息，可以把事情搞大”。

　　二是确定乌鲁木齐非法聚集闹事的地点是人民广场。艾合买提·吐尔逊称“人民广场人多，可以见到大官，影响力大”。同时还确定在喀什、和田、阿克苏、伊犁也要在同一时间举行非法聚集闹事活动。

　　三是明确了组织分工：艾合买提·吐尔逊和木合塔尔负责制作有关非法聚集的信息，其他人员负责在网上进行发布，木合塔尔负责在“校内网”上发布，古丽米拉负责与境外联系，发送现场消息。

　　像这样的会议，他们还在６月２８日、７月１日、７月３日先后召开了３次，甚至叫嚣：“把事搞大，如果有机会，命都可以不要。”

　　７月５日１时３０分，艾合买提·吐尔逊等人在“我们的维吾尔”ＱＱ群内开会，甚至商定当日１７时一起赴人民广场参加非法聚集的暗号——“你是广东人吗？”“是！”

　　……

　　“世维会”煽动的罪恶行径比比皆是。现有关部门已查明，在“７·５”事件现场组织实施和参与打砸抢烧的犯罪团伙５４个，涉及成员４００余名。在现场打砸抢烧犯罪活动中，有组织的犯罪团伙起到了骨干作用；一些原来治安混乱的地方成了“７·５”事件中实施打砸抢烧严重暴力犯罪分子的“窝藏点”。

　　然而，１９７条生命的逝去，并没有唤醒“世维会”的悔过之心。就在乌鲁木齐“７·５”事件发生之后，“世维会”煽动民族对立，制造更大动乱的行动依然没有停止——

　　据有关部门掌握，７月６日凌晨，“世维会”召开紧急电话会议，对事件进行商讨，并拟定声明、对策，企图继续煽动境内维吾尔族民众扩大事态，并拉拢国际社会向中国施压。

　　当地时间７月６日早上，中国驻德国慕尼黑总领馆遭受两名不明身份的人投掷燃烧物，造成馆舍和国旗轻微损坏。

　　当地时间７月６日下午，约１５０名“东突”分子在中国驻荷兰大使馆门前举行抗议示威。很快，示威演变成有组织、有准备的暴力事件。

　　……

　　在“７·５”事件后，“世维会”副主席塞依提·吐木吐鲁克和境内“东突”分子联系，表示“我们要把握这个机会，把在这次事件中死亡的人员都说成是维吾尔族人，让境内外的维吾尔族人继续闹下去，不断扩大这次事件在国际上的影响力，让中国政府在国际上颜面扫地。”

　　为了达到其卑鄙目的，“世维会”不断混淆视听，造假无所不用其极——

　　以库尔德人用族规对与外族谈恋爱的姑娘施行石刑，说成是维吾尔族姑娘遭汉人迫害；

　　以湖北石首一次群体事件的照片为证，谎称中国警方是如何对付乌鲁木齐“和平示威者”的；

　　以杭州萧山区一起交通事故现场的照片，表达对所谓汉族警察在乌鲁木齐杀害维吾尔族人的愤怒……

　　“世维会”如此费尽心机，无非是想进一步煽动、挑拨新疆各族人民之间的对立，实现他们分裂国家的图谋。

　　“７·５”事件是“世维会”本质的一次总暴露。相当长一段时间以来，他们一直叫嚣——“要齐心协力，削弱中国的经济，打破中共的强大”

　　乌鲁木齐“７·５”事件是“世维会”本质的一次总暴露。只要我们稍微翻阅一下“世维会”过去的所言所行，就不难从其斑斑劣迹中读出他们的“暴力倾向”由来已久——

　　“由于别人压制我们，他们就要先行被消灭。”

　　“我们要齐心协力，不惧中共原子弹的威胁，削弱中国的经济，打破中共的强大。”

　　今年５月，“世维会”在中国驻美大使馆示威活动中一次次这样叫嚣着，充分暴露了其分裂祖国、对抗祖国的暴力本质。

　　“即便没有韶关事件这个导火索，其他类似的一些事情也会被用来蛊惑、煽动一些人上街闹事，‘世维会’就是一直在寻找这样的机会。”中国现代国际关系研究院反恐研究中心主任李伟说。

　　事实的确如此。今年的５月２１日至２５日，在“世维会”第三次代表大会期间，“世维会”进一步确定了争取“东突独立”的方针和一系列暴力分裂的策略——

　　“东突独立”运动要“外部以谈判对话为主，内部以强烈打击为主”；

　　逐步将“东突独立”的主战场引入境内；

　　将煽动境内“闹事”作为实现“东突独立”的重要途径；

　　通过在新疆制造持续动乱迫使中国政府谈判，最终实现“东突独立”；

　　利用敏感时期、热点问题制造影响，对中国施以更大的打击；

　　……

　　只要简单回顾一下“世维会”的历史，谁都不难发现它和恐怖主义暴力活动之间千丝万缕的联系。

　　“世维会”的前身是世界维吾尔青年代表大会以及东突民族代表大会。这两个组织曾经出现在２００３年１２月中国公安部第一批认定的四个“东突”恐怖组织名单当中。

　　“世维会”秘书长多里坤·艾沙不仅是前世界维吾尔青年代表大会主席、国际刑警组织红色通缉令对象，而且还曾经担任另一个恐怖组织——“东突解放组织”的头目。

　　那么，这些恐怖组织究竟做过些什么？

　　１９９８年１月３０日至２月１８日，“东突解放组织”成员在喀什市制造了２３起系列投毒案，致使４人中毒、１人死亡，数以千计的牲畜死亡或中毒。

　　１９９８年４月６日在霍尔果斯口岸我海关与边检部门查获了一起武器偷运案，在羊毛集装箱中掩藏大量军用物资。据被抓获的罪犯供认，他们是受境外“世界维吾尔青年代表大会”和“东突解放组织”的指派行动的。

　　１９９８年５月２３日，在境外接受过专门训练、被派入境的“东突解放组织”成员在乌鲁木齐市投放了４０多枚化学自燃纵火装置，制造了１５起纵火案。

　　……

　　借助国内的一些社会问题煽动民族对立，通过闹事甚至是暴力恐怖手段，来达到分裂祖国的目的。在这一手段的使用上，“世维会”和那些“东突”分裂分子们并没有什么不同。

　　在去年“３·１４”事件发生之后，“世维会”受到刺激和启发，决定效仿达赖集团制造“３·１４”事件的做法，把分裂活动重心向境内转移，充分利用民生问题煽动暴力事件。

　　例如，从２００８年４月开始，“世维会”便制定了一系列抵制破坏北京奥运会的活动计划，号召境内维吾尔族人非法聚集、抵制奥运火炬传递，在新疆闹事。

　　此外，他们还加强境内渗透，建立内外勾联渠道，煽动他们与政府抗争；“世维会”及其下属机构通过４０余个网站，在境内发展了一批信息员；“世维会”人员在境内建立ＱＱ群，或在维语网站担任网管、版主，发展关系人，在网上造谣、煽动、传播闹事信息；肖合来提·吾守尔在新疆的乌鲁木齐、喀什、伊犁和安徽、江苏等地建立了一个有上百名情报信息员的情报网络……

　　事实历历在目，种种证据足以证明——

　　乌鲁木齐“７·５”事件就是一起典型的由境内外“三股势力”相互勾结并策划实施的严重暴力犯罪事件，目的就是要在新疆制造民族对立、社会动荡，破坏改革开放、尤其是近十年来新疆政治稳定、经济发展、社会安宁的大好局面。

　　稳定是福，动乱是祸。民族团结和社会稳定是中华民族的最高利益，“世维会”的图谋永远不会得逞，其丑恶行径永远无法阻挡人们对美好生活的向往和追求。

(Global Times) Six more get death penalty. By Liang Chen. October 16, 2009.

Fourteen more people, including two from the Han ethnic group, were Thursday given penalties ranging from death to many years in jail, for murder and other crimes in the deadly riots in July in the city of Urumqi. This is the first time that rioters of the Han ethnic group caught in the Urumqi unrest were held responsible, following the sentencing of six people of the Uygur ethnic group to the death penalty and another to life imprisonment three days ago.

Last Saturday, local courts in South China's Guangdong Province sentenced one Han man to death and another to life in prision over a toy factory brawl that left two Uygur workers dead.

While overseas dissidents criticized the verdicts of fulfilling the government's "political need," people in China applauded the fact that the criminals "got what they deserved" under the law, whether they were Han or Uygur.

Of the two Han people sentenced, Han Junbo was sentenced to death. His accomplice, Liu Bo, was sentenced to 10 years in prison, according to the Urumqi Intermediate People's Court. Han was found to have beaten an Uygur with a steel bar, and Liu helped beat the Uygur's body with a stick and a bar, causing his death, according to the Xinhua News Agency. The two were among the Han residents who took to the streets two days after mobs of Uygur rioters killed 195 people and injured nearly 2,000 on July 5, in an apparently vindictive move.

Several Uygurs, led by Ahmatjan Moming, were convicted of murder, robbery, arson, and vandalism. They used bricks, stones and sticks to beat two men to death, and robbed the victims of their cell phones, bracelets and other belongings, the court said. Other mobs drove a bus to break into a Geely Auto sales store to vandalize and burn more than 40 cars, resulting in economic losses of more than 1.6 million yuan ($235,000).

Of the 14 sentenced Thursday, three were given the death sentence. Another three were given the death penalty with a two-year suspension, a sentence usually commuted to life in prison. The rest were given life imprisonment or shorter jail terms.

Hou Hanmin, the spokeswoman of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Regional Government, told the Global Times that more trials and public hearings would continue for the remaining detained suspects, without giving specific dates.

Police have detained nearly 700 suspects related with the riot that erupted on July 5, earlier reports said, in which 197 people died, mostly Han Chinese, and more than 1,600 were wounded, according to official figures.

Xiong Kunxin, a professor of ethnic policy at the Minzu University of China, said there was a fair trial for the violent law-breakers. "Only harsh penalties could comfort the families of the victims and display the authority of the law," Xiong said. "The law is meant for justice and will not discriminate against ethnicity, no matter whether they are Han or Uygur," he said.

Dilshat Reshit, a spokesman of the World Uygur Congress (WUC), said the death penalties handed down to Han criminals are only out of the government's political will to demonstrate equality, adding that "all the Uygurs who stood trial so far have been denied a fair hearing." However, local authorities said that the two trials were fair practices that accord with laws and were carried out under public supervision.

"Nearly 500 people attended the public hearing of Thursday's trials, including defendants' families, plaintiffs' families, members of the provincial People's Congress, citizen representatives and the Chinese media," Wang Wenhua, deputy secretary of the regional committee of political and legislative affairs in Xinjiang, told the Global Times. He said each defendant was allocated a lawyer to protect the rights of defense and appeal, and the evidence would also be released later. Public prosecutors presented testimonies of witnesses, autopsy reports and other evidence at the court, and played videos of crime scenes, according to Xinhua.

To some extent, the sentencing of the mobs has offered general relief to most of the people in Xinjiang.

Shi Jinyang, a middle-age local taxi driver, said he believes that the harsh sentences are helpful to maintain order and stability in post-riot Xinjiang. "Local people have longed for the sentencing for quite a while, and the rulings are justified and convincing," he told the Global Times, suggesting that the government continue to play tough in ensuring stability following the harsh punishment.

Ai Shanjiang, 33, a Uygur van driver in Kashgar, said those rioters deserve capital punishment, "otherwise, those criminals may continue to wreak havoc on society."

Li Zhifeng, an official at the Stability Maintenance Office in Xinjiang, said the number of armed forces has not been reduced, but they have more mobility, he said. The Internet is still blocked, but the local network within the Xinjiang district is unimpeded.

(YouTube)

　
A week after 7-5, three Islamic agitators tried to foment unrest in an Urumqi mosque. They were told to leave, became violent, and were then shot by the Police. The Han in Urumqi are talking about how incompetent these special force police, from Liaoning Province, appear to have been - panicking when faced with three idiots wielding sharpened bits of metal, firing off loads of ammo, having to be told by the squad leader not to point their guns at each other. The feeling is these clowns could hardly protect themselves against three terrorists, let alone a full-on riot. Words used: 'disappointing', 'embarrassing' and 'no hope'. There is anger that these 'special forces' are being put up in expensive hotels and eating in expensive restaurants - at the expense of the Urumqi taxpayers! Watch the footage and judge for yourself, but note that a) this video was probably leaked by the authorities, in a move that has backfired, and b) why would they feel the need to put a camera in a mosque...?

(National Geographic) China's Uygurs. Matthew Teague. December 2009.

The first several seconds of the incident in Urumqi seemed almost lighthearted, considering the previous week. And they revealed nothing about what would follow. A cool front had swept over the city on this particular day in July, drawing people from their homes. Some shops stayed closed because their windows had been shattered, but food vendors pushed their carts out onto the street. A week earlier an ethnic clash had broken out here, killing almost 200 people in one of China’s most deadly protests since the Tiananmen Square massacre two decades ago. So the Chinese government had sent tens of thousands of security forces into the city, the capital of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, to restore order between the Han and the Uygurs. The Han dominate Chinese society, but the Uygurs (pronounced WEE-gurs), a Turkic-speaking Central Asian people, claim this western borderland as their ancestral home.

Han security forces stood in ranks along every street in the city's Uygur quarter. They bristled with riot gear and automatic weapons. The only sound came from loudspeakers mounted on trucks that trawled the market streets, broadcasting the good news of ethnic harmony. If Urumqi had an edge of unrest on this Monday, it was sheathed in silence.
Most Uygurs are Muslims, and about noon I stood on the street in front of a central mosque wondering how many people might be inside. As if in answer, a mass of humanity came pouring out, hundreds of people tumbling and plunging into the street.

Bystanders watched, puzzled, but the emerging crowd offered only odd and inscrutable clues: Many hadn't had time to pull on their shoes and ran in just their socks. They cried out with alarm or possibly in celebration, and their faces glowed with either fear or joy. If they were fleeing from danger, there was no sign of it, and the group split and flew north and south. In the flicker of a moment they had disappeared.

Now three men stepped from the mosque, holding what looked like wooden sticks. One wore a blue shirt, one a black shirt, and one a white shirt. They shouted and smiled, which gave their faces a buoyant quality. Their tiny rally seemed brash: Did they not see the Chinese police on every corner or hear the amplified news about manifest happiness?

They turned southward. All three walked with peculiar long strides and waved their sticks overhead, like three baton-twirling drum majors whose marching band had run ahead of them. They passed rows of market stalls where people shouted to them to stop whatever they were doing. Shop owners slammed shut their stall doors. After two blocks the men stopped and turned back north; just before they reached me, they crossed the street. They still held up what were, more likely, rusted swords.

Once across the street, they burst into a run, heading toward a group of armed Chinese. The man in blue sprinted ahead; he seemed to catch the government forces off guard, because they turned and ran. The details of the next moment—the angle of the running man, his shirt billowing behind him, the strange coolness of the air—were etched by a sound: a gunshot. But the three Uygurs did not stop in the face of destruction. They tilted toward it.

The Tibetan struggle for independence from China has long captivated the West. Fewer people are familiar with an arguably more critical struggle in a neighboring hinterland: that of the Uygurs. Their anonymity is ironic because the West has played an unwitting role in their current crisis—and because the Uygurs, whose culture is fading toward obscurity, once occupied the center of the known world.
Xinjiang sits in the middle of Asia, encircled by some of Earth's highest mountains, as though a drawstring had cinched the top of the world like a coin purse. Passes through those snowy mountains funneled ancient traders and travelers along paths that became the renowned Silk Road. "They say it is the highest place in the world," Marco Polo wrote of climbing the Pamir mountains from the Afghanistan side. When he emerged from the pass, he found the Uygur homeland and marveled: "From this country, many merchants go forth about the world."

The territory became the fulcrum on which Asia and Europe balanced. Turkic raiders and later Genghis Khan, Buddhists and then Muslims, traders and tribesmen, missionaries and monks—all passed through this hemispheric crossroads, and each group left something of itself. I saw a Uygur woman wearing a Muslim head cover and holding her baby, whose head she had shaved into phantasmagoric designs, a pre-Islamic shamanistic practice to frighten away baby-stealing evil spirits. Xinjiang's history is also written in the faces of its people: dark faces with oval eyes. Also fair faces with narrow, jet eyes. And sometimes blue eyes with blond hair.

Geography itself protects the mosaic of Uygur culture in Hotan, in far southwestern Xinjiang. A range of snowcapped mountains rises at the town's back, and before it lies the Taklimakan, a desert larger than Poland, which people sometimes call the Sea of Death. Hotan's inhabitants are mostly farmers, and many of them come together each Sunday outside the town for a bazaar where children eat sweetened ice shaved from chunks that float down the Karakax (Black Jade) River, women browse tents full of silk, and men gather to have their beards trimmed while they tell jokes.

It's an old scene, although there is an occasional sign of technology: Knifemakers sit in long rows on ancient bicycles they've reconfigured to spin grindstones, looking like an invading horde of spark-spitting cyclists. A young Uygur man named Otkur (the names of Uygurs in Xinjiang have been changed for their protection) shared his bowl of sheep's lung with me, and afterward we approached an astonishing device: a two-story-high swing set with a seat big enough for two people to stand on. Otkur smiled. "For playing," he said. Two women climbed onto the ends of the seat and swung so high they disappeared into tree branches.

In town I met Dawud, a music master who teaches a small group of students. In his school a large mural showed a mashrap, a traditional all-male gathering—now closely regulated by the Chinese—where Uygurs convene to play music, recite poetry, and socialize. Dawud fashioned a fingerpick from a piece of wire and some twine, flicked his fingers across the five strings of a tambur, and launched into a series of complex songs with roots that reach back at least five centuries.

Those patchwork elements of Uygur life underscore something crucial about the Uygurs as a whole: Centuries of living at a great Eurasian way station have made them a complicated people who defy careless classification. But in time the world forgot this, with disastrous results.
As the Silk Road began to fray and trade took to the seas, both East and West lost interest in the Uygurs and their mountain fastness. For generations China saw little promise in this remote land—Xinjiang means "new frontier"—because the Chinese prized agriculture, and the wild west offered only dust and stones. People there ate mutton, not pork. In 1932 a British officer traveling in Xinjiang wrote with dark foresight, "Perhaps an awakening China, wondering where to settle its surplus millions of people, may have the good sense to call in the science of the West and to develop [Xinjiang]." But through the early 20th century, the Chinese government did not extend its influence to the distant region, and the Uygurs twice declared their own independent country. The second attempt at self-determination, in 1944, lasted five years, until the rise of Mao and the Chinese Communist Party, which sent in military forces and later established a nuclear testing ground, Lop Nur, in Xinjiang to eliminate any confusion.

Realizing that, if nothing else, its big, empty territory provided a buffer against foreign influence, Mao's China instituted a program called the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps—combining farm, military garrison, and prison—in which settlers from other Chinese provinces would work the soil and watch the borders. The first arrivals, in 1954, included more than 100,000 demobilized soldiers. Some were coerced, but the flow gathered momentum as the government extended a railroad west to Urumqi in 1962 and used promises of food and clothing to entice residents from overcrowded cities like Shanghai.

Meanwhile the Chinese were discovering that Xinjiang offered far more than just a border cushion: It held something vital to their very survival as a nation. Xinjiang contains about 40 percent of China's coal reserves and more than a fifth of its natural gas. Most important, it has nearly a fifth of the nation's proven oil reserves, although Beijing claims it holds as much as a third. Never mind the massive deposits of gold, salt, and other minerals. Xinjiang isn't empty. It's strategic. And with that realization, other things came sharply into focus for China's leadership: Xinjiang is the largest, most far-flung region. It borders more countries than any other. And it's home to an ethnic group that has tried twice in living memory to make a break for freedom.

In 1947, during the second incarnation of Uygur independence, about 220,000 Han Chinese made up 5 percent of Xinjiang's population. Uygurs numbered about three million, or 75 percent, the remainder being a mix of Central Asian ethnicities. By 2007 the Uygur population had increased to 9.6 million. But the Han population had swelled to 8.2 million.

Some Uygurs found opportunity in the influx. In the 1980s in burgeoning Urumqi, a laundress named Rebiya Kadeer grew her business into a department store, then built that into an international trading empire. She became one of the wealthiest people in China and an inspiration for her compatriots—a Uygur woman who appeared in Asia's Wall Street Journal and met with such businessmen as Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. In many ways she seemed emblematic of Xinjiang: In the last two decades of the 20th century the region's GDP increased tenfold.
But many more Uygurs languished. The big business in Xinjiang is oil, but all that oil is controlled from Beijing by state-owned energy companies. Many of the good jobs in Xinjiang are government jobs, and employees can advance more readily if they join the Communist Party, which requires renouncing their religion. And most Uygurs won't do that. The result is an ironic and combustible symmetry: As Han settlers pour in, Uygurs, unable to find work in their fantastically wealthy and spacious homeland, migrate east to work in privately owned factories in crowded coastal cities.

In the past few decades local resistance has flared up around Xinjiang, fluctuating in scale and violence. During the 1980s Uygur students protested treatment by police in a handful of incidents; in 1990 a disturbance south of Kashgar against birth limits ended in perhaps four dozen deaths. In 1997 hundreds of people in a city called Gulja marched to protest repression of Islamic practices and were arrested; the number of casualties is unknown. Other examples abound, including bus bombings and assassinations.

The Chinese government realized that it had a problem in Xinjiang, much as it had a problem in neighboring Tibet. Along with regulating mashraps—those traditional gatherings—the state monitored services at mosques, afraid they might provide a platform for dissidents. In general, officials downplayed the unrest as the work of isolated "ruffians" in a Uygur population that was otherwise blissful. In early September 2001, Xinjiang Communist Party Secretary Wang Lequan announced in Urumqi that "society is stable, and people are living and working in peace and contentment."

A few days later Beijing received a potent and unexpected propaganda tool: September 11.

As America and much of the West launched the "war on terror," China recognized the momentum of global public opinion and chose a new tack. The shift happened so fast it came with an almost audible crack. On October 11 a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry described China as "a victim of international terrorism." Then the government issued a report on unrest in Xinjiang blaming none other than Osama bin Laden. "It's an effective strategy," says James Millward, a professor at Georgetown University and an expert on Xinjiang, "because in America we see Muslims somewhere who are unhappy and maybe even violent, and we assume it's because of religious reasons."

And just like that, the Uygurs—with the complexity of their culture, the richness of their past, the fullness of their grievance against the Chinese state—fell into a tidy classification. China asked the United States to include a group of militant separatist Uygurs on its list of terrorist organizations but was rebuffed—at least at first.
In December 2001, 22 Uygurs were captured in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where they may have received weapons training with the intent of battling the Chinese military back in Xinjiang. The men were rounded up by bounty hunters, handed over to U.S. forces, and sent to Guantánamo Bay. (Years later a U.S. court would order their release.) In August 2002 Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage traveled to Beijing to discuss, among other issues, America's upcoming mission in Iraq. While there, he announced a reversal in the U.S. stance: A militant Uygur group called the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement would now be listed as a terrorist organization.

The heart of Uygur tradition is the ancient capital of Kashgar. Today its Old City looks much as it must have when Marco Polo spied it after descending through the mountain pass—a warren of passageways and ancient mud-brick homes that resemble a jumble of oversize children's blocks. Early this year the Chinese government undertook a bold step: They began systematically bulldozing the Old City block by block and moving the inhabitants into a new compound on the edge of town.

Uygurs don't discuss the subject in public for fear of imprisonment, but one man who lives in the Old City, Ahun, agreed to talk with me in his home. A rendezvous would not be easy, because for days the Chinese security services had been following me. I was to wait in the main square during the busy midday until I saw him pass under Mao's statue, then follow at a distance without acknowledgment.

As we walked through city streets, he stopped casually to take a drink of water at a cart and later to tie his shoe. Finally we entered the Old City. The Chinese government's ostensible reason for demolishing the neighborhood is that it's too old to withstand an earthquake. But there may be another motive. As Ahun and I wove our way deeper into the warren, I watched his shoulders relax and his gait loosen. He was hard to trace in here. The Old City is a refuge.

The homes are adjacent and interconnected, and each is two stories high and arranged around a central courtyard. I followed Ahun up a flight of stairs, and when he flung open the door, it struck me that these homes are like oysters: On the outside they're drab and crude, but on the inside whitewashed plaster walls gleam, and many-colored rugs complement painted ceilings. "I pray. When I worship, I ask Allah, 'Rescue me my house,' " Ahun said. From his house he has a clear view of a government wrecking crew at work on a nearby home. According to the demolition schedule, they'll arrive at Ahun's home in three years.

He was born in the house, he said. So was his father. So was his grandfather, after his great-grandfather built it on family land. "I have two sons," he said. That's five generations who have lived in the same house.
If Hotan represents Xinjiang's past—with a Uygur majority that gathers to sharpen knives, trim beards, sing songs—then Kashgar is its present. Uygurs still make up most of the city's population, but their culture here is embattled. The government is working fast to tear it down.

Given enough time, Ahun said, China's economic development will bring political change, and hope for his people. "China will be obliged to receive a democratic system," he said. But right now, for a man who prays each day for the survival of his family home, no act is too desperate. "You do not understand our rage," he said. "In the Middle East there are human bombs, who connect their bodies with bombs. But with our rage, we don't need bombs connected. We ourselves explode."

In June of this year, a disgruntled worker at a toy factory in Shaoguan, near Hong Kong, reportedly claimed that Uygurs had raped two women. A melee followed. The violence lasted several hours and left scores injured. Angry Han workers in the factory's dormitory beat to death two Uygur co-workers.

This spark lit a fire 2,000 miles away, in Xinjiang. On July 5 thousands of Uygurs—the numbers reported varied widely—took to Urumqi's streets to protest the treatment of the Uygur workers. The authorities were caught off guard.

I spoke to a young woman named Arzigul, who had attended the protest. She said it started off peacefully as young people circulated around the capital's public square. "They were screaming the name 'Uygur! Uygur! Uygur!'" she said. When security forces arrived, something happened—exactly what is unclear. Each side says the other struck first, but at some point the authorities tried to quell the crowd, which apparently devolved into a mob attacking Han on the street. Two days later a group of Han—apparently numbering in the thousands—took to the street with meat cleavers and clubs and knives. They in turn attacked Uygurs.

Chinese officials say they're protecting their citizens from terrorists. In July, Vice Foreign Minister He Yafei called the riots "a grave and violent criminal incident plotted and organized by the outside forces of terrorism, separatism, no comma after separatism in original source and extremism." James Millward, the Xinjiang expert, says many Han—even officials—sincerely believe Xinjiang faces a threat from terrorists and interlopers. "It's what they are constantly told." Eventually military forces and police clamped down on Urumqi, and there seemed no possibility of further unrest. That's when the three men emerged from the mosque in the Uygur quarter, scattering people in every direction.
I watched them stride up the street and back, then run at the Chinese forces. First came the single shot, which missed. The Uygurs continued their charge, and I realized that the running men with their rusted swords did not expect to prevail. They expected to die.

A moment later another officer released a burst of automatic fire. The lead Uygur—the man in the flowing blue shirt—fell with the sudden slackness of a thrown rag doll. His body hit the pavement, but the momentum of his sprint sent him tumbling, and his feet flew up and over his head.

For a few seconds the incident played out in tableau on the opposite sidewalk. The remaining two Uygurs ran into the street, and the scene became three-dimensional, with bullets flying in my direction. I ran into a nearby building and found myself in the lobby of an enormous department store. People pressed themselves into corners and behind clothing displays; women wailed, and two men improvised a door lock by shoving a metal bar through the door's handles. Beyond the building's glass doors, all three of the Uygur men now lay in the street, one injured and two dead. Soldiers, police, and plainclothes security officers were firing upward, into the windows of surrounding buildings.

The department store held special significance for the Uygurs. It belonged to their heroine Rebiya Kadeer, the laundress turned mogul who had become beloved after she began to speak out against China's treatment of the Uygurs. In 1999, as an American delegation arrived in China to meet Kadeer, security officers arrested her. She spent the next six years in prison, then joined her exiled husband in the U.S. Her imprisonment only raised her status among her people, who regard her as the "mother of all Uygurs."

She's a grandmother, just over five feet tall, and she terrifies the Chinese authorities. Mentioning her name in Xinjiang brings swift and severe punishment. When I went with Ahun to his home in Kashgar's Old City, he spoke freely of rebellion against China's government, but when I mentioned Rebiya Kadeer, he froze. "If China finds this," he said, pointing to my voice recorder and then reaching for my throat in mock vengeance, "on Judgment Day I will catch your neck."
　

After the July riots, trucks with loudspeakers circled the public squares of Urumqi, proclaiming that the unrest had been organized by Kadeer from her office in Washington, D.C. Chinese officials accused her in news reports around the globe and were said to be planning to tear down her trade centers. "The Chinese authorities are fearful of me because of what they have been doing to the Uygur people," she told me recently. In her office an enormous East Turkistan flag—symbol of a free Uygur nation—hangs on one wall, and photos of her 11 children, two of whom are in prison, hang on another.
The Western world knows of the struggle for freedom by Tibetans largely because the Dalai Lama presents a warm and charismatic embodiment of his people. The Uygurs have remained obscure, in part, because they have no such figure. But the Chinese government's recent efforts to demonize Rebiya Kadeer have lifted her into a representative role. "I keep advocating for my people, for the self-determination of Uygurs," she told me. Whether that means autonomy within China or a push for full independence depends on the government's reaction, she said. "At the moment I'm trying to invite the Chinese authorities to come to the dialogue peacefully."

Even as Kadeer spoke, another round of strife loomed in Xinjiang—rumors, allegations, protests—and she acknowledges that a peaceful resolution may be impossible. After seeing the region's past and present through Hotan and Kashgar, we may be glimpsing its future in Urumqi: a sprawling city that serves Han migrants drawn by Xinjiang's natural resources, where a Uygur minority stays confined to its quarter.

And on an otherwise silent Monday afternoon, men detonate on the street from the sheer force of their rage.

(Global Times) Five get death for July 5 Xinjiang riots December 3, 2009.

Five death penalties and two life-imprisonment sentences were handed down Thursday for murder and other crimes in the deadly July 5 riots in Urumqi, capital of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, according to the Intermediate People's Court of Urumqi. On October 12, six people were sentenced the death penalty and another life in prison. Three days later, six more were sentenced to death and three others handed life sentences. Nine people have been executed so far for their involvement in the riots.

(Global Times) Three sentenced to death for murder in Urumqi riot December 4, 2009.

Three people were sentenced to death for murder and other crimes committed in and after the July 5 riot in Urumqi, capital of west China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, on Friday. The defendants were Heyrinisa Sawut, Ruzikhari Niyaz and Li Longfei. Another one was sentenced to life imprisonment by the Intermediate People's Court of Urumqi, while three others were given jail terms. The trials were heard in open sessions with presence of relatives of the defendants and the victims. On Thursday five people were sentenced to death by the court, two others were sentenced to life imprisonment while another six were given jail terms.

(South China Morning Post) Xinjiang's frustrated internet users still cut off from the Web Choi Chi-yuk and Ng Tze-wei December 11, 2009.

More than five months after the ethnic riots in Urumqi that killed almost 200 people, the internet remains inaccessible to the majority of Xinjiang's 20 million population. The situation has become so frustrating that some internet users have travelled out of the region to log on.

Xia Ya, a 26-year-old from Urumqi who recently quit her job, travelled to the Yunnan capital, Kunming , in August just to catch up with online friends and play games for the first time since the internet was shut down. "I had a couple of group chats and I spent the whole day surfing the internet in my hotel room," Xia said. "My friends told me they were extremely excited when I showed up online. They were so worried about me because I disappeared for a month. I felt like I had been liberated when I could play my favourite online game, chat with friends and browse news portals."

While the common perception is that the internet was simply blocked out entirely in Xinjiang, an online service of sorts remains. It has in effect become a form of intranet, with access to internally hosted websites, such as government websites, permitted, but access to the World Wide Web denied.

At least 197 Uygur and Han Chinese were killed in riots on July 5 and the following reprisals, and authorities accused "separatist elements" of organising the unrest online. "We cut internet connection in some areas of Urumqi in order to quench the riot quickly and prevent violence from spreading to other places," Li Zhi, the Communist Party chief of Urumqi who was subsequently sacked, said at the time.

An Urumqi resident called Chen Yun said: "A friend of mine took an overnight train to Dunhuang [a tourist city in Gansu] simply to access the internet. He booked into a hotel and locked himself in for days playing games." Instead of using internet portals and forums for news and information, Chen had to rely on Xinjiang regional government websites - which left him feeling "cut off from the rest of the planet". In addition to being unable to use search engines such as Baidu and Google, watching online video on sites like Youku was also out. "It is so frustrating when you can hardly download a favourite song," he said.

There are also more practical concerns - Chen was unable to download a new version of his anti-virus software when it expired. "To a certain extent, I've got used to life without the internet," Chen said wryly. "I'm afraid I may struggle to cope when the internet service is resumed."

For small businesses, the loss of internet service has been a disaster. They have been unable to communicate with clients overseas or even in other parts of the country, meaning missed transactions and a loss of profit. Internet cafes have been particularly hard hit - there were more than 600 cafes in Urumqi before the riots, and many have shut down. They received little or no compensation for the disruption.

The internet is not blocked off for everyone, however. Some major companies have been permitted access. "All the major companies must sign a security agreement with the authorities before they are entitled to use the internet in connection with their business," said an Urumqi employee with knowledge of the regulations.

The terms of internet use were simple: not a single piece of information or photograph of the riots can leak out. "I am aware of one employee at a company with internet access who was detained for 15 days by security officials," said the employee, who declined to be named. "He uploaded some video clips of the July 5 incident using a computer in his office."

The question on the minds of all internet users in Xinjiang is a very simple one: when will service be resumed? So far the Xinjiang government has not answered.

(New York Times) Chinese Court Sentences 5 to Death in Xinjiang Mayhem Andrew Jacobs. December 24, 2009.

A Chinese court has handed down death sentences for five people convicted of participating in the ethnic violence in July that killed nearly 200 people in the far western region of Xinjiang, the authorities there announced Thursday. The sentences, after a series of trials this week, bring to 22 the number of people given the death penalty since trials began in September. The court, in the regional capital, Urumqi, gave five other people suspended death sentences, which are often equivalent to life in prison. Nine of those sentenced have already been executed, according to the state media. The sentences were announced by the Xinjiang regional government and distributed to news outlets.

In recent months, public security officials have detained more than 800 people who they say played a role in rioting that pitted the region’s Han Chinese majority against the Turkic-speaking Uighurs. Officials say more than 1,600 people were wounded during the three days of unrest, which deeply unnerved the ruling Communist Party. Those convicted in trials on Tuesday and Wednesday, according to the statement, were guilty of “extremely serious crimes.” It described several defendants, all with Uighur names, who attacked Han residents as they drove or bicycled through the city, bludgeoning and stoning them. Most of the dead were Han, although a small number of Uighurs were killed during retaliatory violence in the days that followed.

In addition to those given death sentences this week, eight others were given life imprisonment and four others were sentenced to 10 or more years in prison. Uighur exile groups and rights advocates have criticized the judicial proceedings as lacking transparency. They also say that scores of Uighurs have been held incommunicado and without legal representation.

In recent weeks the authorities have detained 94 additional people whom they describe as fugitives. Not included in that number are the 20 Uighurs repatriated to China last week after seeking political asylum in Cambodia. Those Uighurs, including three children, told the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees that they feared long prison terms or the death penalty if they returned. Two days after they were forcibly sent home, China signed 14 business deals with the Cambodian government worth about $1 billion.

Citing “official sources,” an editorial published Thursday in China Daily, the state-run English-language newspaper, described seven of the Uighurs as fugitives. It criticized the United States for calling them political refugees and for suggesting that they would face peril if they were returned to China. “Based on the professionalism of past judicial hearings on the July 5 massacre in Urumqi, it gives us confidence that the 20 members of the Uighur minority group just extradited from Cambodia would not be mistreated,” it said.

BACK TO JULY 5-7, 2009; JULY 8-10, 2009; JULY 11 TO SEPTEMBER 1, 2009