Hundreds of Chinese from rival ethnic groups fought each other with machetes, metal pipes and bricks in the northwestern city of Urumqi, overcoming police attempts to quell the deadliest clashes in decades.
Police fired tear gas to prevent a mob of Han Chinese from avenging rioting by ethnic Uighurs that left at least 156 dead. The fighting came after thousands of Chinese armed with knives and steel bars clashed with police in Urumqi, capital of the westernmost province of Xinjiang. Urumqi is under a curfew until 8 am local time July 8, state-run Xinhua News Agency said.
The violence illustrates China’s failure to address simmering grievances among its minorities, who complain of restrictions on religious and cultural practices. Beijing’s policy of investing billions of dollars to placate the restive territories of Tibet and Xinjiang has also led to migration by the Han, who make up more than 90 per cent of the country’s population, exacerbating tensions.
“Beijing is insistent that Xinjiang, like Tibet, is an integral part of China,” said Jonathan Fenby, director of China research in London at Trusted Sources, a research group. “It’s very difficult to see how either side is going to give way. The prognosis must be for continued unrest, continued tension, and, I’m afraid, outbreaks of violence like this.”
Earlier on Tuesday, dozens of Muslim Uighurs marched to demand the release of more than 1,000 people held by police following protests. Similar scenes played out across the city of 2.4 million, Xinhua News Agency said.
The strife followed a demonstration in Urumqi over the deaths of migrant Uighur workers in a June factory brawl in southern China.
Muslim Uighurs, who make up less than half Xinjiang’s 20 million population after years of Han migration, complain of discrimination and unfair division of the region’s resources. The landlocked region, about three times the size of France, has China’s second-highest oil and natural gas reserves and was the biggest cotton producer.
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“Uighurs feel they are not getting enough of the goodies,” said Colin Mackerras, a China researcher at Griffith University in Queensland, Australia. “The balance has shifted quite heavily in favor of the Han and the Uighurs think they are being taken over.”
President Hu Jintao, 66, who administered Tibet from 1988 to 1992, hasn’t commented on the events. Tibet was struck by rioting in 1989. Hu is preparing to meet leaders of the Group of Eight nations in Italy this week.
Japan’s top government spokesman, Chief Cabinet Secretary Takeo Kawamura, on Tuesday called the deaths and injuries “regrettable.”
China’s Foreign Ministry today again blamed foreign-based separatists for fomenting the riots, branding them terrorists and criminals. The riots were a premeditated attack, Qin Gang, a ministry spokesman, told a briefing in Beijing on Tuesday.
“Their terrorist nature will be exposed to the world,” he said.
Police in Xianjiang say they have evidence that Rebiya Kadeer, an exiled Uighur activist living in the US, planned the demonstrations, Xinhua reported.
Kadeer, who heads the World Uighur Congress, denied any role in the riots, saying at a July 6 news conference in Washington that the only calls she made were to her children in Urumqi to ask them to stay home because rising tensions risked violence. The group is a Munich-based exile organization that seeks independence from China.
Authorities made mass arrests, deployed 20,000 security personnel and cut Internet and phone lines to stem the violence.
Li Zhi, chief of the Urumqi Communist Party, on Tuesday addressed the Han demonstrators from the roof of a car, urging them to disperse and trust the government. Protesters attacked Uighur property, sang the national anthem and ripped down posters exhorting residents to preserve social harmony.
Police set up road blocks to keep protesters away from Uighur areas.
The latest protests followed reports that most of the victims in the earlier rioting were Han. Of the 274 people being treated in Urumqi’s People’s Hospital, 233 were Han, the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reported, citing the head doctor, whom it didn’t name.
Protests spread to the Uighur-majority oasis town of Kashgar on Monday, Xinhua reported. Several hundred demonstrators gathered in the outpost on China’s western border, before dispersing as police began making arrests, the New York Times said, citing a resident it didn’t identify.
“The government feels that if they don’t control it immediately and harshly it will get out of control,” said Dru Gladney, president of the Pacific Basin Institute at Pomona College in Claremont, California.
The official death toll makes the violence the most deadly in decades, possibly since the Cultural Revolution.
In the demonstrations that broke out in Lhasa, capital of Tibet, in March last year, the official death toll was 19. Unofficial estimates put the toll at about 200. The government cast those riots as Tibetan violence directed at Han Chinese and Hui, a minority group that is ethnically similar to the Han.