Word: urumqi
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...months after violent protests, allegations of new attacks in the troubled western Chinese city of Urumqi touched off huge demonstrations on Sept. 3, with residents gathering in the city center to demand the government improve public security. Some in the crowd, estimated by official media to be in the tens of thousands, called for the resignation of Wang Lequan, the longstanding Communist Party chief of the Xinjiang region, news services reported. While the details of the unrest were bizarre - 21 people were arrested on suspicion of pricking pedestrians with tainted needles, according to state media - the return of unrest...
...touched off when police aggressively blocked a protest over the death of two Uighurs during a June factory brawl in the coastal Guangdong province. Two days after the riot, thousands of Han gathered to carry out revenge attacks. Paramilitary forces were able to keep the revenge mobs from Urumqi's Uighur quarter, thus preventing another bloodbath. But some Uighurs were seriously beaten and possibly killed that day. All told, the July violence left nearly 200 dead and more than 1,600 injured. (Read a brief history of the Uighurs...
...dispatching thousands of security forces in the city in July, the government showed it could prevent further mass attacks. But the tension is still evident. After the July violence, Uighurs, who make up about 15% of Urumqi's population, started leaving the city for towns like Kashgar, with larger Uighur concentrations. The Han majority are still angry about the deadly rioting. Hundreds of suspects were arrested following the July attacks, but there have been conflicting reports about when any trials will take place. On Thursday, after the new round of protests, the regional government said arrest warrants for the July...
...decision to raze Old Kashgar was made before anti-Chinese riots in Xinjiang's capital of Urumqi broke out earlier this month. That violence, in which at least 197 people died, was largely perpetrated by Uighurs against local Han Chinese, according to Beijing. Uighur-rights groups say that the Uighur death toll after a police crackdown and Chinese counterattacks has gone unreported and that the riots were an outgrowth of long-standing frustrations with Beijing's policies, which, they say, discriminate against Uighurs, depriving them of jobs in their own land while curbing the teaching of the Uighurs' language...
...mood in Kashgar, according to observers, is one of defeat and resignation. Since the violence in Urumqi, foreign reporters in the area have been tightly controlled by government minders and often prevented from taking pictures. Locals fear speaking out; a recent government propaganda campaign sternly warned against those "creating a negative impression." The demolition of the city's historic core fits lockstep with what many consider a concerted effort on Beijing's part to bring Xinjiang firmly under its grasp and dilute Uighur identity. More and more Han Chinese migrants are flooding into Xinjiang's cities, including Kashgar...