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China - Source: ONE News -
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Three people were killed in rioting that erupted in China's
restive far west Xinjiang region, when locals burned vehicles and
blocked traffic in the regional capital Urumqi, the state news
agency reported.
"The regional government did not say how many people were involved
in the unrest, but said they illegally gathered in several downtown
places and engaged in beating, smashing, looting and burning," said
the official Xinhua news agency.
"The government sent police to disperse the crowd and arrested some
rioters."
The dead were three ordinary people of the Han ethnic group, Xinhua
said.
"More than 20 others were injured in the incident and many motor
vehicles were burned."
The official reports did not specify the ethnicity of those
involved in the unrest, or the reasons behind it, and calls to the
Xinjiang region spokesperson's office and Urumqi police were not
answered.
But a witness and other sources have told Reuters it involved
members of the Uighur ethnic minority, many of whom resent the
Chinese presence in the region, and the cultural and religious
controls imposed by China's ruling Communist Party.
The eruption of anger in Xinjiang's tightly controlled capital
brings into focus debate about the long-term viability of those
controls.
"It started as a few hundred, and then there were easily over a
thousand involved," said the visitor, who spoke on condition of
anonymity.
He said the rioters overturned traffic rails and smashed buses
until thousands of police and anti-riot troops swept through the
city, using tear-gas and high-pressure water hoses to disperse
crowds.
"Now the whole city is on lock-down," he said.
Dilxat Raxit, an advocate of Uighur independence exiled in Sweden,
said the unrest was sparked by local anger over a violent
confrontation between Han Chinese and Uighur factory workers in far
southern China in late June, which Uighurs said showed the
discrimination they face.
"There were thousands of people shouting to stop ethnic
discrimination, demanding an explanation. This anger has been
growing for a long time," said Dilxat Raxit.
The Chinese video website Youku (
www.youku.com) showed footage
titled Urumqi riot that showed smoke rising from an expressway as a
firetruck stopped at the scene.
An overseas Chinese news website, Boxun (peacehall.com), showed
pictures it said were of the Urumqi riot, including hundreds of
civilians pressed against a row of police, burning wreckage on a
city street, and anti-riot police in shields and helmets.
Almost half of Xinjiang's 20 million people are Uighurs.
Many of them resent controls imposed by Beijing and an inflow of Han Chinese migrants.
The population of Urumqi is mostly Han Chinese, and the city is
under tight police security even in normal times.
Many Uighurs complain they are marginalised economically and
politically in their own land, which has rich mineral and natural
gas reserves.
Xinjiang has been under increasingly tight security in recent
years, especially in the run-up to the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games,
when the region was hit by several deadly attacks that authorities
said were the work of militants.
But human rights groups and Uighur independence activists say
Beijing grossly exaggerates the threat from militants to justify
harsh controls restricting peaceful political demands.
