【悉尼先驱晨报】Accusations against Uygur workers that sparked Chinese riot

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Accusations against Uygur workers that sparked Chinese riot

John Garnaut in Beijing
[size=1.2em]July 7, 2009


[size=1.2em]THE Xinjiang riots appear to have begun as a protest against the violent mob attacks last week on Uygur workers at a toy factory in southern China.

[size=1.2em]In Shaoguan, Guangdong province, in the south of China, Uygur workers were set on by Han Chinese workers after claims that six Xinjiang boys had "raped two innocent girls".

[size=1.2em]Two Uygurs were killed and 118 people reportedly injured before local police said a disgruntled Han Chinese former worker had confessed to "faking the information to express his discontent".

[size=1.2em]Uygurs expressed their discontent in Urumqi and elsewhere in Xinjiang.

[size=1.2em]Chinese officials generally try to play down outbreaks of violence under their watch.

[size=1.2em]In Xinjiang and Tibet, in China's western frontier, it sometimes appears the other way around.

[size=1.2em]Nur Bekri, chairman of the Xinjiang regional government, yesterday repeated the false sexual harassment allegations against the Uygur workers, long after Guangdong police denied those claims.

[size=1.2em]Bekri said in a televised speech yesterday that it was the "three forces of terrorism, separatism and extremism" that exploited the toy factory unrest "to create chaos".

[size=1.2em]Strangely, he immediately repeated the fabricated story about the sexual assault of a Chinese girl by Uygur workers.

[size=1.2em]David Brophy, who is completing his doctorate on modern Uygur history at Harvard University, said Uygurs began to identify strongly as a unified ethnic group in the early decades of last century.

[size=1.2em]He said there was little social infrastructure to unite them unlike the network of Buddhist monasteries in Tibet.

[size=1.2em]"Uygur society lacks cohesive institutions that can underpin a broad political movement," he said.

[size=1.2em]However, he said heavy-handed actions by Chinese Government leaders such as Bekri were leading Uygurs to unite against the perceived common threat to their culture and identity.

[size=1.2em]"Bekri's career is being built around the claim that he is a bulwark against terrorism in Xinjiang," Brophy said.

[size=1.2em]"It wouldn't surprise me if he is interested in stirring things up a little bit." And if the Xinhua report of his speech yesterday was accurate "then that's only going to inflame the situation".

[size=1.2em]Yesterday the Chinese Communist Party battled with Uygur political leaders in exile to control the story.

[size=1.2em]"We are extremely saddened by the heavy-handed use of force by the Chinese security forces against the peaceful demonstrators," said Alim Seytoff, vice-president of the Uygur American Association in Washington.

[size=1.2em]"We ask the international community to condemn China's killing of innocent Uygurs."

Source:
The Sydney Morning Herald


http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/world/accusations-against-uygur-workers-that-sparked-chinese-riot-20090706-dai6.html

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Protests in China kill 140

Sunday bloody Sunday ... demonstrators throw rocks at police during the riot. Photo: AP

John Garnaut Herald Correspondent in Beijing

July 7, 2009
XINJIANG, in the north-west of China, has been rocked by bloody riots that have left at least 140 people dead, according to Chinese state media.

Protests by ethnic Uygurs in Urumqi city and elsewhere in Xinjiang province turned bloody when confronted by armed police on Sunday night, resulting in the most deadly officially acknowledged mass unrest since the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989.

Amateur footage on video-sharing websites showed police and fire engines rushing to the scenes accompanied by background sounds of gunshots and explosives.

Authorities said the situation was under control by Monday morning but information is tightly controlled and difficult to verify. Authorities have cut normal channels of electronic communication.

Beijing blamed outsiders for plotting separatist violence against China, echoing its handling of the bloody riots that rocked Tibet last year.

Late yesterday the official Chinese-language media said only "a few" civilians had died but the midday China Central Television news showed vehicles and buildings ablaze, rioters overturning police cars and bloodied and dazed ethnic Han Chinese civilians clustering among the smoke and debris.

Official English language services later increased the death toll from three to 140 and said it was still climbing.

A Xinjiang provincial propaganda official was quoted on Xinhua's English language news service as saying 140 people were dead, 828 injured, at least 260 vehicles attacked or set on fire and 203 houses damaged.

"The situation is very dangerous and I plan to leave for Beijing tomorrow night," a Uygur source in Urumqi told the Herald before the mobile phone line was cut.

Internet services around Urumqi and other big towns were cut yesterday, according to social message services.

The protesters appear to have been mainly Uygur, a Muslim Turkic-speaking ethnic group that once dominated the Xinjiang area until waves of Han Chinese moved there in the past 60 years. Authorities have imposed special limits on Uygurs' travel, religion and education.

http://www.smh.com.au/world/prot ... -20090706-dai1.html


两份不同的报纸，标题不同，都是同一个记者John Garnaut 的稿子。