纽约时报:Toll Rises to 156 in Ethnic Clashes in Western China

rlsrls08

Toll Rises to 156 in Ethnic Clashes in Western China
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/07/world/asia/07china.html?_r=1

By EDWARD WONG
Published: July 6, 2009


Ng Han Guan/Associated Press
Urumqi residents on Monday walked past burned cars. The government sent police officers into the city after deadly fighting. More Photos >


URUMQI, China — The Chinese state news agency reported Monday that 156 people were killed and more than 800 injured when rioters clashed with the police in a regional capital in western China after days of rising tensions between members of the Uighur ethnic group and Han Chinese.

The casualty toll, if confirmed, would make this the deadliest outbreak of violence in China in many years.

The rioting broke out Sunday afternoon in a large market area of Urumqi, the capital of the vast, restive desert region of Xinjiang, and lasted for several hours before riot police officers and paramilitary or military troops locked down the Uighur quarter of the city, according to witnesses and photographs of the riot.

At least 1,000 rioters took to the streets, stoning the police and setting vehicles on fire. Plumes of smoke billowed into the sky, while police officers used fire hoses and batons to beat back rioters and detained Uighurs who appeared to be leading the protest, witnesses said.

Protests spread to a second city, Kashgar, as 200 to 300 people chanting “God is great” and “Release the people” confronted the riot police in front of that city’s main mosque, the largest in China, about 5:30 p.m. But they quickly dispersed when officers moved into the crowd and began making arrests, one Kashgar resident, a witness to the incident, said in a telephone interview. Police officers were still patrolling the area late Monday, said the man, asked for anonymity out of fear of retribution.

And in the city of Hotan, far south of Urumqi, police officers in riot gear were patrolling the streets in increased numbers on Monday, said a local Uighur man who works for the closed circuit television system that monitors the streets. In contrast to last year’s unrest in Tibet, where accounts of police and military violence against demonstrators were common, China’s central government moved swiftly to take command of the public depiction of the Urumqi protests and to cripple protesters’ ability to communicate.

Local Internet service was largely disabled, and online bulletin boards and search engines across China were purged of references to the violence. The social networking service Twitter, which effectively rallied demonstrators in Iran last month, was also disabled. China Mobile, the nation’s largest cellphone provider, curtailed service in Urumqi, and cellphone calls from some Beijing numbers to the area were blocked. But Chinese television carried images showing some of the violence.

The regional government said the violence was “masterminded” by the World Uighur Congress, Xinhua reported. The group, which is based in Munich and advocates for the rights of Uighurs in China, denied having any in the violence and said that Chinese security forces had staged a “brutal crackdown of a peaceful protest.”

The casualty numbers in Urumqi appeared to be murky and shifting on Monday. .

An unidentified official at Urumqi First People’s Hospital, a medical facility near the unrest, said before abruptly hanging up that 40 people had been admitted and that at least one had died. At Urumqi Friendship Hospital, another unidentified official was unable to say how many people had been admitted but said that none of the injuries appeared life-threatening.

Both spoke to a researcher on Monday afternoon in Beijing time, more than half a day after troops in Urumqi had quelled the violence.

One American who watched the rioting at its height said he did not see lethal fighting, though he said he did see what appeared to be Uighurs shoving or kicking a few Han Chinese. Images of the rioting on state television showed some bloody people lying in the streets and cars burning.

Dozens of Uighur men were led into police stations on Sunday evening with their hands behind their backs and shirts pulled over their heads, one witness said. Early Monday, the local government announced a curfew banning all traffic in the city until 8 p.m.

The riot was the largest ethnic clash in China since the Tibetan uprising of March 2008. Like the Tibetan unrest, it highlighted the deep-seated frustrations felt by some ethnic minorities in western China over the policies of the Communist Party, and how that can quickly turn into ethnic violence. Last year, in Lhasa, the Tibetan capital, at least 19 people were killed, most of them Han civilians, according to government statistics.

Many Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking Muslim group, resent rule by the Han Chinese, and Chinese security forces have tried to keep oil-rich Xinjiang under tight control since the 1990s, when cities there were struck by waves of protests, riots and bombings. Last summer, attacks on security forces took place in several cities in Xinjiang; the Chinese government blamed separatist groups.

Early Monday, Chinese officials said the latest riots were started by Rebiya Kadeer, a Uighur human rights advocate who had been imprisoned in China and now lives in Washington, Xinhua reported. As with the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader, Chinese officials often blame Ms. Kadeer for ethnic unrest; she regularly denies the charges.

The clashes on Sunday began when the police confronted a protest march held by Uighurs to demand a full government investigation of a brawl between Uighur and Han workers that erupted in Guangdong Province overnight on June 25 and June 26. The brawl took place in a toy factory and left 2 Uighurs dead and 118 people injured. The police later arrested a bitter ex-employee of the factory who had ignited the fight by starting a rumor that six Uighur men had raped two Han women at the work site, Xinhua reported.

There was also a rumor circulating on Sunday in Urumqi that a Han man had killed a Uighur in the city earlier in the day, said Adam Grode, an English teacher living in the neighborhood where the rioting took place.

“This is just crazy,” Mr. Grode said by telephone Sunday night. “There was a lot of tear gas in the streets, and I almost couldn’t get back to my apartment. There’s a huge police presence.”

Mr. Grode said he saw a few Han civilians being harassed by Uighurs. Rumors of Uighurs attacking Han Chinese spread quickly through parts of Urumqi, adding to the panic. A worker at the Texas Restaurant, a few hundred yards from the site of the rioting, said her manager had urged the restaurant workers to stay inside. Xinhua reported few details of the riot on Sunday night. It said that “an unknown number of people gathered Sunday afternoon” in Urumqi, “attacking passers-by and setting fire to vehicles.”

Uighurs are the largest ethnic group in Xinjiang but are a minority in Urumqi, where Han Chinese make up more than 70 percent of the population of two million or so. The Chinese government has encouraged Han migration to the city and other parts of Xinjiang, fueling resentment among the Uighurs. Urumqi is a deeply segregated city, with Han Chinese there rarely venturing into the Uighur quarter.

The Uighur neighborhood is centered in a warren of narrow alleyways, food markets and a large shopping area called the Grand Bazaar or the Erdaoqiao (pronounced ar-DOW-chyow) Market, where the rioting reached its peak on Sunday.

Mr. Grode, who lives in an apartment there, said he went outside when he first heard commotion around 6 p.m. He saw hundreds of Uighurs in the streets; that quickly swelled to more than 1,000, he said.

Police officers soon arrived. Around 7 p.m., protesters began hurling rocks and vegetables from the market at the police, Mr. Grode said. Traffic ground to a halt. An hour later, as the riot surged toward the center of the market, troops in green uniforms and full riot gear showed up, as did armored vehicles. Chinese government officials often deploy the People’s Armed Police, a paramilitary force, to quell riots.

By midnight, Mr. Grode said, some of the armored vehicles had begun to leave, but bursts of gunfire could still be heard.

In a telephone interview Monday, one Urumqi resident described a scene of deserted streets, an omnipresent police force and almost palpable tension.

“All around the Erdaoqiao area is very very tense,” said a taxi driver who works near the market, but refused to be identified. “The area is deserted, like you’re driving around in the wee hours of the morning. This morning when I was driving around, I saw three or four burnt-out cars. There’s ash and glass all over the place. Buses, taxis, vans, all with their windows smashed in, empty.”

An ethnic Han woman who lives in an apartment near the Erdaoqiao market said the streets were effectively under a police curfew. “The area is completely closed off to traffic. The people outside can’t come in, we can’t go out,” she said. “When something big happens, it’s best to stay home. Nothing’s open outside anyways, no stores are open. where are you going to go?

“What they should do is crack down with a lot of force at first, so the situation doesn’t get worse. So it doesn’t drag out like in Tibet,” she added. “Their mind is very simple. If you crack down on one, you’ll scare all of them. The government should come down harder.”

rlsrls08

死亡人数上升到156

作者就是臭名昭著的edward wong。该新闻一贯的CNN。

不过读者留言中还是有不少明智的。