【AP】 After violence, western China looks for answers

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After violence, western China looks for answers
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090711/ap_on_re_as/as_china_protest_138

Posted 44m ago  


                       Sat Jul 11, 3:16 AM ET
A helicopter flies past the crescent spiral of a mosque in Urumqi, China, Saturday, July 11, 2009. On Saturday, paramilitary police carrying automatic weapons and riot shields blocked some roads leading to the largely Muslim Uighur district of the city, and groups of 30 marched along the road chanting slogans encouraging ethnic unity.(AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

URUMQI, China (AP) — It was about 8 p.m. whenthe mob descended on Zhongwan Road. The police didn't arrive until sixhours later. In the time between, most residents locked their doors andhid, peering out through windows and listening from basements as ethnicviolence raged in China's western Xinjiang province.


The next morning, residents in this multiethnicneighborhood emerged to find the road covered with remnants of mayhem:puddles of blood next to overturned vegetable carts, glass shardseverywhere, bricks covered with blood, and a random shoe.

Ethnic minority Uighur rioters had burned downthe local grocery store, owned by a majority Han Chinese family — oneof many stores attacked across the regional capital, Urumqi. Fourfamily members were killed, and a fifth woman was still missing. OnSaturday, the rest of the family was grimly sifting through the store'srubble, still looking for her body.

Nearly a week after western Xinjiang provincewas rocked by China's worst ethnic violence in decades, residents ofZhongwan Road, both Han and Uighur, were still putting together thesnippets of what they saw and heard. Many others are searching foranswers about what really happened — especially how many died and whothey were.

China's government released a breakdown Saturdayof the riots' death toll, saying most of the 184 killed were from theHan Chinese majority. But many Uighurs disputed the new figures, citingpersistent rumors that security forces fired on Uighurs during the July5 protest and in following days during a police crackdown andretaliation by Han mobs.

On Sunday, a week after the unrest began, thecenter of Urumqi was tense but calm. The official Xinhua News Agencysaid the city's Public Security Bureau had published a notice banningillegal assembly, marches and demonstrations, adding the situation was"basically under control" but that some "sporadic illegal assembliesand demonstrations" had continued.

It all started last Sunday, when a few hundredstudents and others gathered downtown at the People's Square in thelate afternoon to protest the deaths of Uighurs in fighting at afactory thousands of miles away in southern China. The police moved into stop the demonstration from the square, and it was unclear whostruck first or what triggered the violence.

The Uighur protesters started to scatter,toppling police barricades, smashing windows and torching cars andattacking Hans as they rampaged through the southeastern part of thecity.

When the rioters turned up Zhongwan Road that night, at least one Han shop owner had an early warning about the brewing chaos.

"A customer told me there was trouble headedthis way and that I should close my shop immediately and hide," saidthe cement shop owner, who would only give his surname, Cheng.

Cheng brought in his motorcycle and barricadedhis metal door from the inside with bags of cement. He knelt on thefloor and peered out onto the street through a narrow vertical window.

He saw a group of Han residents came runningdown the street shouting, "Quick, hide!" They were quickly followed bya mob of 300 Uighurs armed with sticks and bricks, Cheng said.

The rioters grabbed sacks of cement outside Cheng's store and set up a roadblock in front of his store to stop cars.
Aile Nur, 23, a Uighur man who worked at a restaurant two doors from Yu's store, said he locked himself in his kitchen.

"I could hear them shouting 'Are you Han or areyou Uighur?' to each car that stopped" at the roadblock, he said. "Ifthey were Han, they were smashed."

The rioters dragged some of the people out oftheir cars and beat them, said the residents. Then, they turned theirattack on shops run by Han people. They pounded on Cheng's door andhurled rocks into the window, sending Cheng fleeing into the basementstoreroom.

Police weren't showing up and emergency hotlines rang unanswered, residents said.

"I started calling the police from 8:30 p.m.,but I didn't get through until midnight," said a beef noodle restaurantowner next to Cheng's store who belongs to another Muslim minoritycalled the Hui. He would only give his surname, Yu.

"I could hear glass being smashed, peoplescreaming, tires exploding," said the noodle shop owner, who estimatedthat at least 17 people were killed by rioters on that street alone. Helooked at the rubble of the grocery store and sighed. "If the policehad come on time, not so many people would have died. Their responsewas far too slow."

Residents and relatives said the mob forcedtheir way into the local grocery story owned by another family named Yuwho supplied the area's residents — both Uighurs and Hans — withcooking oil, flour and rice. Four in the family were killed, but it wasunclear how they died. Some neighbors said they were beaten to death.Others said they were locked in the store and burned alive.

"I knew they set fire to the store when I heard the cooking gas canisters explode: 'Bang, bang, bang!"' Cheng said.

It was 2 a.m. by the time the paramilitarypolice arrived, sirens blaring. The rioters fled, their footstepspounding through the alleys, residents said. Sounds of sporadic gunfirefollowed, but no one in the neighborhood could say if any of therioters had been shot.

Fire engines rolled in and put out the blaze atthe grocery store, but even at dawn, most of the shop had crumbled andplumes of smoke were still rising from the debris. Dead chickens lay incoops, charred fish skeletons were scattered among piles of rice andflour.

Officials have said that 137 Han Chinese died in Urumqi, while the other victims included 46 Uighurs and one Hui.

Two days after the riot, there was a Hanbacklash, involving large groups of marauding men with clubs, meatcleavers and lead pipes who stormed into Uighur neighborhoods. It'sunclear how many Uighurs were injured or killed because the governmentand state-run media have downplayed the violence. Associated Pressreporters were not allowed to interview the injured Uighurs inhospitals.

But Uighurs on the streets of Urumqi and from exile activist groups say they think many more of their own were killed.
"I've heard that more than 100 Uighurs havedied, but nobody wants to talk about it in public," said one Uighur manwho did not want to give his name because the city remains tense andsecurity forces are everywhere.

China has said its security forces exercisedrestraint in restoring stability but has not provided details norexplained why so many people died.

Rebiya Kadeer,president of the pro-independence World Uyghur Congress, has said atleast 500 people were killed while other overseas groups have put thetoll even higher, citing accounts from Uighurs in China.

China's government blames Kadeer, a 62-year-oldUighur businesswoman activist who lives in exile in the U.S., forinstigating the riots with anti-Beijing propaganda. She has denied anyinvolvement and condemned the violence.

Many Uighurs in Urumqi said didn't believeKadeer was involved in the unrest. They said that the fighting was theresult of pent-up frustrations about longstanding discrimination andgovernment efforts to subvert their religion and culture — thouhg thegovernment says Uighurs have benefited from Xinjiang's rapid economicdevelopment.

"We don't really know Rebiya that well. We don'tlisten to her or follow her on the Internet," said one Uighur woman,who only identified herself as Parizat. "We don't need Rebiya to tellus what to be angry about. We live here. We know what's wrong."

On Zhongwan Road, people were tallying theirlosses and looking for answers. Many people are still consumed withanger and fear over the violence.

Yu Dongzhi's family owned the burned-out grocerystore, and the mob killed Yu's brother-in-law, 13-year-old nephew, theboy's cousin and grandmother — all found dead inside the shop. Hissister is still missing

"I want all the terrorists executed by firingsquad. I hate them," said the 44-year-old, who works in the southerncity of Shenzhen but rushed to Urumqi after hearing that his sister'sfamily had died.

Yu spoke as he leaned on his shovel in theremains of the store, where the family was searching the remains forthe body of his sister, Xingzhi. He had already spent the weeksearching all of Urumqi's hospitals to no avail.

"I haven't told my mother yet," he said. "So now I must find her, dead or alive."

The group stopped digging by 6 p.m. but could not find a body. The next day, Yu decided, he would search the morgues.

Copyright 2009The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not bepublished, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

rlsrls08

一家四口被烧死的汉人的故事和采访另外一个汉人，算是表态暴徒是维族人了