[09.09.06 N.Y Times]China Ousts Top Official After Protests

渔音谦谦

HONG KONG — The top Communist official in Urumqi in western Chinawas dismissed on Saturday as a large deployment of the military policeappeared to have brought a measure of peace to the city after two daysof large street protests.
      The New York Times
Urumqi was the site of huge ethnic protests in early July.

     

  Li Zhi, the party secretary of Urumqi, lost his post, the official Xinhua news agency reported on Saturday evening. He became the most senior person to be removed since ethnic tensions erupted there in  rioting in July.
Beijing officials also sent to Urumqi a special medical inspection unit from the People’s Liberation Army to investigate reports that people had been stabbed with needles.
It is somewhat
unusualfor China’s leaders to replace a senior local official so quickly afterprotests — in this case, while large deployments of armed policeofficers are still blocking intersections in Urumqi and most shops arestill closed. The Beijing leadership has often sought to avoid givingthe impression of giving in to public pressure.
The removal ofMr. Li “shows that Xinjiang is viewed as a strategic region where therecannot be the kind of social protests we have seen in recent days,”said Nicholas Bequelin, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch.
The latest protests were notable for including large crowds of peoplewho specifically called on Friday for the removal of Mr. Li’s boss, Wang Lequan,the powerful party secretary of restive Xinjiang region, of whichUrumqi is the capital. Mr. Wang, a member of the Politburo believed tobe a close ally of President Hu Jintao, has run the nominally autonomous region for 15 years and is famous within China for taking a hard line toward minorities.
“Theywant to protect Wang Lequan, because firing a Politburo member wouldsend a message they do not want to send,” namely that hard-linepolicies toward ethnic minorities can be questioned, said Li Cheng, theresearch director of the Brookings Institution’s China Center.TheUrumqi party chief seems to have been sacrificed partly to protect Mr.Wang, but also because he proved incapable of keeping order.
“Usuallyif a local leader could not deal with two crises that occur in a shortperiod of time, that leader will be fired,” Li Cheng said.
Alsoforced out on Saturday was the director of Xinjiang’s public securitydepartment, Liu Yaohua. The party chief of the region’s AksuPrefecture, Zhu Changjie, replaced him.
The crowds in Urumqilast week have been accusing Mr. Wang and his aides of not being toughenough. The violence last week involves renewed tensions between Uighurs, the dominant ethnic group in Xinjiang, and Han Chinese, the dominant ethnic group for China over all.
Han have been moving in large numbers to Xinjiang since the 1960s,occupying many of the best jobs; according to the authorities, most of the victims in the rioting in  July, in which at least 197 people died, were Han.
Tens of thousands of Han protesters took to the streets on Thursday asword spread that young Uighurs had reportedly been stabbing people withneedles. Zhang Hong, the deputy mayor of Urumqi, announced Friday that  that the unrest on Thursday had resulted in five deaths with 14 people injured, Xinhua said.
Friday’s protests were much smaller and more peaceful than Thursday’s.
Through Thursday, 531 people had gone to hospitals claiming to havebeen stabbed, and 106 of them had physical wounds consistent withhaving suffered such a stabbing, Xinhua said. Some Han have voicedworry that the needles could carry H.I.V.
Before his fall frompower, Mr. Li had been the most visible Chinese official seeking torespond to the unrest in his city last week. He had raced to asuccession of gathering places and tried to persuade residents toreturn home.
Zhu Hailun, the secretary of the Communist Party’s Xinjiang legislative and political affairs committee, will replace Mr. Li.
A troubled quiet returned on Saturday to Urumqi, residents said in telephoneinterviews. “The military police are everywhere, and they have a veryfirm hold on the city,” said a taxi driver who gave his family name, Li.
Most of the downtown area, the scene of some of the largest protests, was blocked off to traffic.


“There’s no one out there, every store is still closed,” said a downtown resident who gave only her family name, Liu.

源地址：http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/0 ... a.html?_r=1&scp=8&sq=china&st=cse

渔音谦谦

渔音谦谦

自己领走。看看翻译的效果如何。

渔音谦谦

已翻译。
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