【2010.6.22 法新社】Muslim group urges sensitivity in China's Xinjiang

rhapsody

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/2010 ... slamdiplomacyunrest

Tue Jun 22, 1:52 am ET

BEIJING (AFP) – The head of the world's largest Muslim grouping urged China on Tuesday to match economic growth in its restive Xinjiang region with more attention to other concerns of its Uighur minority.

The carefully worded comments by Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, Secretary-General of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), came after he completed a visit to Xinjiang as the July anniversary of deadly ethnic riots approached.

"We hope development on the cultural field will go hand in hand with the economic field," Ihsanoglu told reporters in Beijing before leaving China.

Ihsanoglu arrived last week for his seven-day visit -- the first-ever to China by a head of the 57-member, pan-Islamic organisation -- that included two days in Xinjiang, the traditionally Muslim northwestern region.

Authorities there are bracing for the July 5 anniversary of deadly violence that pitted Muslim ethnic Uighurs against members of China's dominant Han ethnic group, leaving nearly 200 people dead, according to government figures.

The riots in the capital Urumqi provoked an outcry last year in some Muslim countries over China's treatment of Xinjiang's rougly eight million Uighurs, who have long alleged political, religious and cultural repression by Beijing.

Since the riots, China has said it would pour around 10 billion yuan (1.5 billion dollars) in development aid into the region beginning in 2011 in a bid to raise Uighur living standards and quell simmering discontent.

However, Uighurs complain that rapid state-backed development in the region has benefited only Han migrants to the area and that an influx of Han threatens to further swamp their culture.

Ihsanoglu declined to comment further on what the OIC would like to see in Xinjiang, and otherwise applauded China's efforts to increase development there.

Ihsanoglu, who met with government leaders in Xinjiang, said China had also pledged to raise the per capita income in the region up to the national average by 2015.

"I think this is a serious attempt from the government to address the issue of unrest," he said.

Ihsanoglu, whose Xinjiang tour took him to Urumqi and the ancient Silk Road oasis city of Kashgar, said the situation ahead of the anniversary appeared "more relaxed."

While he was in Xinjiang, Ihsanoglu said he toured a religious school and mosques, and in Beijing he met with China's top legislator Wu Bangguo and the head of the National Administration for Religious Affairs.

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