Armed mobs spread ethnic strife in China's west

By WILLIAM FOREMAN, Associated Press Writer

URUMQI, China – The government imposed a curfew Tuesday night in this regional capital of western China after mobs of Han Chinese with meat cleavers and clubs roamed the streets looking for Muslim Uighurs who had earlier beaten up people in the country's worst ethnic violence in decades.

Rioting in the Xinjiang region broke out Sunday and killed at least 156 people. Tuesday's new violence came despite swarms of paramilitary and riot police enforcing a dragnet that state media said led to the arrest of more than 1,400 people in the often tense region.

Members of the Uighur ethnic group attacked people near Urumqi's railway station, and women in headscarves protested the arrests of husbands and sons in another part of the city. For much of the afternoon, a mob of 1,000 mostly young Han Chinese holding cleavers and clubs and chanting "Defend the country" tore through streets trying to get to a Uighur neighborhood until they were repulsed by police firing tear gas.

Panic and anger bubbled up amid the suspicion in Urumqi (pronounced uh-ROOM-chee). In some neighborhoods, Han Chinese — China's majority ethnic group — armed themselves with pieces of lumber and shovels to defend themselves. People bought up bottled water out of fear, as one resident said, that "the Uighurs might poison the water."

The central government has slowed mobile phone and Internet services, blocked Twitter — whose servers are overseas — and censored Chinese social networking and news sites and accused Uighurs living in exile of inciting Sunday's riot. State media coverage, however, carried graphic video and pictures of the unrest _showing mainly Han Chinese victims and stoking the anger.

The violence is a further embarrassment for a Chinese leadership preparing for the 60th anniversary of communist rule in October and calling for the creation of a "harmonious society" to celebrate.

Years of rapid development have failed to smooth over the ethnic fault lines in Xinjiang.

Ethnic Uighurs (pronounced WEE-gers) have watched growing numbers of Han Chinese move into the region, one of China's fastest-growing, where oil and gas industries make up most of the $61 billion economy. Trade, wheat farming and sheep herding has given way to plantation farms of cotton and sugar beets and natural resource extraction.

Wang Lequan, Xinjiang's Communist Party secretary, imposed traffic restrictions and ordering people off the streets from 9 p.m. Tuesday to 8 a.m. Wednesday "to avoid further chaos."

"It is needed for the overall situation. I hope people pay great attention and act immediately," he said in an announcement broadcast on Xinjiang television.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang blamed the violence on Rebiya Kadeer, the U.S.-exiled head of the World Uyghur Congress and Uyghur American Association.

"Using violence, making rumors, and distorting facts are what cowards do because they are afraid to see social stability and ethnic solidarity in Xinjiang," he told a regular news conference.

Qin said Kadeer was behind the violence, adding "she has committed crimes that jeopardize national security." Evidence had been found against her, Qin said, but refused to give details.

In Washington, Kadeer denied the Chinese accusations.

Sunday's riot started as a peaceful demonstration by Uighurs over a deadly fight at a factory in eastern China between Han Chinese and Uighur workers. It then spiraled out of control, as mainly Uighur groups beat people and set fire to vehicles and shops belonging to Han Chinese.

On Tuesday, some among the Han Chinese mob retreating from the tear gas were met by Urumqi's Communist Party leader Li Zhi, who climbed atop a police vehicle and started chanting with the crowd. Li pumped his fists, beat his chest, and urged the crowd to strike down Kadeer, the 62-year-old Uighur leader.

"Those Muslims killed so many of our people. We just can't let that happen," said one man in the crowd, surnamed Liu. He carried a long wooden stick and said the Han Chinese were forced to take up arms. People walked by with eyes stinging from the tear gas.

To the east, on Xingfu road, Han Chinese residents stoned a car with two Uighurs inside until it crashed, pulling one passenger out and beating him until police arrived, residents said.

Earlier, about 200 people, mostly women in traditional headscarves, took to the streets in another neighborhood, wailing for the release of their sons and husbands who were arrested in the crackdown and confronting lines of paramilitary police. The women said police came through their neighborhood Monday night and strip-searched men to check for cuts and other signs of fighting before hauling them away.

"My husband was detained at gunpoint. They were hitting people, they were stripping people naked. My husband was scared so he locked the door, but the police broke down the door and took him away," said a woman who gave her name as Aynir. She said about 300 people were arrested in the market in the southern section of town.

The protesters briefly scuffled with paramilitary police, who pushed them back with long sticks before both sides retreated.

Foreign reporters on a government-run tour of the riot's aftermath witnessed the protest.

Groups of 10 or so Uighur men with bricks and knives attacked Han Chinese passers-by and shop-owners around midday outside the railway station until police ran them off, witnesses said.

"They were using everything for weapons, like bricks, sticks and cleavers," said an employee at a nearby fast-food restaurant who identified himself as Ma. "Whenever the rioters saw someone on the street, they would ask 'Are you a Uighur?' If they kept silent or couldn't answer in the Uighur language, they would get beaten or killed."

It was not immediately clear if anyone was killed in those reported attacks.

Li, the Communist Party official, told a news conference that more than 1,000 people had been detained as of early Tuesday and suggested more arrests were under way. "The number is changing all the time. We will let those who did not commit serious crimes go back to their work units."

The official Xinhua News Agency said earlier Tuesday that 1,434 suspects had been arrested, and that checkpoints had been set up to stop rioters from escaping.

Officials at the news conference said they could not give an ethnic breakdown of the dead.

Sunday's riot started as a peaceful demonstration by 1,000 to 3,000 people protesting the June 25 deaths of Uighur factory workers killed in a brawl in the southern Chinese city of Shaoguan. Xinhua said two died. Messages on Internet sites popular with Uighurs put the figure higher, raising tensions in Xinjiang.

In a sign the government was trying to address communal grievances, Xinhua said Tuesday that 13 people had been arrested over the factory fight, including three from Xinjiang. Two others were arrested for spreading rumors on the Internet that Xinjiang employees had raped two female workers, the report said, citing a police official.

The disturbances in Xinjiang carry reminders of the widespread anti-Chinese protests that shook Tibet last year and have left large parts of western China living with police checkpoints and tightened security. Like the Tibetans, Uighur unrest has not been muted by rapid economic development, although the government publicly is unwilling to address ethnic tensions.