URUMQI, China: Riots and street battles killed at least 156 people in China’s western Xinjiang province and injured 828 others in the deadliest ethnic unrest to hit the region in decades. Officials said Monday the death toll was expected to rise.
Police sealed off streets in parts of the provincial capital, Urumqi, after discord between ethnic Muslim Uighur people and China’s Han majority erupted into violence.
Witnesses reported a new, smaller protest Monday in a second city, Kashgar. A Uighur man there said he was among more than 300 protesters who demonstrated outside the Id Kah Mosque. He said they were surrounded by police, who asked them to calm down. “We were yelling at each other but there were no clashes, no physical contact,” said the man, who gave his name as Yagupu.
The unrest is another troubling sign for Beijing at how rapid economic development has failed to stem — and even has exacerbated — resentment among ethnic minorities, who say they are being marginalized in their homelands as Chinese migrants pour in. Columns of paramilitary police in green camouflage uniforms, helmets and flak vests marched Monday around Urumqi’s main bazaar — a largely Uighur neighborhood — carrying batons and shields. Mobile phone service and social networking site Twitter were blocked and Internet links were also cut or slowed down.
Rioters on Sunday overturned barricades, attacked vehicles and houses, and clashed violently with police in Urumqi, according to media and witness accounts. State television aired footage showing protesters attacking and kicking people on the ground. Other people, who appeared to be Han Chinese, sat dazed with blood pouring down their faces.
There was little immediate explanation for how so many people died. The government accused a Uighur businesswoman living in the US of inciting the riots through phone calls and “propaganda” spread on websites.
Witnesses and state media said the violence started only after police arrived to disperse a peaceful protest demanding justice for two Uighurs killed last month during a fight with Han co-workers at a factory in southern China.
Thousands of people took part in Sunday’s disturbance, unlike recent sporadic separatist violence carried out by small groups in Xinjiang. The clashes echoed the violent protest that rocked Tibet last year and left many Tibetan communities living under clamped-down security ever since.
