URUMQI, China: China’s leaders vowed Thursday to severely punish those responsible for bloodshed in Xinjiang that left at least 156 people dead and exposed deep ethnic tensions.
The warning came as riot police and soldiers maintained a firm grip on Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, where Muslim Uighurs and Han Chinese faced off this week in China’s worst ethnic conflict for decades.
“The planners of the incident, the organizers, key members and the serious violent criminals must be severely punished,” President Hu Jintao and the other eight members of the ruling Communist Party’s Politburo said.
Local party leaders in Urumqi had on Wednesday warned that people involved in any killings would be sentenced to death, and earlier announced that more than 1,400 people had been arrested for their involvement in the unrest.
The Politburo statement came as tentative signs of normality returned to Urumqi. Thousands of baton-wielding riot police and armed soldiers were still in the city, but their numbers were far fewer than in previous days.
Even though more shops had reopened after a three-day government-mandated business closure, many were still shuttered. “How can it return to normal with so many soldiers?” said a Han woman surnamed Li in the city center. And the big bazaar in the main Uighur district remained shut, with Uighurs saying the closure was another example of the different rules they have to live by compared with the Han.
“They said we could reopen after three days. But today is the fourth day and they are not letting us open,” said a clothing shop owner.
Turkey’s industry minister meanwhile urged his countrymen to boycott Chinese goods in protest at the violence, but a spokeswoman said this was the minister’s personal view and not government policy.
The minister, Nihat Ergun, told a meeting of industrial exporters in the town of Yozgat in central Turkey that Turks should put pressure on China to end violence by not buying Chinese goods.
China on Thursday rejected a call by Turkey to discuss the unrest at the United Nations Security Council, saying the incident was an internal affair.
“The Chinese government has taken decisive measures according to law,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang told reporters in Beijing. “This is completely China’s internal affair, there is no reason to seek a Security Council discussion.”
His comments came after Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Wednesday that Turkey, a nonpermanent member of the UN Security Council, would ask the UN body to discuss ways of ending the violence.
