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Chinese Police 'Gun Down' Xinjiang Demonstrators in
Clash
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Bloomberg July 18, 2011 |
July 19 (Bloomberg) -- Police gunned down rioters in
northwestern China's Xinjiang region yesterday, with the
official state media and an organization representing
the Uighur ethnic group giving conflicting accounts of
the incident.
China's official Xinhua News Agency, citing unidentified
people at the Ministry of Public Security, said rioters
rushed a police station in the city of Hotan at about 12
p.m. yesterday, taking hostages and setting the building
on fire. One member of the armed police, a security
officer and two hostages were killed, one security
officer was severely injured and police "gunned down
several rioters," the news service said.
The Munich-based World Uyghur Congress, citing
unidentified people in Xinjiang, said police fired on
about 100 ethnic Uighurs protesters in the city's main
bazaar, according to a statement from the affiliated
Washington-based Uyghur American Association. The
demonstration was against land seizures and
disappearances after riots two years ago, the group
said.
"People should view the Chinese government statements
with extreme caution," Amy Reger, a researcher for the
Uyghur American Association, said in an interview today.
There were clashes in 2009 between the mostly Muslim
Uighur minority and the Han Chinese ethnic group in the
region's capital killed almost 200 people and injured
more than 1,000. Some Uighurs, who share ethnicity with
people in central Asia, advocate independence for
Xinjiang.
Han Migration
Han Chinese, who make up about 90 percent of China's
population, have been settling in Xinjiang for decades
and now account for more than four in 10 people in the
region. The top leader in Xinjiang, Communist Party
chief Zhang Chunxian, is an ethnic Han.
The Xinjiang riots come as protests increase across
China as income gaps widen. So-called mass incidents --
riots, strikes and protests -- doubled in five years to
180,000 in 2010, Sun Liping, a professor at Beijing's
Tsinghua University, said in a Feb. 25 article in the
Economic Observer.
Hotan is in southwestern Xinjiang, near China's border
with India and Afghanistan. Some Uighurs have fought as
militants in Afghanistan and some are detained by the
U.S. in Guantanamo Bay. The central government sent an
anti-terrorist task force to Xinjiang after yesterday's
riot, Xinhua said. |
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