New Protests in Western China After Deadly Clashes

URUMQI - Rival protesters took to the streets again on Tuesday, defying Chinese government efforts to lock down this regional capital of 2.3 million people and other places across its western desert region after bloody clashes between Muslim Uighurs and security forces that were mostly Han Chinese. The fighting, which erupted Sunday evening, left at least 156 people dead and more than 1,000 wounded, according to the state news agency.
Paramilitary forces fired tear gas Tuesday at Han Chinese protesters armed with clubs, lead pipes, shovels and meat cleavers. The mob was trying to reach this city’s Uighur enclave in the afternoon to exact revenge for Han civilians killed in the rioting on Sunday, when the Uighurs had rampaged through parts of the city.
In an attempt to contain China’s worst ethnic violence in decades, the authorities had imposed curfews, cut off cellphone and Internet services and sent armed police officers into neighborhoods after the first riot, but protesters massed across the city as rumors spread of fresh violence being committed by both sides.
In the morning, hundreds of Uighur protesters crashed a state-run tour of the riot scene that had been arranged by the authorities for foreign and Chinese journalists.
A wailing crowd of women, joined later by scores of Uighur men, marched down a wide avenue Tuesday with raised fists, tearfully demanding the release of Uighur men who they said had been seized from their homes after the violence Sunday. Some women waved the identification cards of men who had been detained.
As journalists watched, the demonstrators smashed the windshield of a police car, and several police officers drew their pistols before the entire crowd was encircled by officers and paramilitary troops in riot gear.
“A lot of ordinary people were taken away by the police,” said a weeping, 13-year-old protester named Qimanguli who wore a white T-shirt and a black headscarf. She said her 19-year-old brother was detained on Monday, long after the riots had ended.
The initial confrontation on Tuesday later ebbed to a tense standoff in a Uighur neighborhood pocked with burned-out homes and an automobile sales lot torched during the Sunday riots. About 100 protesters, mostly women, some carrying infants, confronted riot police officers in black body armor and helmets who had tear-gas launchers at the ready.
In midafternoon, however, thousands of furious Han Chinese armed with simple hand weapons marched from a central square, South Gate, toward the main Uighur neighborhood, where the riots had begun on Sunday. The first wave engaged in a brick-throwing battle with Uighurs who had taken to the rooftops of the neighborhood, while paramilitary troops watched. The troops later fired tear gas from cannons atop armored personnel carriers to push back the Han protesters.
Li Zhi, the head of the Communist Party in Urumqi, appeared at the South Gate plaza to beseech the protesters to go home. But his speech angered some of them even more, especially when he repeatedly yelled, “Strike down Rebiya!” — a reference to Rebiya Kadeer, a Uighur businesswoman and human rights advocate in Washington whom the Chinese government blames for the Sunday rioting.
At a railway station, a group of Uighur men also armed themselves with makeshift weapons threatened and chased down Han Chinese in the area, The Associated Press reported.
The bloodshed here, along with the Tibetan uprising last year, shows the extent of racial hostility that still pervades much of western China, fueled partly by economic disparity and by government attempts to restrict religious and political activity by minority groups.
The rioting had begun Sunday as a peaceful protest calling for a full government inquiry into an earlier brawl between Uighurs and Han Chinese at a factory in southern China in late June. It took place in the heart of Xinjiang, an oil-rich desert region where Uighurs are the largest ethnic group but are ruled by the Han, the dominant ethnic group in the country.
Protests spread Monday to the heavily guarded town of Kashgar, on China’s western border, as 200 to 300 people chanting “God is great” and “Release the people” confronted riot police officers about 5:30 p.m. in front of the city’s yellow-walled Id Kah Mosque, the largest mosque in China. They quickly dispersed when officers began arresting people, one resident said.