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China police use tear gas to disperse Xinjiang protests
Tue Jul 7, 2009 3:21am EDT
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By Chris Buckley
URUMQI, China (Reuters) - Riot police fired tear gas to disperse rock-throwing Han Chinese protesters who took to the streets in the capital of the Muslim region of Xinjiang on Tuesday, two days after ethnic unrest left 156 dead and more than 1,000 wounded.
Hundreds of protesters from China's predominant Han ethnic group smashed shops owned by Uighurs, a Turkic largely Islamic people who share linguistic and cultural bonds with Central Asia.
Uighurs protesting against the arrest of relatives also clashed with police. Many were women, wailing and waving the identity cards of husbands, brothers or sons they say were arbitrarily seized in a sweeping reaction to Sunday's rioting in the city of Urumqi.
"My husband was taken away yesterday by police. They didn't say why. They just took him away," a woman who identified herself as Maliya told Reuters.
Fighting broke out briefly when Uighur protesters advanced toward hundreds of anti-riot police carrying clubs and shields on Tuesday, but there was no bloodshed.
Along with Tibet, Xinjiang is one of the most politically sensitive regions in China and in both places the government has sought to maintain its grip by controlling religious and cultural life while promising economic growth and prosperity.
Some protesters vowed defiance and denounced the arrests after the protest in Saimachang, a neighborhood on the outskirts of Urumqi with small shops and brick-and-mud homes along dusty alleys.
Abdul Ali, a Uighur man in his 20s who had taken off his shirt, held up his clenched fist. "They've been arresting us for no reason, and it's time for us to fight back," he said.
Ali said three of his brothers and a sister had been among 1,434 suspects taken into police custody. State television showed victims in hospital and burned cars and shops. Of the 156 killed, 27 were women.
Xinjiang has long been a hotbed of ethnic tensions, fostered by a yawning economic gap between Uighurs and Han Chinese, government controls on religion and culture and in influx of Han Chinese migrants who now are the majority in most key cities.
Beijing has poured cash into exploiting Xinjiang's rich oil and gas deposits and consolidating its hold on a strategically vital frontierland that borders Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia, but Uighurs say migrant Han are the main beneficiaries.
Human rights groups have warned that a harsh crackdown on Uighurs in the wake of Sunday's violence could merely exacerbate the grievances that fueled ethnic tensions.
Urumqi Communist Party boss Li Zhi defended the crackdown.
"It should be said that they were all violent elements who wielded clubs and smashed, looted, burned and even murdered at the scene," he told a news conference.
But he also said some may have been "swindled or deceived." Continued...
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