Hundreds Of Armed Chinese March On Muslims

About 300 With Clubs Attack Food Stalls Run By Muslims In Western Province

(CBS/AP)  Updated 9:34 a.m. ET

Mobs of Han Chinese wielding meat cleavers and clubs and groups of Muslim Uighur men beat people in the streets of the capital of China's Xinjiang region Tuesday. The government imposed a curfew as it tried to stem communal violence after a riot that killed at least 156 people.

Members of the Muslim Uighur ethnic group attacked people near the Urumqi's railway station, and women in headscarves protested the arrests of husbands and sons in another part of the city. Meanwhile, for much of the afternoon, a mob of 1,000 mostly young Han Chinese holding clubs and chanting "Defend the Country" tore through streets trying to get to a Uighur neighborhood until they were repulsed by police firing tear gas.

Panic and anger bubbled up amid the suspicion in Urumqi (pronounced uh-ROOM-chee). In some neighborhoods, Han Chinese - China's majority ethnic group - armed themselves with pieces of lumber and shovels to defend themselves. People bought up bottled water out of fear, as one resident said, that "the Uighurs might poison the water."

The outbursts happened despite swarms of paramilitary and riot police enforcing a dragnet that state media said led to the arrest more than 1,400 participants in Sunday's riot, the worst ethnic violence in the often tense region in decades.

Trying to control the message, the government has slowed mobile phone and Internet services, blocked Twitter - whose servers are overseas - and censored Chinese social networking and news sites and accused Uighurs living in exile of inciting Sunday's riot. State media coverage, however, carried graphic footage and pictures of the unrest -showing mainly Han Chinese victims and stoking the anger.

The violence is a further embarrassment for a Chinese leadership preparing for the 60th anniversary of communist rule in October and calling for the creation of a "harmonious society" to celebrate. Years of rapid development have failed to smooth over the ethnic fault lines in Xinjiang, where the Uighurs (pronounced WEE-gers) have watched growing numbers of Han Chinese move in.

Wang Lequan, Xinjiang's Communist Party secretary, declared a curfew in all but name, imposing traffic restrictions and ordering people off the streets from 9 p.m. to 8 a.m. Wednesday "to avoid further chaos."

"It is needed for the overall situation. I hope people pay great attention and act immediately," he said in an announcement broadcast on Xinjiang television.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang blamed the violence on Rebiya Kadeer, the U.S.-exiled Uighur leader.

"Using violence, making rumors, and distorting facts are what cowards do because they are afraid to see social stability and ethnic solidarity in Xinjiang," he told a regular news conference.

Qin said Kadeer was behind the violence, adding "she has committed crimes that jeopardize national security." Evidence had been found against her, Qin said, but refused to give details.

Sunday's riot started as a peaceful demonstration by Uighurs over a deadly fight at a factory in eastern China between Han Chinese and Uighur workers. It then spiraled out of control, as mainly Uighur groups beat people and set fire to vehicles and shops belonging to Han Chinese.

After retreating from the tear gas, some among the Han Chinese mob were met by Urumqi's Communist Party leader Li Zhi, who climbed atop a police vehicle and started chanting with the crowd. Li pumped his fists, beat his chest, and urged the crowd to strike down Kadeer, the 62-year-old Uighur leader.

"Those Muslims killed so many of our people. We just can't let that happen," said one man in the crowd, surnamed Liu. He carried a long wooden stick and said the Han Chinese were forced to take up arms. People walked by with bloodshot eyes from the tear gas.

To the east, on Xingfu road, Han Chinese residents stoned a car with two Uighurs inside until it crashed, pulling one passenger out and beating him until police arrived, residents said.

Elsewhere in the city Tuesday, about 200 people, mostly women in traditional headscarves, took to the streets in another neighborhood, wailing for the release of their sons and husbands in the crackdown and confronting lines of paramilitary police. The women said police came through their neighborhood Monday night and strip-searched men to check for cuts and other signs of fighting before hauling them away.

"My husband was detained at gunpoint. They were hitting people, they were stripping people naked. My husband was scared so he locked the door, but the police broke down the door and took him away," said a woman, who gave her name as Aynir. She said about 300 people were arrested in the market in the southern section of town.

The protesters briefly scuffled with paramilitary police, who pushed them back with long sticks before both sides retreated.

"China's violent crackdown in Xinjiang is based, in part, on China's allegation that the some of the Uighurs are associated with the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, which was designated by both the U.N. and the U.S. as an al Qaeda-affiliated terrorist organization," said CBS News Foreign Affairs Analyst Pamela Falk, from Beijing. "That is why there was so much sensitivity about what to do with the 17 Uighur detainees who had been held in Guantanamo."

Falk reports that the region has been on the radar of the U.S. and the U.N. for more than a decade, "because of the mix of terrorist organizations stoking violence, on the one hand, and the religious freedom issues of the Chinese Muslim community, on the other."

"And although there has been violence in the past in the far western region of China, the scope of the fighting is larger and unexpected at a time when President Hu Jintao is out of the country, promoting the strength of the Chinese economy," Falk added.

Foreign reporters on a government-run tour of the riot's aftermath witnessed the protest and without their presence, the incident might have gone unreported given the media controls.

Groups of 10 or so Uighur men with bricks and knives attacked Han Chinese passers-by and shop-owners midday outside the city's southern railway station, until police ran them off, witnesses said.

"They were using everything for weapons, like bricks, sticks and cleavers," said a Mr. Ma, an employee at the Dicos fast-food restaurant nearby. "Whenever the rioters saw someone on the street, they would ask 'are you a Uighur?' If they kept silent or couldn't answer in the Uighur language, they would get beaten or killed."

It was not immediately clear if anyone was killed in those reported attacks.

Li, the Communist Party official, told a news conference that more than 1,000 people had been detained as of early Tuesday and suggested more arrests were under way. "The number is changing all the time. We will let those who did not commit serious crimes go back to their work units."

The official Xinhua News Agency said earlier Tuesday that 1,434 suspects had been arrested, and that checkpoints had been set up to stop rioters from escaping.

Officials at the news conference said they could not give a breakdown of how many of the dead were Uighurs and how many were Han Chinese.

Sunday's riot started as a peaceful demonstration by 1,000 to 3,000 people protesting the June 25 deaths of Uighur factory workers killed in a brawl in the southern Chinese city of Shaoguan. Xinhua said two died. Messages circulating on Internet sites popular with Uighurs put the figure higher, raising tensions in Xinjiang.

In a sign the government was trying to address communal grievances, Xinhua announced Tuesday that 13 people had been arrested over the factory fight, including three from Xinjiang. Two others were arrested for spreading rumors on the Internet that Xinjiang employees had raped two female workers, the report said, citing a local police deputy director.

The disturbances in Xinjiang carry reminders of the widespread anti-Chinese protests that shook Tibet last year and have left large parts of western China living with police checkpoints and tightened security. Like the Tibetans, Uighur unrest has not been muted by rapid economic development, though the government publicly is unwilling to address ethnic tensions.

[tobehonesttoo]

Here is a video uploaded again on youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-n_SdDBfCHA

It is from a Korean media. After seeing it, I could not breath. That is what they called "peaceful protest".
It will be removed again soon. Shame on Youtube and Google.

[armyoftwelve]

What I don't get is why the influx of the Han is such a problem for people who are supposed to be tolerant??

Without the PRC, Xinjiang would be a wasteland holding a few million
impoverished rabble. Even under Mao, the Uighur were allowed to make the hajj--so how bad can things really be?

It seems that the issue is that the Han don't practice the right religion in the eyes of the uighur. Well, people who claim to be tolerant are expected to make their words match their deeds and put up with diversity of belief!!

[Illuminated1]

Now that the Olympics spectacle is over with...
Is China's bubble beginning to burst?
Harmonious under a dictatorship ...hah

[credibility2]

Sounds to me like the Muslims were the instigators and aggressors and resent having to handle anything without resorting to violence and terrorism.

[stupa1]

"Better Red than Dead...you will get your mind right"
The Chinese motto to all its minorities and people who are not Han...
or
"You will assimilate or else"

[anti-global2]

"me chinese, me play joke, me put pee pee in your coke"

-Confusus

[earth562]

"by blitzder July 7, 2009 5:35 AM PDT
Still the muslims are not so arrogant and mealy mouthed as you Jews, you come to a country, and take it over with corrupt finance then try and destroy it with neo-con like propaganda. Much like in the US,UK, Canada, Germany etc.

By the way, Israel, US and proxies have been killing muslims for the last 60 years, since the Balfour Declaration, its not the muslims who are trouble makers, its outsiders with the profit motive killing for dollars."


Profit ?

Hmm. without the West the Arab countrys and their oil would not of been explored. I guess you must think sand is a valuable commodity.

Jews ?

Its OPEC and its Arab oil sheiks who are manipualting the Mercantile Excange and raising oil to $ 70 when in reality it should be around $ 25 a barrel.

Otherwise, thanks Blitz for showing your arrogance and ignorance,

[pubsnomore]

How about that....the Chinese are doing exactly what the racist RePigSwine want to do to all minorities in the US...and they are right here admitting it on a public forum!

[jpshen]

See the link. I have nothing to say but hold those responsibles and severely punish them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psm8CG0MzTU

[DoubleHappiness88]

RELIGION,[Any religion]POISONS EVERYTHING!

[anti-global2]

I hope the whole country falls apart. Then the dirty sneaky thieving b a s t a r d s will be to busy killing their own people and trying to keep the economy from falling apart and therefore will have no time to steal technology and trade secrets from us in the U.S.
China is a toilet, I hope someone flushes it.

[gangesdak]

I never thought I would side with the Muslims. But, boy, did they give the Chinese a lesson! Let them sttrangle each other; world would be a better place without them.

[cbsnews_viewer]

Wee-gers where not immigrants trying 'to make a better life", they where the original inhabitants. The Han Chinese are the ones moving in on them, and then discriminating and calling them 'lazy' to foreign journalists. Image ,Your mother and father happen to be the muslim religion and then you have many US half-wits with a shallow knowledge trying to tell you how-it-is.
I wouldn't want police coming in and stealing my brother, or father just cause he was a male to arrest with bogus charges.

[tautomer]

Kinda sounds like Democrats at the Republican Convention in Minneapolis. That was a classy move.

[Sloughfoot]

Islamist don't play well with their neighbors and when they get it handed to them, they immediately whine and snivel for being the poor, oppressed minority. Islamist don't play well with each other. Take a good look, show me a modern, industrialized Islamic nation providing free speech, religion, press, assembly.

[leeanna59]

Surprise, surprise, surprise, 156 people dead and not one of them had a gun. What did they use? Shovels and pieces of lumber.

[pepperwood2]

Hundreds Of Armed Chinese March On Muslims - I'm sure BO & SOWS will rush to judgment for the press so that the rest of the world will see how they will protect these militant Muslims.

Whereas putting a dagger in the back of our Hispanic Neighbor Honduras is business as usual. So Sad!

[stupa1]

"Better Red than Dead...you will get your mind right"
The Chinese motto to all its minoriets and people who are not Han...
or
"You will assimilate or else"

[exaf74]

Hundreds of Han Chinese armed with clubs marched through the Xinjiang capital of Urumqi, knocking over food stalls run by Muslims.

Good for them!

[xlib]

I personally think these muslims are just trying to get a to the Bahamas so they can live the good life like the ones sent from gitmo. After all, they are doing just fine.