Recalling the nightmare: witnesses' account of Xinjiang riot

• Source: Xinhua
• [19:21 July 06 2009]
• Comments

Returning to his Geely automobile store, Guo Jianxin was still frightened recalling the nightmare Sunday.

"Fortunately I managed to leave," said the general manager of the store in Urumqi, capital of northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

"It was about 10 p.m. and I found rioters outside," he said. The manager called more than 20 workers from the store, who already left after a day's work.

"I asked them to help protect the store, but there were too many rioters...more than 100, holding knives, clubs and stones," he said. Guo was from the Hui ethnic group.

Failing to dissuade the rioters from entering the store, Guo led his workers to flee. They hid on a hill beside the store.

The three-storey building was ablaze, while more than 30 new cars in the store were all torched. One worker's arm was broken and he was sent to hospital.

Opposite to the store was a shop owned by a Han couple. They told Xinhua reporter that they saw some rioters on the streets after 10 p.m., immediately shut the door and escaped.

When they returned, the couple found that their shop was burned, some 20,000 yuan (2,941 U.S. dollars) and a camera in the counter was gone.

But they didn't complain much. Next door, a young worker from the southwestern Sichuan province was beaten to death.

IN THE HOSPITAL

China was shocked, when rioters burned 261 motor vehicles, including 190 buses, at least 10 taxis and two police cars, Sunday evening in the city.

The death toll has risen to 140 and may still climb.

The People's Hospital, one of the biggest hospitals in Xinjiang's capital Urumqi, received 291 people as victim of the riot, among whom 17 died later.

Among them, 233 were Han Chinese, 39 were Uygurs, while the rest were from other ethnic minorities like Hui and Kazak, said Wang Faxing, president of the hospital.