156 killed, 1,080 injured in Xinjiang riots

• Source: Global Times
• [09:51 July 07 2009]
• Comments

The World Uygur Congress, led by Rebiya Kadeer, a separatist in exile in the United States, was blamed for orchestrating the unrest, according to local authorities.

The congress recently instigated unrest via the Internet, calling on supporters “to be braver” and “to do something big,” the local government said.

“This was a crime of violence that was pre-meditated and organized,” said Nur Bekri, chairman of the Xinjiang regional government.

The riots were agitated following a fight between the Uygur and Han ethnic workers, resulting in two dead Uygur workers in a toy factory in Guangdong Province on June 26, Bekri said in a televised speech yesterday.

The fight was triggered by the sexual assault of a female Han worker by a Uygur coworker, Bekri said.

As authorities expected the death toll from Sunday’s riot to rise, hundreds of arrests were made yesterday in connection with the unrest, and searches for about 90 other key suspects were underway, Regional Police Chief Liu Yaohua said at a press conference.

Twitter.com was blocked on the mainland yesterday. However, fanfou.com, Twitter’s Chinese equivalent, remained in operation. Searches for “Urumqi” or “riot” produced no results.

Independent information about the riot, including photos, poured into online forums and blogs. But such Web pages were soon deleted, while mobilephone services were briefly unconnected in the afternoon.

World media has been covering the incident extensively. A media center had been set up in Hoi Tak Hotel for reporters who came to cover the incident.

“The riot has destroyed the spiritual support with which the terrorist, separatist and extremist forces cheated the people to participate in the so-called Jihad,” Wang Lequan, chief of the Xinjiang Communist Party of China (CPC), said in an interview with Xinjiang TV yesterday.

Kang Juan, Guo Qiang and An Baijie contributed to this story