Police call for calm on streets of Kashgar
- Source: Global Times
- [08:22 July 09 2009]
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By Cheng Gang in Kashgar
Appeals for people to remain calm echoed from loudspeakers atop police trucks yesterday in Kashgar, as security forces attempted to bring order to the city.
At least eight trucks, whose backdoors were blocked with shields, patrolled the streets repeating messages in the Uygur language to explain what the government was doing and calling for the public to be patient and calm.
More than 90 percent of the population of Kashgar, which lies 1,500 kilometers west of Urumqi, is Uygur.
The city is also where 16 police offices were killed in August.
Stores across the city have been boarded up since Monday to protect them from vandals and looters, following an order from the local government.
By 10 pm last night, only a handful of restaurants, run by Uygur, remained open.
Few people were seen on the streets.
The city’s new Kashgar Airport was equally desolate yesterday, as were roads into the city, except for the personnel manning the checkpoints.
The government has launched an emergency plan and adopted strict security measures, including sending out patrols around the city, Chen Li, director of the publicity department of Kashgar, told the Global Times yesterday.
“Social order has been maintained,” he said.
The receptionist at the Hengyuan Hotel told the Global Times that it had just 10 guests.
“Before the riots started we had lots of tourists staying here, but they’ve all left.”
A local tour bus driver told the Global Times he recently spent 300,000 yuan ($44,000) on a new vehicle ahead of the high season.
“It should be the start of the tourist season,” he told the Global Times.
“I was hoping to make a packet with my new bus, but now I’m in dire straits. I’ll be lucky if I earn anything at all,” he said.
Several tourist attractions in Kashgar, including the Xiangfei Tomb and East bazaar, remained open yesterday, but attracted few visitors.
A local official told the Global Times the riots were disastrous for Kashgar.
“After many years of effort to achieve ethnic unity, Han and Uygur were beginning to live together peacefully. But these riots have put Xinjiang’s development back at least a decade,” he said.
“Everything is upset now,” a local man said.
“The riots will definitely have a negative impact on the region’s economic and social development.”
Liang Chen and Zhang Han contributed to this story