CHINESE AUTHORITIES have raised the tally of dead in last week’s ethnic clashes in Xinjiang province to 184, as the number of injured in the violence between Han Chinese and Muslim Uighurs was increased to 1,680.
The government has also banned illegal assembly, marches and demonstrations in Urumqi, a city of 2.3 million people 3,270km west of Beijing. Officials said the situation was under control but that there were still sporadic illegal assemblies and demonstrations in some places, according to the Xinhua news agency.
Heavily armed troops are still patrolling the streets and there is a curfew in effect.
China’s worst violence since the Tiananmen Square crackdown 20 years ago left 184 people dead. Of these, 137 were Han Chinese and 46 were Uighurs, while one victim of the riots was part of the minority Hui Muslim group.
Last Sunday’s protest by minority Uighurs over the June 26th deaths of Uighur factory workers in a brawl in southern China escalated into deadly attacks on members of the Han Chinese majority, as Uighurs turned on Han residents, beating passersby and burning shops.
In subsequent days, large groups of Han Chinese armed themselves with clubs and cleavers and roamed the streets of Urumqi looking for revenge. It remains unclear how many people may have been injured – Uighur groups in exile say hundreds of their people were injured, but the Chinese deny this.
Much remains unclear about the initial riot.
The Chinese government said the violence in Urumqi had a “profound” political background, describing it as a “serious crime masterminded and organised by the ‘three forces’ of terrorism, separatism and extremism at home and abroad”.
The updated figure of the number of injured came from a televised speech by state governor Nur Bekri. He said more than 900 of the injured remained in hospital, and 74 were “on the verge of death”.
Thousands of Chinese troops have flooded into Urumqi to keep the two ethnic groups apart, with armed paramilitary police patrolling People’s Square, where the violence began last week. A senior Communist Party official has vowed to execute those guilty of murder in the rioting.
China has accused the exile Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer of starting the riots, a charge she denies.
Beijing believes the Uighurs should be grateful for Xinjiang’s rapid economic development. However, many of the Turkic-speaking group, which makes up nine million of Xinjiang’s 20 million people, are unhappy with the growing economic and political power of Han Chinese, saying it threatens their indigenous culture. They want independence for Xinjiang, which borders eight central Asian nations.
There was an explosion yesterday morning at a refinery in Urumqi, but no links to sabotage were found.
In Turkey, prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has continued to criticise the crackdown on the Uighurs, calling on the Chinese government to “give up efforts to assimilate” the Uighurs. He earlier described the repression of the Uighurs as “genocide”.