THE CHINESE government imposed a curfew on Urumqi last night after hundreds of Han residents armed with meat cleavers, iron pipes and shovels joined the frontline of the deadliest ethnic clashes the country has seen in decades.
As the UN called for restraint and petrol bombs were thrown at a Chinese consulate in Europe, armed riot police in Urumqi struggled to restore order with teargas and roadblocks in the capital of the far western Xinjiang region.
The local Communist party chief, Wang Lequan, warned that the struggle was far from over, although he said the worst violence on Sunday had been quelled.
Yesterday there were at least three confrontations between indigenous Uighurs, Han settlers and police, according to media reports. The authorities raised the casualty toll from Sunday’s riot to 156 dead and more than 1,000 wounded. No ethnic breakdown has been given, but reports from hospitals suggest the vast majority were Han. Chinese websites and newspapers have published pictures of rows of bloodied bodies.
There have been few domestic reports of the dozens of Uighur casualties – some of whom were confirmed by the Guardian as having been shot – or claims by exiled Uighur groups that police killed protesters.
Human rights groups have called for an independent investigation into the cause of the violence. The UN’s human rights high commissioner, Navi Pillay, said the Chinese authorities and civic leaders of the Han and Uighur ethnic groups should exercise great restraint to avoid sparking more violence.
But many Han residents – the largest ethnic group in Urumqi – and Hui armed themselves and took to the streets, looking for revenge or communal self-defence. Several hundred headed for the Grand Bazaar, the main Uighur district, armed with clubs. They smashed shop windows and knocked over food stalls.
In another protest, hundreds of Uighurs, mostly women and children, confronted police and called for the release of husbands and fathers who were rounded up in a search for suspects. The authorities have arrested 1,434 people. Some were taken away during door-to-door searches in which police asked men to remove their shirts so they could look for wounds that might indicate involvement in the riot.
A separate report suggested a gang of about a dozen Uighurs armed with knives and bricks attacked passersby and drivers from other ethnic groups. On Monday evening about 200 demonstrators gathered in front of the main mosque in Kashgar, a Silk Road city closer to the border with Kyrgyzstan.
Police say “separatist groups” are trying to organise more unrest. The Chinese authorities blamed Rebiya Kadeer, leader of the exile group World Uighur Congress, for stirring up discontent. They say she and her supporters want to divide China by creating an East Turkestan homeland.
Crowds initially gathered on Sunday to protest against the killing of two Uighur migrants by Han co-workers at a toy factory in Guangdong two weeks ago.
In a belated response, police announced yesterday that they had detained 15 suspects in the case, though graphic video of workers repeatedly battering the victims with wooden staves has been circulating on the internet for more than a week.
The authorities acknowledged yesterday that they had restricted access to the web since Sunday.
“We cut internet connections in some areas of Urumqi in order to quench the riot quickly and prevent violence from spreading,” the city’s top Communist party official, Li Zhi, told state media.
Elsewhere in China, the microblog Twitter has been blocked and information about the riot censored on search engines and discussion forums.
Compared with the unrest in Tibet last year, the government has given more access to foreign reporters. Officials have organised press conferences and trips. But a visit to a local hospital was cancelled on security grounds and several correspondents have had equipment confiscated.
The conflict appears to have spread overseas. Uighur supporters have staged demonstrations outside Chinese diplomatic missions in the Netherlands and Germany. In Munich two petrol bombs were thrown at the consulate. – (Guardian service)