A SEPARATIST riot in a mainly Muslim region of north western China has resulted in the deaths of to people and the destruction of shops and cars, according to reports reaching Beijing. A curfew has been imposed on the town of Yining in Xinjiang near the border with Kazakhstan, where most of the trouble happened, local officials said.
The riot, which occurred last Wednesday, appears to have been one of the worst in a region which has a history of strife between Muslims of the Uighur ethnic group and members of China's majority Han population. Attacks on the ruling Chinese by fiercely independent Muslim groups have occurred in the region over the centuries, with the most recent serious disturbances in 1990.
Dozens more people were said to have been wounded in the savage fighting which occurred when 1,000 Muslims began beating up local Chinese residents after a Chinese policeman tried to arrest an Uighur man, locals said.
"Both Han Chinese and Uighurs were killed or injured," a Chinese propaganda official told Reuters by telephone from Yining in the Yili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture. People have been ordered to stay at home after sunset in the region, where the Muslims are in the majority. The Han Chinese form 38 per cent of the population.
The incident comes at an embarrassing time for the Beijing government, which has made stability one of it stop domestic priorities in a year which sees the return of Hong Kong and the 15th congress of the Chinese Communist Party. However, the fact that the disturbance occurred in a remote region with a history of such trouble makes it unlikely that it will affect stability elsewhere in China. Officials in Yining said the trouble was exacerbated by "foreign hostile forces".
One police officer and members of both ethnic groups were said by one Chinese source to have been killed. The Hong Kong Ming Pao newspaper said rioters set fire to the bodies of those killed. Reports by Han residents said the Muslims attacked Chinese people at random, smashed cars and set fire to shops, and that they called for all Han to get out of Xinjiang. After the attempted arrest, demonstrators marched on a government building and police fired teargas to disperse them, the reports said.
Yining lies about 700 km northwest of the Xinjiang capital, Urumqi. "There was a demonstration and they shouted slogans calling for Han Chinese to be driven out of Xinjiang and for Xinjiang to be split from the motherland using the pretext of religion," a local official was quoted as saying.
The end of Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting, coincided last weekend with the celebrations of the Chinese New Year.