China's president cut short a G8 summit trip to rush home Wednesday after ethnic tensions soared in Xinjiang territory, and the government flooded the area with security forces in a bid to quell emotions in the wake of a massive riot that left 156 dead.
Two helicopters dropped leaflets appealing for calm among the Xinjiang capital's 2.3 million residents a day after running battles in the streets involving Han Chinese and minority Muslim Uighurs waving bricks, steel pipes and cleavers.
A Foreign Ministry statement said "given the current situation in Xinjiang," President Hu Jintao cut short a trip to Italy for a Group of Eight meeting later Wednesday to return home. It was not known if he would travel to Urumqi, about four hours by air west of Beijing.
After an overnight curfew, streets were calmer Wednesday, but residents showed cell phone and video camera footage of the earlier chaos, reporting neighbor-on-neighbor violence and pointing out bloodstains.
Uighurs say the riots that started Sunday — put down by volleys of tear gas and a massive show of force — were triggered by the June 25 deaths of Uighur factory workers killed in a brawl in the southern Chinese city of Shaoguan. State-run media have said two workers died, but many Uighurs believe more were killed and said the incident was an example of how little the government cared about them.
Many of the Turkic-speaking group believe the Han Chinese, who have flooded into the rugged, rapidly developing western region in recent years, are trying to crowd them out. The Han Chinese say the Uighurs are backward and ungrateful for all the economic development and modernization.
They also complain that the Uighurs' religion — a moderate form of Sunni Islam — keeps them from blending into Chinese society, which is officially communist and largely secular.
In one of the biggest Uighur neighborhoods Wednesday, residents crowded around reporters to complain about how mobs of Han Chinese men stormed into their neighborhoods and assaulted them.
Two helicopters dropped leaflets appealing for calm among the Xinjiang capital's 2.3 million residents a day after running battles in the streets involving Han Chinese and minority Muslim Uighurs waving bricks, steel pipes and cleavers.
A Foreign Ministry statement said "given the current situation in Xinjiang," President Hu Jintao cut short a trip to Italy for a Group of Eight meeting later Wednesday to return home. It was not known if he would travel to Urumqi, about four hours by air west of Beijing.
After an overnight curfew, streets were calmer Wednesday, but residents showed cell phone and video camera footage of the earlier chaos, reporting neighbor-on-neighbor violence and pointing out bloodstains.
Uighurs say the riots that started Sunday — put down by volleys of tear gas and a massive show of force — were triggered by the June 25 deaths of Uighur factory workers killed in a brawl in the southern Chinese city of Shaoguan. State-run media have said two workers died, but many Uighurs believe more were killed and said the incident was an example of how little the government cared about them.
Many of the Turkic-speaking group believe the Han Chinese, who have flooded into the rugged, rapidly developing western region in recent years, are trying to crowd them out. The Han Chinese say the Uighurs are backward and ungrateful for all the economic development and modernization.
They also complain that the Uighurs' religion — a moderate form of Sunni Islam — keeps them from blending into Chinese society, which is officially communist and largely secular.
In one of the biggest Uighur neighborhoods Wednesday, residents crowded around reporters to complain about how mobs of Han Chinese men stormed into their neighborhoods and assaulted them.
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- retro_Syl
- added this
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Secular Communists meets Sunni Islam, chaos indeed.
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If we are lucky they will both destroy each other.
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- reckless063
- 5 months ago
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