World Bulletin, 4 August 2014 

A prominent Uighur official says the Chinese police has provoked ethnic Uighurs by harassing Muslim women. A violent protest erupted after the Chinese police insulted and harassed a crowd of Muslim Uighur women, after forcing them to gather at a village square in the Yarkand region in East Turkestan, Turkish paper reported quoting a prominent Uighur official.

Police opened fire on the crowd to disperse the protest, which was sparked on the first day of the recent religious holiday, marking the end of Ramadan. The initial reports said dozens of people were shot dead, but a certain number of casulties have not been clarified, because the Chinese officials cut communication with the region.

‘Some sources claimed hundreds of people could have been massacred during the incident, but we do not know the certain toll,’ said Vice President of the World Uighur Congress, Seyit Tumturk, speaking to Turkey’s conservative newspaper, Yenisafak.

Tumturk said, based on Uighur activists’ accounts in the region, ‘The violence was prompted when the police forced women to remove their headscarves. The police’s harassment provoked people.”

According to the report, Tumturk also said that the Chinese military has imposed martial law and a curfew in the region: ‘Yarkand has been completely isolated. The power has been cut and people can not have access to the internet. We do not know what has been happening in the region.”

http://www.worldbulletin.net/news/141868/china-isolates-uighurs-in-yarkand-report