In China’s Far West, a City Struggles to Move On
The New York Times, 23 May 2014
URUMQI, China — They were hard-core bargain hunters, gray-haired bus drivers and bureaucrats on modest pensions who woke up early to find the cheapest produce in this increasingly expensive city. For the driver of the sport utility vehicle seeking to maximize the mayhem, they were the easiest of targets.
“The driver zigzagged down the street like he was drunk, knocking people over and crushing others under the tires,” one witness said. “These poor old people never had a chance.” Moments later, another S.U.V. barreled down North Park Street, its occupants tossing small explosive devices out of the windows as the driver ran over those who lay wounded in the street.
By the time the vehicles exploded at opposite ends of the block, 43 people were dead, including four of the assailants, and more than 90 people were wounded, according to an updated casualty list. A fifth suspect was arrested Thursday night, the state media reported. Most of the victims were ethnic Han, the dominant ethnic group in China.
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Victims and Officials on Xinjiang Attack
As residents of Urumqi, China, mourned the deaths in the market blast on Thursday, Chinese and Uighur officials and survivors discussed the terror attack.
Credit
On Friday morning, a day after one of China’s worst terrorist attacks in recent memory, North Park Street had a veneer of normalcy. The bakeries, noodle makers and fishmongers were open for business. A restaurant serving rice pilaf and lamb was packed with Uighur men and young bank employees on their lunch break. A few paces from the shattered window of a pawnshop, schoolchildren in matching track suits boisterously traded penny candy.
But this city of three million remains on edge. The authorities, fearing revenge attacks by Han citizens, deployed a thick cordon of heavily armed police officers in front of Uighur schools and neighborhoods. Security guards at markets and malls asked shoppers to open their bags; those carrying bottled drinks were told to take a sip to show that they were not filled with gasoline. The United States Embassy issued a warning advising its citizens to avoid traveling here in the Xinjiang region, in China’s far west.
In Beijing, the authorities promised a merciless campaign against the Uighur separatists who in recent months have been expanding their range of targets, shedding the blood of tourists in Beijing, train passengers in the southwest city of Kunming and now elderly shoppers in Urumqi, the bustling regional capital.
“This is the vile political murder of innocent people who know nothing and care less about the so-called ‘cause’ their murderers wish to promulgate,” Xinhua, the state news agency, wrote in an editorial on Friday. “Such crimes are not to be tolerated in any civilized country or ethnic group.”
Here in Urumqi, Han and Uighur residents tried to put on a brave face, saying the attack would not succeed in driving a wedge between them. “Most Uighurs are good,” said Xu Chen, 36, a Han businessman who was born and raised in Xinjiang and who said he counted many Uighurs among his best friends. “It’s just a tiny minority who would seek to cause trouble.”
Korban Ismail, 26, a Uighur taxi driver, uttered almost the exact same words, but then he recalled an incident earlier in the day, when he stopped to pick up three Han women who had flagged him down. Seeing his face, one of the women refused to get in, and Mr. Ismail drove away in anger. “When I got married, I had more Han guests than Uighurs,” he said. “This kind of behavior can’t be good for ethnic harmony.”
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Urumqi is emblematic of the challenges facing Beijing as it tries to stem the mounting strife, which has taken more than 200 lives this year. A booming city that is more than 75 percent Han, it is home to a large Uighur middle class that has mastered the Mandarin language and prospered by landing secure government jobs.
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A broken window near the market in Urumqi. Credit The New York Times
But south of the neon-lit hotels and restaurants that surround People’s Square, with its granite plinth honoring the People’s Liberation Army, thousands of poor Uighurs, many of them rural migrants, crowd into ramshackle tenements.
Many of the more recent arrivals, young men from the Uighur heartland in the south, have few marketable skills and speak only Uighur, a Turkic language.
It was here in July 2009 that young Uighur men went on a rampage, slaughtering Han in the streets after a demonstration by Uighur students was broken up by the police. Nearly 200 people died in the days that followed, although exile groups say that figure does not include Uighurs subsequently killed by vengeful Han mobs.
Back on North Park Street, the authorities worked to erase evidence of the previous day’s violence. After removing several charred vehicles and cleaning up the blood and crushed vegetables, they cut down the top half of a large sycamore tree whose leaves had been seared by the flames of a burning car.
As armed police officers with riot shields paraded up and down the street, neighbors traded stories of loss and near misses. One 76-year-old woman tearfully described how her husband’s hair caught fire; another recounted seeing a man clutching an open wound in his chest that was filled with scraps of metal. An egg vendor said her life was saved by a customer who took the brunt of an explosive device, which one witness said resembled a paint can.
Yang Tanghui, 81, listened to the stories and shook his head. An army veteran who was among the first to arrive in Xinjiang in the early 1950s, part of a massive campaign to pacify the region through Han migration, he said he had nothing but warm feelings for the Uighurs.
Back then, when Uighurs outnumbered Han 10 to one, there were frequent conflicts between the two groups, many because of language barriers. “Things are much better now,” he said.
These days, he said, any attempt to stir up trouble would end badly for Uighurs, who are increasingly outnumbered in Urumqi and other big cities in the north of Xinjiang.
“We’re all human beings,” he said. “We all have mothers and we all just want to live our lives. But if it comes to war, and we start killing each other, the Han will come out ahead.”