On Islam, 19 July 2011

BEIJING — At least twenty Muslims from China’s minority Uighur community were killed on Tuesday, July 19, in renewed clash with police forces in the ethnically tense northwestern region of Xinjiang, a Uighur exile group said.

“The Chinese authorities should immediately cease their systematic oppression to prevent a further escalation of the situation,” Dilxat Raxit, a spokesman for the Germany-based World Uyghur Congress, said in a statement.
The group said that 20 uighurs were killed and 70 arrested when police opened fire after a crowd of perhaps 100 Uighur protesters massed there to complain about arrests of young men.

Dolkun Isa, the secretary general of the World Uyghur Congress, said those arrests were made during security crackdowns on Uighur homes.

Supporters of the detained youths gathered at the station and “asked for the local government to release their friends and family,” Isa told The New York Times on Tuesday.

“But the local government refused to give an answer. The local people got angry and attacked the police station, and some people were killed.”

Citing sources in Xinjiang, the group said Chinese security forces beat 14 people to death and shot dead six others during the unrest.

However, the official Chinese version of the story was much different.

A Chinese government official described the events as “an organized terrorist attack.”

“The rioters carried explosive devices and grenades. They first broke into the offices of the local administration of industry and commerce and the taxation bureau that are close to the police station,” Hou Hanmin, chief of the regional information office, told the Global Times, a popular tabloid owned by the Chinese Communist Party’s mouthpiece, the People’s Daily.

“They injured two persons there.”

“When they realized the targets were wrong, they started to attack the police station from the ground floor to the second floor where they showed a flag with separatist messages,” Hou said.

The Chinese official claimed that the “attackers” set the police station on fire before killing hostages during a stand-off with armed police.

Blocking Social Media

Applying similar methods used during last year’s unrest, Chinese authorities blocked searches on Sina Weibo, China’s Twitter-like microblogging services, on the attack.

When searching for the Chinese renderings of “Xinjiang unrest” and “Hotan,” a page appears saying, “according to relevant laws, regulations and policies, search results are not displayed.”

Hotan is a city of some 300,000 people, 88 percent of them from minority groups, according to the Hotan government website.

Today’s clashes are the worst violence Xinjiang has experienced in about a year.

In July 2009, Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, erupted in violence when the mainly Muslim Uighur minority vented resentment over Chinese restrictions in the region.

In the following days, mobs of angry Han took to the streets looking for revenge in the worst ethnic violence that China had seen in decades.

The unrest left nearly 200 dead and 1,700 injured, according to government figures. But Uighurs affirm the toll was much higher and mainly from their community.

China’s authorities have convicted about 200 people, mostly Uighurs, over the riots and sentenced 26 of them to death.

Following the unrest, Chinese officials added about 17,000 surveillance cameras to the tens of thousands already installed in Urumqi, basically in neighborhoods frequented by Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking Muslim minority.

Xinjiang has been autonomous since 1955 but continues to be the subject of massive security crackdowns by Chinese authorities.

Rights groups accuse Chinese authorities of religious repression against Uighur Muslims, a Turkish-speaking minority of eight million, in Xinjiang in the name of counter terrorism.

Muslims accuses the government of settling millions of ethnic Han in their territory with the ultimate goal of obliterating its identity and culture.

And analysts say the policy of transferring Han Chinese to Xinjiang to consolidate Beijing’s authority has increased the proportion of Han in the region from five percent in the 1940s to more than 40 percent now.

Beijing views the vast region of Xinjiang as an invaluable asset because of its crucial strategic location near Central Asia and its large oil and gas reserves.

http://www.onislam.net/english/news/asia-pacific/453087-clashes-erupt-in-xinjiang-scores-dead.html