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BEIJING: China on Monday blamed Muslim Uighurs, armed with knives and batons, for riots in the capital of its restive Xinjiang region that left at least three dead, as heavy security was imposed across the city.
Dramatic footage of Sunday's unrest broadcast by the state-run CCTV network showed men turning over a police car and smashing its windows, a woman being kicked as she lay on the ground, and buses and other vehicles aflame.
Three "ordinary" Han Chinese people died in the violence, an initial Xinhua report said, while a later dispatch said a "number of civilians and one armed police officer" were killed, without clarifying the death toll.
Authorities said heavy security had been rolled out across Urumqi, and a police spokesman there told AFP by telephone that the situation on Monday was calm.
"All (police) units and individuals shall voluntarily help maintain social order," an Urumqi government notice said, according to Xinhua. "People who violate the notice will be detained and punished by police."
A witness, a Han Chinese bar owner in the city centre where the riots took place and who refused to be named, told AFP there were around 3,000 Uighur protesters, some of whom were armed with wooden batons and knives.
She said the rioters broke cars, smashed windows and tried to set some buses on fire.
"All shop owners in the street were very scared," she told AFP by telephone, adding order had now been restored.
The Xinjiang government blamed Rebiya Kadeer, the Uighurs' leader who is living in exile in the United States, for orchestrating the unrest.
"An initial investigation showed the violence was masterminded by the separatist World Uighur Congress led by Rebiya Kadeer," the government said in a statement, according to Xinhua.
"The violence is a pre-empted, organised violent crime. It is instigated and directed from abroad, and carried out by outlaws in the country."
However, Uighur exiles, who have long chafed at Chinese rule in Xinjiang, accused Chinese security forces of over-reacting in quelling peaceful protests by thousands of people, and said police had fired indiscriminately.
The unrest echoes deadly violence in Buddhist Tibet in March last year when Tibetans stormed through the streets of the region's capital, Lhasa, attacking Han Chinese in frustration at what they claimed was repressive Chinese rule.
Many of Xinjiang's roughly eight million Uighurs similarly say they have suffered political, cultural and religious persecution.
As in Tibet, they also complain about Han Chinese moving into Xinjiang and dominating economic and political life.
Alim Seytoff, general secretary of the Uighur American Association, told AFP in Washington that he feared the death toll was higher than the three reported by Beijing.
Seytoff said Uighur students were seeking the arrest of suspects behind an ethnically charged brawl late last month at a factory in southern China that left two Uighurs dead.
"These young Uighurs peacefully took to the streets but more than 1,000 armed Chinese police came out," Seytoff told AFP. "What we were told is that they began to shoot indiscriminately."
Kadeer also blamed Chinese authorities in a statement released by the Uighur American Association.
"This incident could have been avoided if the Chinese authorities had properly investigated the Shaoguan killings," Kadeer said, referring to the factory brawl.
"Young Uighurs exercised their right to peacefully protest the mishandling of the killings and were in turn met with government violence."
Xinjiang is a rugged region of vast deserts and mountains that borders central Asia, and the Uighurs are a Turkic-speaking people who have closer cultural links to their regional neighbours than the Han Chinese.
This year marks 60 years since communist Chinese troops entered Xinjiang and "peacefully liberated" the region. Advocates of independence for the area have maintained the move was an invasion.
- AFP/so
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