Yahoo
News
By Tyra Dempster and Mark Chisholm Tyra Dempster And
Mark Chisholm
– 1 hr 46 mins ago
The situation in Communist China continuws
to escalate in its Western Muslim States as Muslims become bolder and bolder in
definace of Bejing.
URUMQI, China (Reuters) – At least 140 people have been
killed in rioting in China's northwestern region of Xinjiang, with the government blaming exiled
separatists for the Muslim area's worst case of unrest in years.
Hundreds of rioters have been arrested, the official Xinhua
news agency reported, after rock-throwing Uighur people took to the streets of
the regional capital on Sunday, some burning and smashing vehicles and
confronting ranks of anti-riot police.
The unrest underscores the volatile ethnic tensions that
have accompanied
Along with
But analysts said the fresh trouble in the remote
resource-rich region was unlikely to have a major impact on
"In terms of China's domestic economy, it is in a
remote place and it does not have a big impact on things generally unless there
is some evidence, of which there is none, that the government is in some
meaningful way losing control," said Arthur Kroeber, Managing Director of
Dragonomics, a research and advisory firm in Beijing.
"Unfortunately ... this will bring a negative impact on
Signaling a security crackdown in the strategic region near
"This was a crime of violence that was pre-meditated
and organized," Xinhua quoted the unnamed official as saying.
He blamed the violence on the World Uyghur Congress led by Rebiya Kadeer, a Uighur businesswoman now in
exile in the
But exiled Uighur groups adamantly rejected the Chinese
government claim of a plot. They said the riot was an outpouring of pent-up
anger over government policies and Han
Chinese dominance of economic opportunities.
"This is regional unrest only," said Zheshang
Securities analyst Zhang Yanbing.
HAN CHINESE TARGETED
Li Zhi, the Communist Party boss of
regional capital
Xinhua did not give the ethnic identity of the dead, or say
if they were civilians or police, but admissions at the People's Hospitals, one
of the biggest in
Xinhua said the hospital received 291 people of whom 17 died
later. Among them 233 were Han Chinese, 39 were Uighurs, while the rest were
from other ethnic minorities.
The riot in
"In Xinjiang one of
the major sources of discontent is that there is still a major gap economically
between Han and Uighurs," said Barry Sautman, a specialist on
Almost half of Xinjiang's 20 million people are Uighurs. The
population of
Chinese state television showed rioters throwing rocks at
police and overturning a police car, and smoke billowing from burning vehicles.
"I personally saw several Han people being stabbed. Many people on buses were
scared witless," Zhang Wanxin, a
Police rounded up "several hundred" who
participated in the violence, including more than 10 key players who fanned
unrest, Xinhua said, and are searching for 90 others.
Residents in
(Additional reporting by Chris
Buckley, Emma Graham-Harrison, Yu Le and Benjamin Kang Lim in