Authorities in the western frontier city of Hotan opened fire on a mob after it attacked a police station, set it on fire and took hostages, the report said.

One police official, a security guard and two hostages were killed in the incident, the report said.

Dilxat Raxit of the World Uyghur Congress told Reuters that police opened fire on peaceful demonstrators, which sparked the fighting.

“The people cannot stand the government’s repression any longer,” he told the news agency.

Simmering tension between the Han, China’s dominant ethnic group, and Xinjiang’s native Uighur minority, a Muslim, Turkic-speaking people, has led to violent clashes in the past.

BBC reports that the death toll may be higher:

At least eight hostages were held during the attack by “a mob” in the city of Hotan, state media said.

During a rescue operation two of the hostages, two security personnel and several attackers were killed.

A report from Xinhua says four were killed but gives no explanation of the cause of the violence:

Police gunned down several rioters who attacked a police station and killed four people in Hotan city of northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region on Monday noon, sources with the Ministry of Public Security said.

Rioters broke into the police station shortly after 12 p.m.. They assaulted the police, took hostages and set fire to the station, according to the ministry.

A member of the armed police, a security personnel and two hostages were killed during the ordeal, the ministry said, adding that another security personnel was severely injured.

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…The ethnic Mongolian protests that have swept a number of cities in recent weeks are a sobering reminder that government largess, assimilation or an iron fist cannot entirely extinguish the yearnings of some of China’s 55 ethnic minorities, who account for 8 percent of the country’s population.

Even as an exemption from the nation’s one-child policy granted to minorities helped expand their numbers, Mongolians are still outnumbered by Han five to one in Inner Mongolia, a region twice the size of California that borders the independent nation of Mongolia.

“We feel like we are being drowned by the Han,” said a 21-year-old computer science student, speaking through the fence of Hohhot Nationality University, where he and thousands of other Mongolian students were penned up for five days last week to prevent them from taking to the streets. “The government always talks about ethnic harmony, but why do we feel so oppressed?”

Although the immediate trigger of the demonstrations was a hit-and-run accident in which a Han coal truck driver struck and killed a Mongolian herder in early May, the underlying enmity can be tied to longstanding grievances that spilled out during interviews with more than a dozen Mongolians last week: the ecological destruction wrought by an unprecedented mining boom, a perception that economic growth disproportionately benefits the Han and the rapid disappearance of Inner Mongolia’s pastoral tradition.

Read more about the protests in Inner Mongolia via CDT.

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Deputy Mayor Zhang Hong reported the casualties at a news conference in the city, capital of the western region of Xinjiang. He said they died Thursday.

Thousands of Han Chinese flooded the streets in angry protests for a second day Friday to demand increased security in the city after a string of bizarre attacks of needle stabbings that appear to be ethnically motivated.

Police used tear gas and public appeals to break up crowds marching on government offices and called on authorities to punish those responsible for ethnic rioting in early July that left 197 people dead.

See also:
- “Police chief visits Urumqi to defuse unrest” from China Daily
- “Urumqi imposes rules to ban unlicensed demonstrations” from Xinhua
- “China blames ethnic separatists for needle attacks” from AP
- A slideshow from the BBC
- Previous reporting on the unrest via CDT.
- “Xinjiang ethnic groups united in hostility” from the Financial Times.
- “China Says Five Dead in Latest Xinjiang Unrest” from the New York Times.

Here is BBC’s video:

And from France 24:

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For the Uyghurs in Xinjiang and other non-Chinese minorities, the great concern is how far Chinese authority can resist increasingly populist opinion and retain this limited neutrality. The answer to this question will affect how far and how much non-Chinese minorities can identify with the state. As China’s society becomes more loose and state power recedes, government policy is more and more subject to social influences.

The Chinese authorities face a tough choice over how they maintain the state’s legitimacy and deal with ethnic relations (see Tsering Shakya, “Tibet and China: the past in the present”, 18 March 2009). If they seek to respond to growing Han Chinese ethnic nationalism by accelerating assimilation of non-Chinese groups, this would provoke the minority-nationalist causes with which the Chinese state found some accommodation in 1949: national self-determination and national liberation. But if they seek to amend and improve existing multi-ethnic arrangements to improve inter-ethnic relations in autonomous regions, they risk severe problems with Chinese business interests and popular opinions.

China has no easy way out. The fires of Lhasa, and now Urumqi, cannot be extinguished without the most intelligent and sophisticated policy mix. But even that might not be enough. Several genies are out of the bottle, and flying free. Welcome to the 21st century, China.

Temtsel Hao is a journalist with the BBC World Service, based in London.

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The myth of a monolithic China was shattered this past week. Running barely beneath the surface of what the government has sought to portray as a “harmonious” society, the fracture created by the Urumqi and Lhasa riots threatens to shake the country.

Foreigners and the Chinese themselves typically picture China’s population as a vast Han majority with a sprinkling of exotic minorities living along the country’s borders. This understates China’s tremendous cultural, geographic, and linguistic diversity—in particular the important cultural differences within the Han population. Across the country, China is experiencing a resurgence of local ethnicity and culture, most notably among southerners such as the Cantonese and Hakka, who are now classified as Han.

Cultural and linguistic cleavages could worsen in a China weakened by internal strife, an economic downturn, uneven growth, or a struggle over future political succession. The initial brawl between workers in a Guangdong toy factory, which left at least two Uighur dead on June 25, prompted the mass unrest in Xinjiang on July 5 that ended with 156 dead, thousands injured and 1,500 arrested, with ongoing violence spreading throughout the region.

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Thousands of Han Chinese roamed the streets of the western city of Urumqi today looking for vengeance after Sunday’s deadly riots as China’s leaders struggled to regain control of the country’s only Muslim-majority region.

Men and women of all ages, girls in high heels and young men in smart white shirts, brandished wooden staves, billiard cues, iron bars and even machetes as they surged towards the main city bazaar.

They were determined to attack the business heart of the Muslim Uighur minority blamed for the carnage in which 156 were killed and more than 800 injured.

The streets were lined with black-clad riot police and thousands of paramilitaries in camouflage and bulletproof vests who barred the mob’s way to the central market. Occasional bursts of tear gas failed to deter the angry crowd.

And from the Sydney Morning Herald:(...)
Read the rest of Angry Mobs Take to the Streets in Urumqi; Hu Jintao Returns Early from Italy (Updated) (1,332 words)

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Three people have been killed and more than 20 injured in violence in the city of Urumqi in China’s restive Xinjiang region, state media says.

Xinhua news agency said police had rushed to the city to restore order after demonstrators attacked passers-by and set fire to vehicles.

Xinhua did not say how many people were involved or what their motive was.

But activists and eyewitnesses said that those involved in the unrest were minority Muslim Uighurs.

A report from the Los Angeles Times gives more details:

The official New China News Agency said rioters were “attacking passersby and setting fire to vehicles,” but representatives for the Uighurs, a Muslim minority, described a peaceful demonstration that turned ugly because of government brutality.

Witnesses reported that riot police arrived on the scene in armored personnel carriers, dispersing the crowd with water cannons and tear gas, and firing warning shots into the air. At least 300 people were reported to be arrested. There were unconfirmed reports of deaths and injuries.

[...] The protests today were triggered by the June 26 killing of two young Uighur men at a toy factory in Guangdong province. According to Uighur sources, the men were beaten to death by a mob, enraged by false rumors that they had sexually harassed Han women.

Xinhua has already apportioned blame for the violence on exiled Uighur activist Rebiya Kadeer, based in Washington D.C., according to this report:

Initial investigation showed the unrest was masterminded by the World Uyghur Congress led by Rebiya Kadeer.

“The unrest is a preempted, organized violent crime. It is instigated and directed from abroad, and carried out by outlaws in the country,” a government statement said early Monday.

According to the government, the World Uyghur Congress has recently been instigating an unrest via the Internet among other means, calling on the outlaws “to be braver” and “to do something big.”

Nur Bekri, chairman of the Xinjiang regional government, said in a televised speech Monday morning that the move came after a conflict between Uygur and Han ethnic people in a toy factory in the southern Guangdong province in June 26, which led to the death of two Uygur workers.

Some comments from Chinese twitterers:

1. 无论身在何处，我都认为这个世界上最美丽的地方就是我的家乡乌鲁木齐。那里的一山一水一草一木每一个人都让我念念不忘。我永远属于那里。各民族和睦相处，难道这真是遥不可及的梦想吗？老天保佑善良的市民。不眠夜。
“No matter where I am, I think the most beautiful place on earth is my hometown, Urumqi. I can never forget the mountains, rivers, grasslands and trees, and the people. I will always belong to that place. All the ethnic groups co-existing in harmony, is this really an unreachable dream? God bless the kindhearted citizens. Sleepless nights.”

2. 虽然从小生活在新疆，我也有过汉族的民族优越感，而这种优越感可能使我对维族和其他少数民族产生心理歧视，原来没意识到，一直到自己看见这类民族冲突引发的暴力事件，才发现自己思想的狭隘，才意识到“民族自治”的真正意义。
“Although I lived in Xinjiang since I was little, I also have felt a sense of Han superiority, and this sense of superiority may have made me discriminate against Uighurs and other minorities. Originally I wasn’t even aware of this until I saw these types of violent ethnic conflicts, and then I discovered the narrowness of my own thinking, and became aware of the true significance of ‘ethnic autonomy.’”

Read what people are saying about this topic on twitter.

Also from Chinese blogger Yang Jie 杨杰:

2个多小时前，驱车经过乌鲁木齐人民广场（此广场在新疆的地位相当于天安门广场之于北京）时，偶然撞上了突发的骚乱场面，看见数百人（或许上千人）有组织地聚集在这里游行滋事，而且参加者都是维吾尔族人，他们中有人用汉语喊口号，有人用维语喊口号，吸引了无数人旁观。从他们半生不熟的汉语判断，应该不是乌鲁木齐本地的维吾尔族人（因为居住在新疆首府乌鲁木齐的维族人说汉语说得很流利）。这个广场的北侧是新疆区党委（省委）所在地，东南侧是区政府（省政府）所在地，历来就是城市的心脏地带，也是居住在周边的各族市民最喜欢光顾驻留的公共宵夜场所，在夏季的夜里总是人满为患。广场中心，矗立着人民解放军进疆纪念碑（新疆和平解放纪念碑），碑体与北京天安门广场的人民英雄纪念碑很相似。

About two hours ago, I drove by the People’s Square of Urumqi. (The square’s importance for Xinjiang is equivalent to the importance of Tiananmen Square for Beijing.) I coincidentally ran into the sudden riot. I saw hundreds (maybe almost a thousand) people gathered here marching, in an organized way. All participants were Uighurs. Some of them were shouting slogans in Chinese, and some in Uighur. They attracted a large crowd. Judging from their half-baked Chinese, they were probably not Uighurs from Urumqi, since Uighurs in the regional capital Urumqi usually speak fluent Chinese. The north of the Square is where the Party Committee of Xinjiang is, and the southeast side of the Square is where the provincial government building is. This is the heart of the city. It is also a popular place for residents of all ethnicities living nearby to spend their time in the evening. On summer nights the square is always very crowded. In the center of the Square, the monument of the People’s Liberation Army Entering XInjiang (also called the Monument of the Peaceful Liberation of Xinjiang) stands tall. The monument is similar to the Monument to the People’s Heroes in Tiananmen Square in Beijing.

And from blogger Li Puman (李普曼):

在网上乌鲁木齐二道桥维族暴乱的消息时，看到一些本族人的评论，许多人都支持武力镇压。而在乌鲁木齐的维族人，则毫无疑问的把所有的暴力对象都指向了汉人和汉人的财产。

原来在经济迅猛发展的掩盖下，民族间的对立也已经如此严重。我们彼此间充满了仇恨、不相信，于是彼此厮杀，暴力对抗暴力。我们彼此都成了不肯互相原谅，不愿意和解的民族？

又或者，是政府从来没想过和解。以至于许多人放弃了和解的希望？

I saw news online about riots in Urumqi, and read some of our Han Chinese opinions. Many comments support the use of force to crack down. And for the Uighurs in Urumqi, no doubt their target all pointed to Han Chinese and their properties.

Under the surface of rapid economic development, the conflict between ethnic nationalities is so severe. We are full of hatred and mistrust. We are killing each other, using violence against violence. We have become people who do not forgive and who do not want to reconcile.

Or, is it the government who has never thought about reconciliation, and therefore many people have given up the hope of reconciliation?

[Photos from freemorenews]

Update: Also see posts from English Xinjiang-based bloggers, Far West China and This is Xinjiang.

Listen to a statement by Nur Bekri, Chairman of the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, linking the riot today to the Shaoguan brawl, and blaming Rebiya Kadeer and others for using the Internet to stir up anger among Uighurs. ‘

The New York Times reports:

The clashes on Sunday began when the police confronted a protest march held by Uighurs to demand a full government investigation of an ethnic brawl between Uighur and Han workers that erupted in Guangdong Province overnight on June 25 and June 26. The brawl took place in a toy factory and left 2 Uighurs dead and 116 people injured. The police later arrested a bitter ex-employee of the factory who had ignited the fight by starting a rumor that 6 Uighur men had raped 2 Han women at the work site, Xinhua reported.

There was also a rumor going around on Sunday in Urumqi that a Han man had killed a Uighur earlier that day in the city, said Adam Grode, an English teacher living in the neighborhood where the rioting took place.

“This is just crazy,” Mr. Grode said by telephone Sunday night. “There was a lot of tear gas in the streets, and I almost couldn’t get back to my apartment. There’s a huge police presence.”

See also from Forbes, “Uighur Unrest: Will Xinjiang become another Tibet in 2009?” and a report from The Times.

Speaking of Tibet in 2008, here is CDT’s translation of “Tibet: Her Pain, My Shame” by Tang Danhong last year.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2009. | Permalink | 16 comments | Add to del.icio.us
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The court determined that the men, who were sentenced in the attack on Aug. 4 in the remote oasis town of Kashgar, were trying to “sabotage the Beijing Olympic Games that began Aug. 8,” Xinhua reported. The men, Abdurahman Azat, 33, and Kurbanjan Hemit, 28, are ethnic Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking Muslim people. Some Uighurs advocate independence in Xinjiang and resent what they call discriminatory policies put in place by the ruling ethnic Han Chinese.

Most, if not all, of the paramilitary officers killed or wounded on Aug. 4 were Han Chinese.

The Intermediate People’s Court of Kashgar sentenced the men for “intentional homicide and illegally producing guns, ammunition and explosives,” Xinhua reported.

The New York Times earlier published an account of this incident that differed from the official account.

Also related, the Ministry of Education has announced plans to teach Chinese school children about “ethnic unity”:

The new classes will run all the way through school, with high school students getting up to 14 hours a year to help them “recognise the superiority of our government and Communist Party’s ethnic policies,” and ensure they reflect them in their work.

Primary school children should learn a “basic awareness of the vital nature of ‘encouraging ethnic unity, protecting national unity and opposing ethnic separatism,”‘ said a summary of the policy posted on the ministry website.

Older children would gain a “correct understanding” of government and Party policy, while those in high school would also be expected to have a firm grasp on basic theory about “ethnic problems” and “establish a Marxist outlook on ethnicity.”

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1. Letter from a Mongolian guy:

I am also a minority, Mongolian. But unlike people from Xinjiang and Tibet, the Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region has been relatively calm. Inner Mongolia’s economy is relatively better, as it is said the GDP per capita here ranks 10th in the nation. On the edge of the road of any city, you can see Tibetans selling bones and straps, the Miao minority selling tea, and the Uighurs selling mutton string, but you can not see the Mongolians outside. I was told that to some extent this shows you the Mongolians have a pretty good life today, and do not need to endure a bitter life. I said, oh, that’s right. But I think to a greater extent, it reflects that Mongolian culture has been extremely marginalized and Mongolians are close to losing their identity. I’m very clear that there are inevitably Mongolians who work on the street. But they were not recognized, as their identity has been blurred.

The Mongolians around me in general feel very lost. They are in conflict with the Han Chinese sentiments, but get along very well with Han Chinese in daily life. But the feeling of being lost is strong there, I can sense that. I think I may be alarmist, but if there are days when the intensification of ethnic conflicts arise, the two sides will immediately turn on each other. It is just like World War II, when people were good neighbors the day before, but the next day they tormented you to death. In fact, those of us Mongolians who received higher education do not have such a narrow vision. The Mongolians I know generally think that nationality and state are very narrow things, and using geography or nationality to label a person is very funny. So we have always been opposed to being hostile to the Henanese or the Uygurs.

2. Letter from a Han Chinese girl (born in the late ’80s):

I slowly discovered that we all more or less have a deep-rooted concept that Uighurs are thieves, Tibetans are brutal, Shanghainese are shrewd calculators, Hunanese are hot tempered, Northeasterners love fighting, northern Jiangsuers are very country, and so on …. .. Before getting to know the people we already divided them by this or that kind of identity, just like a master buying slaves according to the condition of their teeth, which was just as brutally insulting. The more people you know, the more you find the crowd maintains this general view, not just toward Tibetans, the Uighurs, and Shanghainese. So many people have their own set of colored standards, such a strong habit of identity grows in the deep bone marrow of the entire nation. It is like blood running everywhere in a continuous cycle.

Today it’s the Tibetans, tomorrow it may be the Henanese who are thrown to the waves. People hurt each other and mutually judge each other. Thus, violence appears sooner or later, and it is far from over.

This time the Chinese Government’s approach has been very passive. It has been marginalized by the international media. If it is counted as a public relations crisis, the Chinese Government has failed, or, like its ethnic policy in Tibet, this effort is invalid.

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I suddenly remembered this event. In the summer of 2005, seven of us, all from a student theater group, went to Chengdu to attend a college student theater festival. After the performance, we took a train from Chengdu to go back to Lanzhou. There were only a few passengers in the car, almost all of whom got off within the borders of Sichuan province. After dark, there were only a few Tibetans and seven of us in our car. Soon a railway conductor came and asked us to sit in another car for safety reasons. We took our things and left the car. Now looking back, if I were one of those Tibetans at that time, how would I feel about this? Where did this feeling of “us” being threatened [by "them"] come from?

In my sophomore year I was in a dance group at the university. Our teacher especially invited two Tibetan students from the University of Nationalities to come to teach us. After they gave us lessons, they invited us to come to dance parties in their university. I really wanted to go, but no one else wanted to, so I did not go – because I dared not go there by myself. This psychology is interesting; most of us have never seen any unusual or bad behavior by students of other ethnic groups. But we are afraid of them for unknown reasons.

To me, it is even more puzzling, because I am part of a minority ethnic group myself. I am Zhuang. But my classmates do not seem to think very much of this. My roommates only noticed the difference when we were given “student aid for living expenses” each month: I got one Yuan more than them. How much can you really buy for one Yuan? Two steamed buns. But they will protest exaggeratedly: “This is not fair! You are not poorer than us!” They were just joking with me, and this is because they see me as part of “us.” I was not really being treated differently. We discuss such issues openly. One roommate said, “That is because you look just like us, (I insert: ‘but you always say I look Vietnamese’) and we have similar habits and customs in daily life. If you wear strange clothes, don’t eat this, don’t eat that, and get up in the middle of night to pray, than we may not get along that well.” Another roommate was even more direct: “You are too short. You can’t win if you fight with us.”

…Later in my college life these were small events. Because we had many Muslim students, our university has a special dining hall for Muslims. Last year, the university assigned a Han Chinese as the manager of the Muslim dinning hall, so some Muslim students protested. The result was that some Han Chinese students got really pissed off. Some wrote on BBS: The government has been very accommodating to you people, why are you still not satisfied? Why should we accommodate your customs, instead of you accommodating ours? The government has given you a privileged policy and you still want more? (Please note, there are many such viewpoints in online commentaries about recent events in Tibet.) And the rebuttal post (from Muslim students) then asked, Why does the government consider its policy toward ethnic groups as a “special favor”? Maybe the government itself thinks that’s a “special favor” [not us]? Why whenever we demand something, is it immediately considered as “rebellion”?

These are my experiences of relations between different nationalities in the university. Simply put, the gap comes when both sides cannot communicate with each other.

But if I have to look for more reasons in other areas, I gradually realized that the government and some Han people think of it as charity to give ethnic minorities “favors,” and that these minorities should stay in their place after being given such “favors.” They should not misbehave, or be so different [from Han]. But the problem is, the cultural and religious traditions of minority groups have far deeper historical roots than the government. You cannot expect a little “favor” could change that. As for the gap between people in different ethnic groups, I think they come from the following two aspects:

First, under the current political system, ideology is almost as important as sovereignty. To the Communist Party, it would be best if every Chinese believed their official ideology – so-called Marxism with Chinese characteristics. But there are still many people who believe in religion. And for those who do not believe in religion, the official ideology is not very attractive to them either. Therefore there are three different attitudes: those who loyally believe the official ideology (I really do not want to call it “socialism” or “communism”); those who do not believe but at least do not openly oppose it (I am one of them); and those who do not believe [the official ideology] but have their own beliefs. For the Communist Party, which based its legitimacy to rule on economic performance and nationalist ideology, the last kind is most terrifying. The state’s distrust of those who do not believe in the state ideology diffuses into the society, creating the gap between different ethnic groups.

Second, Chinese political culture has never been interested in protecting an individual’s rights and freedom, because it considers individual rights to be created by the state, and they can be taken back [by the state] at any time. The natural extension of such disrespect for individual rights is disrespect for minority’s rights. People believe it is normal if you are just like others; otherwise, you are abnormal. People always sided with the majority and are afraid to be different from others. There even some people who distance themselves and mistreat minorities in order to show their identity with the majority. This is not limited to the area of relations between nationalities. Also, if we take a serious look at the numbers, we will see many times that those “minorities” are actually a very large group of people.

I think that if the government still insists on impossible goals such as “unifying thoughts,” there will be only more friction between different cultures and people. The best policy is to allow different cultures to co-exist. If a society cannot tolerate different thoughts and different cultures, if it cannot tolerate minorities and independent individuals, then its development is very problematic. Even if one can temporarily suppress those dissatisfactions, it is even worse when those suppressed dissatisfactions accumulate. If I have to say that what I hope China will learn from all these events this year, it should be: more tolerance, more openness, more freedom.

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