A year after an attack on ethnic minority Uyghurs at the Xuri Toy Factory in southern China’s Shaoguan left at least two people dead, sparking further ethnic tensions across the country, no Uyghur workers remain on the payroll, workers said.

A Han Chinese worker at the factory, who was there when the violence was sparked in late June last year by the rumor of a sexual assault on a Chinese woman by Uyghurs, said the anniversary had passed without comment or incident, and that production had continued as normal.

“The actual situation on the ground was far worse than the rumors circulating on the Internet,” he said.

But he declined to give details, nor to elaborate on the reasons for the clashes.

The Far West China blog also looks back at the Shaoguan clash and its importance.

Read more about the Shaoguan incident and the subsequent riots in Urumqi via CDT.

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The ethnic Uighur man was attacked by a Han Chinese man in a restaurant in Shenzhen, a city close to Shaoguan in Guangdong province where a massive brawl broke out at a factory between a group of Han Chinese and Uighur workers from Xinjiang last June, the South China Morning Post reported.

The Shaoguan incident triggered serious ethnic rioting in Xinjiang’s capital Urumqi when Uighurs attacked Han Chinese, killing at least 197 people.

“I can’t say the suspect was targeting Uighurs. But this is a traumatizing experience for me. We will return to Xinjiang once police finish questioning,” the Uighur owner of the Xinjiang barbeque restaurant was quoted as saying by the paper.

Seven Han Chinese men were arrested and reportedly fired from their jobs afterwards.

Read also a China Daily report.

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The convicts – all of whom have names suggesting they are from the Uighur ethnic minority – were found guilty of murder, arson and robbery during the riots, which left almost 200 people dead.

The sentencing – announced by the state-run China Central Television – appeared to be aimed at mollifying the anger of the Han Chinese majority, many of whom rallied in the regional capital of Urumqi last month to call for swift retribution.

But overseas Uighur groups warned that the harsh punishments and lack of due legal process could further inflame tensions.

Fears of new unrest prompted the authorities to step up security in Urumqi ahead of the sentencing.

Update: See a post from the China Law & Policy blog about this trial.

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A court in southern China has handed out a death sentence to a man involved in a brawl in July blamed for being the trigger to deadly riots in the restive far western region of Xinjiang.

State media said the fight erupted between a group of Han Chinese and ethnic Uighur workers from Xinjiang at a factory in Shaoguan, Guangdong province, after a rumour spread that some Uighurs had raped two women.

The courts in Shaoguan also gave another man life imprisonment, and nine others got sentences ranging from five to eight years in jail, the official Xinhua news agency said.

Picture above are others who were sentenced for their involvement in the fight. More details, from Xinhua:

[F]ellow worker Xu Qiqi was given a life jail term after they were convicted of manslaughter.

The same court also sentenced three of Xiao’s accomplices to prison terms from seven to eight years on charges of assault.

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When the local government in Xinjiang province dispatched more than 800 Uighur workers to a toy factory here in May, they couldn’t have predicted their fate would blow up into a national crisis. Today, police say two of the Uighur workers were killed and scores more injured in the June 26 events that ignited a firestorm of protest in restive Xinjiang. More mysteriously, some 700 of the original Uighur workers of Shaoguan’s massive electronic toy factory are being held out of sight behind locked gates roughly 10 miles away in an abandoned factory. Their plight, and the lack of quick police action on the initial murders, sparked mass protests and killings on July 5 in the Urumqi, adding the latest cracks in China’s façade of ethnic harmony.

“The Uighurs are like wild men,” said Li Xiaoming, a factory worker from Sichuan province. “They carry knives and steal things, they never do what the bosses tell them.” His comment is par for the course among Han Chinese factory workers and locals across the manufacturing region. Most Han migrant workers in these parts, with little exposure to the outside world themselves, appear to have deep-rooted bias about Uighurs and what they might do. They appreciate the Uighurs’ dancing and food, but don’t trust them. “I think it’s possible they raped a girl,” said one factory worker outside an Internet café. “They made people nervous. They didn’t speak Chinese.”

Read the full article on the Far Eastern Economics Review. 

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Three weeks after simmering racial tension escalated to mayhem and a double murder at a toy factory here, about 750 Uighur workers remain largely out of sight, behind locked gates and guarded doors — perhaps because they are at the center of a storm that has brought international attention to a remote Chinese province.

Most of the Xinjiang migrants who arrived at the massive factory in northern Guangdong province in May are apparently being held in a branch workshop 15 miles up the road, after the fight here led to mass protests and killings 2,000 miles away in their home province. Their tightly guarded new home and workshop is sealed off, and requests to visit inside and interview the Uighur men playing pool behind the gates after dark were refused by guards without explanation.

When asked if those inside were allowed to leave, a guard replied sternly, “No, they can’t go out.” About 10 locals said they haven’t seen the Uighurs outside the gates since they were moved here following the Shaoguan factory murders on June 26, but government officials say they can come and go. Onlookers are quickly shuffled away from the gates and police closely monitor every move.

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Liang Jing, A common disaster for all peoples*

The bloody clashes in Xinjiang cast a long shadow over China’s future; Whether Uighur or Han, they were victims of the ruthless, greedy and incompetent CCP regime. I believe that both the Han and Uighur people are heavy-hearted today, because they all know that Pandora’s box has been opened, the demon has been released, and there will be more innocent Han and Uighur victims of bloody conflict. Where is Hu Jintao’s harmonious society? How will he confront the reality of racial revenge? Does he really think people will accept his blaming everything on instigation by overseas Xinjiang independence elements?

Sixty years ago, the CCP, in order to control Xinjiang, carried out an extremely bloody repression of Uighur separatist forces in which tens of thousands of people were killed. But this was the era when “class revolution” had the upper hand, and when even more Han “class enemies” were physically eliminated. The fact is that the generation of Chinese leaders who took over the country not only failed to provoke deeper ethnic hatred due to the killings, but thanks to their hard drive and spirit of sacrifice created an unprecedented state of national harmony—or, stated differently, the illusion of a harmonious nation—in Xinjiang.

However, when the Communists betrayed their ideal of liberating the world’s poor, and began providing for their own well-being, a resurgence of national separatism in Xinjiang was scarcely avoidable. Hu Jintao’s generation of CPC successors who grew up drinking wolf’s milk, learned brutality from their rebellious forefathers, but failed to learn their down-to-earth work-style based on personal effort. All they can do apart from worshiping violence and money is repeat empty slogans. Over time, various contradictions mounted up and disaster finally broke out.

This large outbreak of conflict between Uighur and Han in Xinjiang comes as no great surprise to many people. The activities of the Xinjiang independence forces have been well known for a long time. Few, however, anticipated the scale of the conflict and the number of casualties. The most surprising is that the trigger for the outbreak of the conflict occurred thousands of kilometers from Xinjiang in Shaoguan, Guangdong. When I heard that bloodshed had occurred in Shaoguan between several hundred Uighur migrant workers and 2000 Han migrant workers I was taken aback: how could those in power in Xinjiang and Guangdong be so blinded with lust for gain as to actually want to send peasants from southern Xinjiang to Guangdong to solve the shortage of migrant workers—what was this but putting a flame to dry fuel?

The migrant worker system—essentially a system of state slavery—is a disaster for Chinese society. For a long time, China’s ruling elite have thought of it not as a shame, but on the contrary as glorious, that it was China’s comparative advantage. Everyone knows that China’s migrant workers have neither individual nor collective dignity, and having been humiliated to the hilt; their minds are flooded with grievances. According to official state­ments, an employee at Xuri toy factory had spread rumors sparking bloodshed between ethnic Han and Uighur workers. That one rumor could at once lead to such a large-scale upheaval is evidence that many migrant workers were already on the lookout for opportunities to let off steam.

The hundreds of millions of Han migrant workers were a volcano ready to erupt. The CPC rulers, quite insensitive to the dignity of the poor, recruited thousands of poor Uighurs to Shaoguan from thousands of miles away, claiming to be alleviating poverty. In their eyes, there was no difference between the poor and animals; they are but factors of production that can be “configured” as they please to obtain the greatest economic output. However, the poor Uighurs were not so crass as to be unaware of their abject status; that the CPC gained enormous wealth from Xinjiang’s oil and gold deposits, while they themselves had no rights to a share in these resources;or that they need not have been so poor, need not have had to leave their homes and families, to suffer humiliation in such a remote and unfamiliar foreign land.

Xinjiang has always had ethnic conflict, but this was not the primary cause of the tragedy that has just taken place in Urumqi. The real curse is the government’s greed, incompetence and blind faith in violence. If it had only come to its senses a little, been less convinced of its own cleverness, less self-deceived. If it had just honestly faced the people, respected them, cared about their problems, listened to their voices, separatist forces would not have such a big impact or led to such a large-scale ethnic bloodshed. It is this abysmal government that is in fact the disaster shared by people of all ethnicities.

________________________________

* Liang Jing, “Ge minzu renmin de gongtong zainan” [A common disaster for all peoples], , 8 July 2009 [梁京： “各族人民的共同灾难”，2009年7月 8日.].

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A post on a local website that said “Six Xinjiang boys raped two innocent girls at the Xuri Toy Factory” caused the brawl, a municipal government spokesman said.

Police found that the former worker of Xuri, surnamed Zhu, faked the information to express his discontent as Zhu failed to get re-employed after quitting the job.

Police found no rape cases at the Xuri Toy Factory.

See also a Reuters report. Also from the Straits Times:

The authorities have reportedly told major Internet chatrooms to remove postings about the clash as it could impede the government’s policy of encouraging coastal provinces to hire minorities from China’s less-developed western region.

In an official confirmation that the incident took place, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported yesterday that more than 400 policemen had been called in to break it up. The plant is owned by Hong Kong tycoon Francis Choi.

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Ethnic clashes between Han Chinese and Uighur workers at a toy factory in China’s southern Guangdong province killed two people and injured 118, a newspaper reported on Saturday.

In a massive night brawl at the “Early Light” toy factory in Guangdong’s Shaoguan city, a group of Han Chinese fought with Uighurs from China’s northwestern Xinjiang region who had been recently recruited to the factory, Hong Kong’s Ming Pao newspaper reported.

The violence lasted until the early hours of Friday morning and at least 16 were seriously injured, the newspaper reported.

About 400 riot police had to be deployed to quell the unrest as the rival workers battled, some with knives and metal pipes. The violence was reportedly sparked by a spate of crimes at the factory following the arrival of around 600 Uighur workers in May this year, the newspaper said.

See also reports from Xinhua and AP.
[Photo from www.motorfans.com.cn]

Update: See more from ESWN.

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A labour dispute at Shenzhen Zhongjin Lingnan Nonfemet Co Ltd (000060.SZ: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), China’s third-largest zinc producer, has been resolved and has not affected output, company officials said on Tuesday.

“There was no impact on output,” an executive at Shaoguan Smelter, the state-run company’s only smelter and site of the dispute, told Reuters by telephone.

The executive added that the dispute, which broke out on Monday, had not occurred during working hours.

Xinhua’s report on this event is here.

Here are photos from Chinese blogosphere:

[Gallery = 8]

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