China Releases Xinjiang “Most Wanted” List; More Filmmakers Boycott Melbourne Festival

AFP reports:

Police in China’s Urumqi city have issued a list with photos of 15 suspects wanted in connection with ethnic unrest this month that the government says left 197 dead, state media said Thursday.

Police in the city, capital of the remote northwestern Xinjiang region, said those who turned themselves in would be treated leniently while those who did not would be “punished severely”, Xinhua news agency said.

Members of the Uighur ethnic group say the unrest was touched off when Urumqi police responded violently to peaceful protests over an earlier brawl at a factory in southern China that state media said left two Uighurs dead.

However, the government says Uighurs, most of whom are Muslim, went on a rampage in Urumqi against members of China’s dominant Han ethnic group.

Meanwhile, the government has denied activist Rebiya Kadeer’s claim that 10,000 Uighurs disappeared overnight in Urumqi after the riots there. From the Guardian:

Rebiya Kadeer, who heads the exile group the World Uighur Congress, alleged in a speech in Tokyo yesterday that snatch squads had targeted Uighurs.

But a spokeswoman for the Xinjiang regional government, Hou Hanmin, said the figures were inaccurate and “completely fabricated.”

Hou said: “How many prisons and holding cells do you think we would need in Urumqi to hold 10,000 people? She was not there that day, so she has no place to talk about what happened.”

Hou said Kadeer had no proof and “no matter who she tells, no one will believe her”.

As Kadeer plans a visit to Australia, more Chinese filmmakers are withdrawing their films from the Melbourne International Film Festival to protest against her attendance.

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