Just over a year ago, a violent lash broke out between Uighur and Han workers at a toy factory in Shaoguan. The following week, violent riots erupted in Urumqi, capital of the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region. RFA reports:
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.
