The Washington Post reports on the installation of 4,000 surveillance cameras in Urumqi:
China has installed about 40,000 high-definition surveillance cameras in the western region of Xinjiang days before the one-year anniversary of the country’s worst ethnic violence in decades.
The security cameras with “riot-proof” protective shells will be monitored by police at more than 4,000 public locations, including on city streets and buses and in schools and shopping malls, city government spokesman Ma Xinchun said Friday.
Long-simmering tensions between Xinjiang’s minority Uighurs and majority Han Chinese migrants turned into open violence in the streets of Urumqi – the capital of the traditionally Muslim region – last July. The government says 197 people were killed. Beijing blamed overseas Uighur (pronounced WEE-gur) groups of plotting the violence, but exile groups denied it.
