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Riots in China’s Muslim minority region

BEIJING: Riots broke out in the capital city of China’s Muslim-majority Xinjiang autonomous region on Sunday with hundreds of protesters attacking passers-by and torching vehicles.

Xinjiang is home to 8 million Uighur Muslims, a minority group in China, and the region has seen intermittent tensions between Uighurs and China’s majority Han ethnic group. Sunday’s violence in the capital city of Urumqi follows racial violence between Uighurs and Han Chinese that took place in southern China last week and left two Uighurs dead and 118 others injured.

China’s State-run Xinhua agency reported that “an unknown number gathered on Sunday afternoon in Urumqi” and began “attacking passers-by and setting fire to vehicles.” Official reports did not mention the cause behind the violence. Xinhua reported that soon after clashes broke out, “police rushed to the site to maintain order.”

A local journalist, who asked not to be identified, told The Hindu that hundreds of Uighurs had on Sunday gathered to protest last weeks violence between Uighurs and Han Chinese.

A video of Sunday’s protest filmed by an Urumqi resident, a copy of which is with The Hindu, shows a crowd of several hundred gathering in a city street, blocking traffic and raising slogans.

The local journalist said Sunday’s violence was not restricted to Urumqi, and had also spread to parts of Tianshan district where Urumqi is located.

On June 26, mass brawls between the two ethnic groups broke out in a factory in China’s southern Guangdong province leaving hundreds injured. The violence broke out after a message on a website claimed six Uighurs had raped two Han Chinese women. Local police later found the claim to be false, and said the message had been posted by a recently laid-off factory worker.

In recent years, the Chinese government has introduced a policy of encouraging factories in the prosperous south to hire minority Uighur workers from Xinjiang. Unemployment among Uighurs is high in Xinjiang and is one reason for the tension in the region, with many Uighurs blaming the increasing Han Chinese migrant population for restricting job opportunities. The recruitment policy has however been unpopular with Han Chinese.

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