China deploys troops to stop riots
Updated on 08 July 2009
Chinese soldiers flooded the streets of Urumqi today as the clampdown following Sunday's bloody protests intensified.
Violent clashes between ethnic Uighurs and Han Chinese have killed 156 people in the Xinjiang province's capital since the weekend, and prompted Chinese President Hu Jintao to abandon plans to attend a G8 summit today.
Troops and convoys of army vehicles were met with applause from many residents of the city's Han Chinese neighbourhoods today as they patrolled the streets.
Anti-riot police blocked off main streets in the city, where at least 1,080 were people have been injured and 1,434 arrested in fighting between Han Chinese and Muslim Uighurs since Sunday.
A curfew was imposed on last night after thousands of Han Chinese stormed through the streets demanding redress and sometimes extracting bloody vengeance for Sunday's violence, much of which involved ethnic Uighurs targeting Han settlers and their businesses.
Han Chinese mobs wielding clubs, metal bars, cleavers and axes took to the streets last night, while Uighurs, many of them women, also protested, defying rows of anti-riot police and telling reporters that their husbands, brothers and sons had been taken away in indiscriminate arrests.
Despite the high security, Han Chinese business owners gathered together, many holding blunt objects that could be used to fend off further attacks.
Han Chinese resident Mr Chen said he was relieved that troops had restored order to the streets.
"There are soldiers everywhere, so there's no problem, there are soldiers outside everything," he said.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry said on its website that President Hu Jintao had left Italy for China "due to the situation" in Xinjiang, and that state councillor Dai Bingguo would attend the G8 summit in his place.
The summit was due to open in the central Italian city of L'Aquila later on Wednesday and Hu had been scheduled to join the talks tomorrow.
Xinjiang has long been a tightly controlled hotbed of ethnic tensions, fostered by an economic gap between many Uighurs and Han Chinese, government controls on religion and culture and an influx of Han migrants who now are the majority in most key cities, including Urumqi.
But the torrid anger on both sides of the region's ethnic divide will now make controlling Xinjiang, with its gas reserves and trade and energy ties to central Asia, all the more testing for the ruling Communist Party.
The government has blamed the Sunday killings on exiled Uighurs seeking independence for their homeland, especially Rebiya Kadeer, a businesswoman and activist now living in exile in the United States.
Kadeer has condemned the violence on both sides, and again denied being the cause of the unrest.
Uighurs, a Turkic people who are largely Muslim and share linguistic and cultural bonds with Central Asia, make up almost half of Xinjiang's 20 million people.
