Scores die at Muslim rally in China
Updated on 06 July 2009
Violence at a Muslim rally in China has left 156 people dead and more than 800 injured.
The government blamed exiled separatists from the traditionally Muslim Xinjiang region, in the west of the country, for the worst case of unrest in years.
Reports in China said hundreds of people have been arrested after protesters from the Uighur minority took to the streets of the regional capital Urumqi on Sunday, burning and smashing vehicles and shops, and clashing with police.
Police also dispersed about 200 people "trying to gather" at the Id Kah mosque in the centre of the Silk Road city of Kashgar, the official Xinhua news agency said.
The unrest underscores the volatile ethnic tensions that have accompanied China's growing economic and political stake in its western frontiers.
Along with Tibet, Xinjiang is one of the most politically sensitive regions in China and in both places the government has sought to maintain its grip by controlling religious and cultural life while promising economic growth and prosperity.
But minorities have long complained that Han Chinese have reaped most of the benefits from official subsidies, while making locals feel like outsiders in their own homes.
No figures have been given on the ethnic identity of the dead but a senior security official said that many of the bodies he saw were Han Chinese, suggesting an explosion of pent-up anger against the economically dominant group.
"It was like a war zone here, with many bodies of ethnic Han people lying on the road," Xinhua quoted Huang Yabo, deputy director of the Urumqi Public Security Bureau, as saying.
Anti-riot police have restored order in Urumqi and security remains tight. Tensions between Uighurs and Chinese are never far from the surface in Xinjiang, China's vast Central Asian buffer province.
Uighur separatists have demanded independence in recent decades, and the military, armed police and riot squads maintain a visible presence in the region.
And in a sign that the unrest might be spreading, Xinhua said that along with the protest in Kashgar, police also had information about efforts to organise unrest in Aksu city and Yili prefecture.
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