Rupee News

The riots in Tehran had hardly died down, when the the spark for riots in Uighurs gave people the reason to come out in the streets of Urumqi and protest. Alama Iqbal mentioned Kashgar in his poetry. The bearded man in the picture is in Kashgar. This is again very similar to the instant spark at the Tienemin Square, and the Tibet rioting right before the Olympics. Surely, if there is any CIA involvement in this mess, Chinese US relations will take a nose dive. The CIA ops are very clever. They probably want to create a wedge between China and Pakistan and may plant enough evidence to involve the “Taliban“. RAW has been looking for opportunities in China. It has sponsored the rioting in Tibet and tried to create problems for Beijing in the areas bordering Southern Tibet. Bharat actually occupies Southern Tibet and has renamed it “Arunchal Pradesh”. The Uigher World Congress shows the Indian version of world maps, and also support the the inpdependence of Tibet–a favorite Bharti hobby horse.

Riots in the restive, mainly Muslim region of Xinjiang could hardly have come at a worse time for Beijing as the Government prepares to celebrate its biggest party for a decade.

Nothing must rain on its parade. After all, the planned march past the capital’s famed Gate of Heavenly Peace — Tiananmen — where Chairman Mao declared the founding of the People’s Republic on October 1, 1949, is to be trumpeted as a moment of national unity and patriotic pride. Signs that minority Turkic-speaking Uighurs in the far West are disgruntled contradict all the official messages of harmony and ethnic unity.

Propaganda mandarins will have to move into overdrive to calm fraying tempers in the far West, while security forces will be beefed up in troublespots — such as Xinjiang and Tibet — where local people with grievances might try to spoil the fun. After all, this is a moment when the nation’s 1.3 billion people must be seen, above all, to be happy and living together as one. Unrest threatens to jeopardise the whole fiesta.

Security officials will start to see conspiracies behind the riot. They will attribute the unrest to outside influences, to a small minority with ulterior motives. UK Times

One of the Uighur leaders Rebiya Kadeer is U.S.-based. There are rumors around Washington on the Bharti source of funding to Kadeer, Alim Seytoff and others. Unlike Tibet, Uighurs are not a celebrity cause– possibly because the Uighurs are Turkic Muslims. The government and the people of Pakistan do not support the insurgent Uighurs. The captured ones are instantly sent back to China and many have been deported to Gitmo. The Western and Indian media is in overdrive threatening the unity and territorial integrity of “the Middle Kingdom”. The Chinese media is is openly blaming US based rebels.

Initial investigation showed the unrest was masterminded by the World Uyghur Congress led by Rebiya Kadeer, according to the regional government. “The unrest is a preempted, organized violent crime. It is instigated and directed from abroad, and carried out by outlaws in the country,” a government statement said early Monday. According to the government, the World Uyghur Congress has recently been instigating an unrest via the Internet among other means, calling on the outlaws “to be braver” and “to do something big.”

Nur Bekri, chairman of the Xinjiang regional government, said in a televised speech Monday morning that the movement came after a conflict between Uygur and Han ethnic people in a toy factory in the southern Guangdong province on June 26. Two Uygur workers were killed during the factory brawl, which was triggered by a sex assault by a Uygur worker toward a Han female worker. A total of 120 others of both Han and Uygur ethnic groups were injured.

Nur Bekri said the brawl was used by some overseas opposition forces to instigate Sunday’s unrest and undermine the ethnic unity and social stability in the autonomous region, with an aim to split the country. “We should bare in mind that stability is to the greatest interest of all people in China, including the people in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region,” he said.

He blamed the “three forces” of terrorism, separatism and extremism for making use of the event to sabotage the country, adding that their attempts are doomed to fail. Xinhua Chinese News Agency

Of course the riots are small. A thousand people assembling in droves in Urumqi, do not an insurgency make. However there are distinct reports that Bharat with its two bases in Kyrgistan wants to create trouble for China and Pakistan. The 7 Indian Consulates in Afghanistan have been involved in training, arming and supporting mercenaries who have ended up in Pakistan. Many have made their way into China also.

“Uighurs have suffered for years under racial profiling and unjust government policies that have painted the entire Uighur population as criminals and terrorists,” U.S.-based Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer said in a statement released last week. Times Online.

Pakistan must continue to quietely work with the Chinese to help China eliminate the perceptions of discrimination among the Uighurs. At the same time, the government must clamp down on any Uighur nationalists that show up in Pakistan.

BEIJING — At least 1,000 rioters clashed with the police on Sunday in a regional capital in western China after days of rising tensions between Muslim Uighurs and Han Chinese, according to witnesses and photographs of the riot.

The rioting broke out Sunday afternoon in a large market area of Urumqi, the capital of the vast, restive desert region of Xinjiang, and lasted for several hours before riot police officers and paramilitary or military troops locked down the Uighur quarter of the city. The rioters threw stones at the police and set vehicles on fire, sending plumes of smoke into the sky, while police officers used firehoses and batons to beat back rioters and detain Uighurs who appeared to be leaders of the protest, witnesses said.

At least three Han Chinese were killed in the rioting and 20 people were injured, according to Xinhua, the official news agency. Dozens of Uighur men were led into nearby police stations with their hands behind their backs and shirts pulled over their heads, one witness said. Early Monday, the local government announced a curfew banning all traffic in the city until 8 p.m.

The riot was the largest ethnic clash in China since the Tibetan uprising of March 2008, and perhaps the biggest protest in Xinjiang in years. Like the Tibetan unrest, it highlighted the deep-seated frustrations felt by some ethnic minorities in western China over the policies of the Communist Party.

Many Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking Muslim group, resent rule by the Han Chinese, and Chinese security forces have tried to keep oil-rich Xinjiang under tight control since the 1990s, when cities there were struck by waves of protests, riots and bombings. Last summer, attacks on security forces took place in several cities in Xinjiang; the Chinese government blamed separatist groups.

Uighurs taking part in the riot on Sunday were furious over an ethnic brawl between Uighur and Han workers that broke out on June 26 in a toy factory in Guangdong and that resulted in the deaths of two Uighurs. A total of 116 people were injured. The police later arrested an ex-employee of the factory who had ignited the brawl by starting a rumor that six Uighur men had raped two Han women at the work site, Xinhua reported.

There was also a rumor going around on Sunday in Urumqi that a Han man had killed a Uighur earlier that day in the city, said Adam Grode, an English teacher and former Fulbright scholar living in the neighborhood where the rioting took place.

“This is just crazy,” Mr. Grode said in a telephone interview on Sunday night. “There was a lot of tear gas in the streets, and I almost couldn’t get back to my apartment. There’s a huge police presence.” NYT

Exiled Uighur leaders are coming out of the woodwork making statements against China.

An exiled Uighur leader disputed the authorities’ version of events and said police had fired indiscriminately on students holding a peaceful protest over an ethnically charged brawl late last month at a factory in southern China that left two Uighurs dead.

“These young Uighurs peacefully took to the streets but more than 1,000 armed Chinese police came out,” Alim Seytoff, head of the Uighur American Association, told AFP in Washington.

“What we were told is that they began to shoot indiscriminately,” said Seytoff, who said he was in contact with Urumqi residents. “More than three were killed, but we don’t know how many. Hundreds of others were injured.” AFP

Does this mean that the enemies of China are working overtime to hit the country? Some will surely try.

People in East Turkistan “burned vehicles and blocked traffic in the regional capital Urumqi, and police rushed to the scene to impose order”, the China-state news agency reported on Sunday.

East Turkistan was occupied by the communist China in 1949 and its name was changed in 1955. The communist China has been excersizing a colonial rule over the East Turkistan since then. The report from the Xinhua news agency did not specify the ethnicity of those involved in the unrest. World Bulletin

Rumors of Uighurs attacking Han Chinese spread quickly through parts of Urumqi, adding to the panic. A worker at Texas Restaurant, a few hundred yards from the site of the rioting, said her manager urged the restaurant workers to stay inside. “My boss went home in the evening and called us saying he had heard that Uighurs were beating Han Chinese, so we’d better stay in the restaurant,” said the worker, a woman who gave only her surname, Wang.

Xinhua reported few details of the riot on Sunday night. It said that “an unknown number of people gathered Sunday afternoon” in Urumqi, “attacking passers-by and setting fire to vehicles.”

Uighurs are the largest ethnic group in Xinjiang but are a minority in Urumqi, where Han Chinese make up more than 70 percent of the two million or so people. The Chinese government has encouraged Han migration to the city and other parts of Xinjiang, fueling resentment among the Uighurs. Urumqi is a deeply segregated city, with Han Chinese there rarely venturing into the Uighur quarter and often warning visitors to stay away from the area.

The Uighur neighborhood is centered in a warren of narrow alleyways, food markets and a large shopping area called the Grand Bazaar or the Erdaoqiao Market, where the rioting reached its peak on Sunday.

Mr. Grode, who lives in an apartment there, said he went outside when he first heard commotion around 6 p.m. He saw hundreds of Uighurs in the streets; that quickly swelled to more than 1,000, he said. When public buses stopped at the scene, Uighurs riding inside opened the windows and joined the crowd in shouting slogans.

Police officers soon arrived. Around 7 p.m., protesters began hurling rocks, vegetables and other goods from the market at the police, Mr. Grode said. Traffic had ground to a halt, and some rioters threw stones at bus windows.

An hour later, as the riot surged toward the center of the market, troops in green uniforms and full riot gear showed up, as did armored vehicles. Chinese government officials often deploy the People’s Armed Police, a paramilitary force, to quell riots. The troops shot off tear gas canisters and might have fired other projectiles too, Mr. Grode said.

By midnight, he said, some of the armored vehicles had begun to leave, but bursts of gunfire could still be heard. NYT. By EDWARD WONG. Published: July 5, 2009

The impact of the small riots will be negligible. However the US offensive in Afghanistan has a destabilizing affect on all the neighboring countries of the SCO. These riots are possibly a direct result of the problems in Afghanistan.

So far the government has not disclosed how many people were involved in Sunday’s unrest, only said they illegally gathered and protested in several downtown places at about 7 p.m. Sunday and engaged in beating, smashing, looting and burning.

The government has arrested some rioters, although the exact number of people arrested was still not available. This year marks the region’s 60th anniversary of peaceful liberation. But during the annual “two session” in March this year, Nur Bekri warned the security situation in the region would be “more severe”.

“It’s a time of celebration for Xinjiang people but hostile forces will not give up such an opportunity to sabotage,” said the official. The far western autonomous region is home to more than 10.96 million of ethnic minority people, including Uygur, Mongolian and Hui. Xinhua Chinese News Agency