Chinese troops flood into restive Urumqi

Poor Migrants Describe Grief From China’s Ethnic Strife

URUMQI, China — As Muslim Uighurs rampaged through the streets of this western provincial capital on Sunday, Zhang Aiying rushed home and stashed her fruit cart away, safe from the mob. But there was no sign of her son, who ventured out amid the ruckus to retrieve another of the family’s carts.

“Call him on his cellphone,” Ms. Zhang, 46, recalled shouting to another relative. “Tell him we want him home. We don’t need him to go back.”

Her son, Lu Huakun, did not answer the call. Three hours later, after the screaming and pleading had died down, Ms. Zhang went in search of him. A dozen bodies were strewn about. She found her son, his head covered with blood, his left arm nearly severed into three pieces.

The killing of Mr. Lu, 25, was a ruinous end to the journey of a family that had fled their poor farming village in central China more than a decade ago to forge a new life here in China’s remote desert region.

Mr. Lu and his parents are typical of the many Han migrants who, at the encouragement of the Chinese government, have settled among the Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking race that is the largest ethnic group in oil-rich Xinjiang Province. The influx of Han, the dominant ethnic group in China, has transformed Xinjiang: the percentage of Han in the population was 40 percent in 2000, up from 6 percent in 1949.

“We wanted to do business,” Lu Sifeng, 47, the father, said Tuesday, his eyes glistening with tears as he sat smoking on his bed. “There was a calling by the government to develop the west. This place would be nothing without the Han.”

But migration has fueled ethnic tensions, as Uighurs complain about the loss of jobs, the proliferation of Han-owned businesses and the disintegration of their own culture.

On Sunday, Mr. Lu was among at least 156 people killed in the deadliest ethnic violence in China in decades. Rampaging Uighurs battled security forces and attacked Han civilians across Urumqi.

The riot had evolved from a protest march held by more than 1,000 Uighurs to demand that the government investigate an earlier brawl between Han and Uighurs in southern China.

The government, apparently hoping to tamp down racial violence, has not released a breakdown of the ethnicities of the 156 dead. But Mr. Lu’s father said that of more than 100 photographs of bodies that he looked through at a police station to identify his son, the vast majority were Han Chinese, most with their heads cut or smashed.

Each victim had a number. His son was 51.

“Of course, in recent days, we’ve been angry toward the Uighur,” Mr. Lu said. “And of course we’re scared of them.”

The family came from Zhoukou, in Henan Province, a poor part of central China. They grew wheat, corn and soybeans on a tiny plot of land. There was little money in it, and the parents heard of a way out: friends from Henan had gone to distant Xinjiang and were making enough money to support relatives back home.

It was the late 1990s, and the central government had announced a push to develop the west, promising that investment would soon flow to those long-neglected lands.

Mr. Lu and Ms. Zhang went first. The younger Mr. Lu followed after graduating from junior high school.

It was far from a bonanza. Others from Henan were selling fruit and vegetables, so the Lu family bought wooden fruit carts. They got a spot at an open-air market off Dawan North Road, on the border between Han and Uighur neighborhoods. Every day, they pushed their carts to work at 8 a.m. and did not shut down until midnight. In a good month, the family netted $300.

“He wasn’t so satisfied with life here,” Ms. Zhang said of her son. “He was so tired here, and there wasn’t so much money.”

Not a day went by that they did not miss their hometown, Ms. Zhang said. But until this past winter, they had never returned for a visit. They wanted to save the cost of train tickets.

They live in bare concrete rooms on the ground floor of an apartment block opposite the market. The kitchen has a makeshift two-burner stove a few feet from the parents’ bed. Most of their neighbors are fellow migrants from Henan and Sichuan.

At the market, about three-quarters of the 200 vendors are from those two provinces, the parents said. A handful of Uighurs sold fruit or raw mutton.

“Relations with the Uighurs were pretty good,” Ms. Zhang said. “There was a mutton stall beside the cart where my son sold fruit. On nights when my son didn’t want to bring his fruit home, he would ask the Uighur neighbor to keep the fruit inside his stall.”

This past winter, the family took the nearly 40-hour train ride home for the first time. The parents had arranged for Mr. Lu to marry a 23-year-old woman from home. The couple had photographs taken: Mr. Lu in a white turtleneck lying beside his bride-to-be in front of a beach backdrop; the smiling couple sitting on a white bench, each holding teddy bears in their laps.

The family returned to Xinjiang after scheduling the wedding for the end of this year.

On Sunday, as on any other day, Ms. Zhang, her son and a young cousin pushed four carts to the market. Mr. Lu’s father had gone to another province to buy fruit wholesale.

Abruptly at 8 p.m., the manager of the market told people to shut down immediately. More than 1,000 Uighurs were marching through the streets to protest government discrimination. Street battles erupted when riot police officers armed with tear gas and batons tried to disperse the crowd.

The first wave of the rioters arrived minutes later, weapons in hand. The younger Mr. Lu dashed home first and Ms. Zhang followed him. When she got home, she found that he had gone out again to rescue another cart.

She cried for three hours until she dared go out to look for him.

“I thought, if I don’t find a body, then maybe he’s in hiding and still alive,” she said. “But I quickly found the body.”

Mr. Lu’s father identified his son on Wednesday from a photograph at a police station.

“After we cremate the body, we’ll go home with the ashes,” Ms. Zhang said. The father stared at cigarette butts strewn across the floor. “We’ll never come back,” he said. source

 

If the China is down,the Chinese government will not be able to buy US national debt,then the government will need to retreat the troops from Afghanistan?At that time who will be the happynest man?And for us,when the US dollar is depreciated.We will receive less from Google Adsense.

 

Search for Han Chinese sister whose family were butchered by Uighurs

What was once a grocery shop is now a blackened mess. Two boys in shorts and singlets play in the rubble but the usual occupants are absent. Five days ago a Han Chinese family was butchered in this small shop — victims of the Uighurs who rampaged through Urumqi.

Yu Dongzhi described how he clawed through the smoking ruins of the store to search for the family who lived there. He hoped to find his sister, Yu Xinli; her husband, Zhang Mingying; their 13-year-old son; her elderly mother-in-law; and a nephew aged 27.

The police helped him to dig among sacks of flour and bottles of rice wine melted by the heat of the blaze.

He found no survivors, only four bodies. He has yet to discover the fate of his sister.

Mr Yu is a heavily built man in his fifties and more than 6ft, but he almost weeps with despair. “I just hope I can find my sister in an intensive care unit of one of the hospitals. But so far, nothing.”

He has checked the mortuaries and photo galleries of unclaimed bodies held by the police, but his sister was not among them.

He has been refused access to the intensive care units. “I don’t say that I want to go in to disturb these very sick people, but why can’t they show us photographs of the injured? At least then I could find my sister,” he said.

Mr Yu cannot bear to think that she may have been dragged away by the rioters and murdered.

Just coping with the deaths of his sister’s family has almost overwhelmed him. The bodies were among the corpses whose pictures have been carried in local newspapers. So shocking was the family tragedy that one newspaper carried a special report on it, Police have confirmed the killings.

As The Times stood outside what is left of No 447 Zhongwan Street, a Han neighbour approached. She had watched the killings from her home in an apartment block overlooking the store.

“We saw hundreds of Uighurs running down the street on the afternoon of July 5. About ten suddenly rushed into the store. They began to hit the people inside, even the old mother, with bricks and stones. They tried to run outside. Then they were dragged back inside.

“There were terrible screams. Just wordless screams. But then very quickly they fell silent.”

She said that the son tried to hide in a chicken coop but was dragged out and his head was cut off. All the victims were left to burn inside the building. The corpses of the boy and his father were found beheaded. Mr Yu said: “Even the 84-year-old mother was stoned and then burnt. It was terrible, terrible. So cruel.”

Mr Yu made his way yesterday to a temporary emergency centre in an Urumqi hotel. At some desks clerks helped Han and Uighurs to process requests for compensation for damaged cars or destroyed businesses.

In a corner, two women waited at a desk for families seeking missing loved ones or reporting the deaths of relatives. This was where Mr Yu hoped to find help in the hunt for his sister. Officials were unable to explain what he could do next.

He sat in the hotel room-turned-office surrounded by relatives, just waiting. “I still have to keep up my hopes,” he said.

Mr Yu is too busy looking for his sister to organise the funerals for her family. That painful task will come next.

More than a decade ago his brother-in-law moved from central Henan province to run a successful business in a district with a high proportion of ethnic Uighur residents. “Perhaps they were jealous of his success. They clearly targeted the family. It looked as if they had decided in advance to pick on my sister. The police are pursuing the case and they have made some arrests,” said Mr Yu.

Nearby, a Uighur family run a small restaurant. The man shrugged when asked about the family who only a week ago ran a thriving business. He refused to talk about his late Han neighbours. source

 

İsmail Enver wanted to create Pan-Turkism but with the victory of Gallipoli_Campaign, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk become what is Turkey and Ismail Enver was ousted.

Turks in Turkey wanted to create Pan-Turkism


LeoSeo is just siding with his Turks. Take what he says with grain of salt. Historically it didn't belong to the Turks. Turks migrated just like Hans Chinese. Muslim Uighurs should be happy that Chinese Hans allow them to live and practice their religion. All religions are BANNED in China.

Gamer, you want US to invade China and give you Muslims a separate country out of China. After you got your separate country from US help, what will you do? You will Attack United States of America in the Name of ISLAM. That's what Muslims do.

 

Who is talking about PAN-Turkism or a great unification here but you? This is about a mass killing incident towards hundreds of Uighurs, are you trying to justify the murders in the streets because of someone's failed ideology somewhere around 100 years ago?

The Uighur Empire dates back to 8th century. Are you calling a life of a nation that spans 1300 years on a land "migrating at some point like others"? Then your base point should be every human migrated other parts of the world from East Africa some dozen thousands of years ago which is kind of a pointless arguement in todays politics.

That's not how we see things in the civilized world, Xinjiang is an Uyghur Autonomous Region btw, how is the weather nowadays in Apartheid South Africa or wherever you mentally live?

He doesn't ask for a seperate country through US help there, he is merely pointing out Chinese are far more brutal. Another example of sheer religious bigotry and illustration of why the author said "If only they were Buddhists" in the above post.

 

I made a few Mel Gibson-esque posts the other day, my bad. I'm not really racist when I'm sober.

Anyhow, hope this sh!t calms down.

 

Death Toll Debated In China's Rioting

URUMQI, China -- The Yu siblings could hardly bear to look at the police snapshots of the dead -- the images so full of anger and cruelty. So they took turns sifting through them in search of their brother, who had been missing since ethnically charged riots shook this city in far western China on Sunday.

Yu Xinqing was the one who found him, victim No. 46.

Yu's elder brother, Yu Xinping, had been finishing his shift when a protest by Muslim Uighurs turned violent and some went on a rampage, attacking Han Chinese in the city. His body was mangled from multiple knife wounds and was badly burned.

"When I saw his picture, I couldn't help crying," said Yu, 35. "If you give me a gun, I will rush out and shoot all the Uighurs I meet. I won't look at them in the same way, no matter how good of an explanation there is."

Chinese authorities on Friday raised the official death count to 184 and said more than 1,000 people were injured in the rioting Sunday, making it the deadliest clash in the far western region of Xinjiang since Chinese troops arrived here 60 years ago and one of the worst in the country's modern history. Additional people were victimized in retaliatory attacks in the following days.

Of the dead, 137 were Han Chinese, 46 were Uighur and one was part of the Hui Muslim minority group. But other details are scarce.

Local officials have declined to release information about how they died or were hurt.

Nearly all of the 150 or so police snapshots of the dead appear to be of Han Chinese. Most have gashes or cuts on their head. Only about 10 appear to be Uighur, at least three with apparent bullet wounds near their hearts -- a detail that lends credence to charges by Uighur leaders that Chinese national security forces fired into the crowd of protesters.

But the faces of several victims were so swollen or injured that they were unrecognizable. At least three bodies were completely burned.

Some Uighur residents of Urumqi, however, say the number of Uighur victims in the official group of pictures is low because the bodies of all Uighurs are not being tallied. Uighurs -- members of a Turkic-speaking group that is culturally, religiously, linguistically and physically different from the Han Chinese, who make up more than 90 percent of China's population -- have long complained of government policies that they say are repressive.

Leaders of Uighur exile groups say that China is grossly misrepresenting the number of people killed and that the melee occurred because security forces overreacted to what had been a peaceful protest. On Friday, Rebiya Kadeer, the Washington-based head of the World Uighur Congress, said that by her organization's tally, based on unconfirmed reports from family members and community leaders, the number of dead Uighurs could be in the thousands. The Chinese government has accused Kadeer of inciting the violence, a charge she denies.

Two Han men in Urumqi who were searching for relatives said they believe that the government may be hiding bodies in an effort to minimize the death count. In separate interviews, they said they went to all 23 hospitals in the area and checked the police pictures, but they could not find their brothers, who where near the city's bazaar when the rioting began.

"The government is worried that if they announce the real statistics, it will raise the national anger," said Wang Haifeng, 21, who last heard from his 18-year-old brother, Wang Haibo, a real estate agent, when he called Sunday during the riots to say he was walking home from a date and was scared. Then the phone went dead.

The Urumqi government said Friday that families of "innocent" people killed in the unrest will each receive about $29,300 in compensation, but it was unclear how officials would make that determination.

Interviews with Han and Uighur victims and their families over the past few days and visits to hospitals where many of the injured are being kept in ethnically segregated wards reveal that the violence was often barbaric and random -- and it went both ways.

Some of the injured and dead appear to have been bystanders.

Chinese troops had locked down this city of 2.4 million by Wednesday, separating Han Chinese from Uighurs and establishing a tense peace. But the accounts from victims speak to the long-standing mistrust between the ethnic groups and how explosive that hatred can quickly become.

Liu Yonghe, 44, a businessman, and his wife, Zhao Lihong, 23, were among the Han victims admitted to a hospital. They had just finished up work and were on a bus en route to shops about 8 p.m. Sunday when it was stoned by a mob. They tried to escape but were beaten with sticks. Liu suffered head injuries, and his leg and two ribs were broken. His wife sustained brain injuries.

In another part of the city's bazaar that day, a Han couple on their way to pick up their granddaughter ran into Uighur protesters. Deng Yimin, 66, and Xiao Xianzhi, 65, said they were beaten until they were bleeding and collapsed.

In a retaliatory attack against Uighurs on Tuesday, Ali, a 21-year-old Uighur laborer was on his way to his company to collect his salary at 4 p.m. when he was jumped by about 50 people. His fingers were broken, and he suffer a concussion and gashes on this back and legs. The same afternoon, Nuryeraly, 25, was running errands with his brother when someone yell that Uighurs were nearby. Several hundred people then began to beat the brothers. The last thing he heard before he passed out was his brother calling for his mother, who was not there. "I don't know where he is now -- if he is alive or not," he said.

But there were signs of kindness across ethnic lines that has triggered soul-searching.

Ali said that before he was beaten, a Han man begged others in his group not to hit him even as the crowd turned on him and cursed him.

Zhao, who has lived in Urumqi for six years and is a shop assistant, said she was not injured as severely as she might have been because a Uighur man pulled her into the shadows of a nearby building while the attackers turned their attention on the Han men.

"I don't blame the Uighurs for all of this," she said. "There is no difference between Uighurs and Han. There are only good people and bad people."

And Xiao, who was on her way to pick up her granddaughter, said she is grateful to two Uighur men who put themselves between an angry mob and Xiao and her husband.

"They shouted at the group of people and pushed them away," Xiao recalled. "They were shouting in the Uighur language, so I didn't know exactly what they were talking about. Then they pulled us up and walked away with us."

Yu, who grew up in Urumqi and said he had no animosity toward Uighurs before this week, is not among those who say they can be friendly with his Uighur neighbors again.

"If the Uighurs are dissatisfied with the government, they should protest to the government instead of killing innocent people. Although I understand that there are bad people and good people in Uighurs, I still have a barrier in my heart," Yu said. The death of his brother, the second of six children, "is such a big hurt for our family." source

 

Indian, shut up, you can not discuss any issue with me. First of all i don't care arab's religion. I beleive in my ancestor's religion, not a religion that created by middle easterns.

 

Gamer you are too crazy,you should be politely to people here,even you have a different idea.

 

China is one of the worst places on earth for human rights , whenever there is an unrest the only solution they have is using force.If a state is against its citizens the alarm bells begin to ring for that state.
We need a stronger chinese wall to protect us from them.