The Portrait of a Killing Field "Olympic Host" -- Ethnic unrest
continues in China

International Herald Tribune

Ethnic unrest continues in China

By Howard W. French
Friday, April 4, 2008

SHANGHAI: Fresh ethnic violence has erupted in a Tibetan region of
southwestern China, with disputed reports of at least eight people shot
dead by police, even as the Chinese government on Friday vowed swift and
severe punishment of Tibetans accused of rioting and participation in
last month's anti-government protests.

Police officers fired on a crowd of protesters on Thursday evening
outside government offices in the Garze Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in
Sichuan Province along the border with Tibet. A Tibet activist group
said the shooting left at least eight protesters dead, according to The
Associated Press.

Signs of ethnic unrest in another area, in the northwestern region of
Xinjiang, have also begun to emerge in recent days, with details of
protests and rumored plotting by Muslim separatists in the Xinjiang
Uighur Autonomous Region and of police crackdowns in several areas of
the province.

China's official Xinhua news agency confirmed the latest incidence of
Tibetan unrest in Sichuan Province, saying a "riot" had broken out and
that "police were forced to fire warning shots to put down the
violence," citing a local official. It said a government official was
attacked and seriously injured in the protest but gave no details of
other injuries or deaths.

The pro-Tibet activist group, the London-based Free Tibet Campaign, said
hundreds of Buddhist monks and lay people had marched on the government
offices to demand that two monks detained for possessing photographs of
the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, be released, The AP
reported.

Quoting Tibet's highest law enforcement official, the official Tibet
Daily newspaper said that courts would "use the weapon of the law to
attack enemies, punish crime, protect the people and maintain
stability," in what it called a drive to "shock criminality and root out
the base of the separatists."

Tibet was shaken by protests last month by Buddhist monks demanding
religious freedoms. Riots followed in Lhasa, the capital, on March 14,
in which shops owned by the country's ethnic Han majority were attacked.
China says 19 people were killed in the rioting and ensuring crackdown,
while Tibetan exile groups says they have reports of 140 deaths. The
events in Lhasa quickly brought a wave of sympathy protests in parts of
several neighboring provinces where Tibetans live in large numbers, in
the biggest outbreak of unrest in the region in at least two decades.

Like Tibetans, Uighurs, who are the predominant ethnic group in
Xinjiang, harbor memories of political independence and deep resentment
of Chinese control, particularly over the practice of their Islamic faith.

Residents of townships and villages near Gulja, a city in the
northwestern region of Xinjiang, said that about 25 Uighur Muslims were
arrested last week on a tip that people in the area were making bombs.
Residents said the police search had turned up three bombs in a cowshed,
but the authorities were still looking for more devices that they
believed were hidden in the area.

A resident of Yengiyer township near Gulja, speaking by telephone Friday
of the uncovering of a bomb plot, said that the police tip had come
after the recent arrest of a Uighur in the provincial capital, Urumqi.
Police contacted in the area declined to discuss the tip or provide
details of the plot. But local residents with connections to the
government said that the bombs were part of a conspiracy to undermine
Communist rule. "Their goal is pretty simple: They want to overthrow the
rule of the Communist Party," said Hong Xiuhua, a 50-year-old retired
local party official who said her husband had been briefed on the
arrests by the local party secretary. "They claim that Xinjiang belongs
to them and want to drive all the Han people out."

Hong said that the police were holding two couples, as well as a local
baker, but they had released some of the other initial suspects. She
said that unauthorized gatherings in the region had been banned,
including weddings, as a precaution, and that people had been warned
"not to talk about inappropriate things, such as complaining about
socialism."

A police official reached by telephone declined to provide details about
the arrests. "It is related to matters of stability, and we have the
right not to give you a reply," the officer said.

As in Tibet, religious freedom has been a constant source of tension in
Xinjiang. The government, for example, bans students and party members
from practicing Islam, and tightly controls and polices the Muslim
clergy. Many Uighurs also complain of discrimination, saying that they
are rarely given jobs in the modern economy or allowed to study abroad
with the same ease as their Han counterparts.

During a previous wave of protests in Gulja in 1997, Uighur human rights
activists say, dozens of demonstrators were killed on the spot by
paramilitary forces, and many others executed later.

A Han resident of the area, a 63-year-old woman who gave her name as
Huang, however, blamed leniency for the latest troubles. "If some of
them are executed, then they'll learn to be scared," Huang said. "I'm
talking about the Uighurs. They're all like this."

Reports of the alleged bomb-making activity came as reports emerged from
other parts of Xinjiang suggesting mounting tensions throughout the
province. As protests spread across Tibetan areas to the south and east,
about 500 Uighurs gathered in the city of Khotan on March 23, reportedly
hoisting banners and shouting pro-independence slogans before the police
moved in and arrested many of the demonstrators, clearing the area.

On March 18, a rumor spread quickly through the streets of Urumqi that a
Uighur woman had detonated a bomb on a city bus, escaping before its
explosion. Officials have denied the incident, but in a telephone
interview an American resident of Xinjiang's bustling capital said that
he had visited the scene hours after the rumor spread and found what
looked like a heavily guarded impromptu construction site, where workers
refused to talk and urged him to leave.

"Pretty much everyone you speak to, whether Chinese or Uighur, says a
bomb went off," said the American, who declined to be identified by
name. "That same night there were riot police in full gear patrolling
the neighborhood, and since then I've seen heavy police patrols
everywhere, including riot police at the main markets, with tear gas,
automatic weapons and armored personnel carriers with gun turrets parked
nearby."

"We've been here for three months and it was certainly never been like
this before."

In the western Xinjiang city of Kashgar, a traditionally important
center of Islam in the region, meanwhile, the police have arrested 70
Uighurs in recent days in a sweep aimed at securing the city before the
arrival of the Olympic torch, according to Reuters. Beijing is to host
the Olympic Games in August, and the torch is to pass through Kashgar in
June.

In an interview with Reuters, Dilxat Raxit, spokesman for the World
Uighur Congress, a Germany-based exile group that seeks independence,
said the authorities were using the Olympics as an excuse to crack down
on the Uighurs. "One world, one dream?" Raxit said, referring to
Beijing's Olympic motto. "Is that right? The Uighurs have a different
dream. We don't want the Olympics here."