Calm restored in Urumqi

PICTURE OF STABILITY: The Erdaoqiao market in Urumqi on Saturday. With the reopening of shops, banks and post office outlets, life in Urumqi is returning to normal. - PHOTO: XINHUA

BEIJING: One week after ethnic violence engulfed Urumqi in China’s Muslim-majority Xinjiang region, calm appears to have been restored to the troubled city. But what exactly transpired on the afternoon of July 5 and led to the violence which claimed 184 lives and injured thousands still remains unclear, with conflicting accounts of the incidents from the Chinese government and ethnic Uighur exiled groups.

The Chinese government has accused an exiled Uighur organisation, known as the World Uighur Congress, of organising the mass riots. On Saturday, the Chinese government said “a massive conspiracy” hatched overseas led to the unrest and evidence pointed to Rebiya Kadeer, the United States-based leader of the WUC, as the mastermind behind the violence. Most of the 184 dead in last week’s violence were Han Chinese, China’s majority ethnic group. Exiled Uighur groups claim the Chinese government has downplayed the number of Uighur deaths.

On Saturday, Chinese media widely accused Ms. Kadeer of a campaign of “misinformation” aimed at winning popular support in the West. On Tuesday, in an interview with the television channel Al Jazeera, Ms. Kadeer displayed photographs from an unrelated June 26 incident in Hubei province purporting to show heavy-handedness of Chinese policing in Urumqi. In the interview, Ms. Kadeer also showed a picture from a car accident in Zhejiang province claiming it showed street violence in Urumqi.

The Chinese government has said it had “strong evidence” to show Ms. Kadeer used a June 26 incident of racial violence between Uighurs and Hans in Guangdong province to organise a mass riot in Urumqi, although it has revealed nothing more than a phone-call Ms. Kadeer made to her brother a day before the riot, predicting “something big would happen.” Ms. Kadeer has denied having any role in the incidents, saying it was “a reaction to China’s repressive policies” in the region.

But, as much as the Chinese government has sought to portray a picture of stability in Xinjiang, ethnic unrest is not new to the region.

Xinjiang has seen intermittent tension between Hans and native Uighurs, who are a minority in China but the largest ethnic group in the region, though nothing of the scale of the events of last week.

Some Uighurs say the increasing presence of Hans in the region, which has steadily increased ever since the Chinese government launched a “Go West” policy to modernise Xinjiang, has limited employment opportunities for locals and is one reason behind the unrest.