Clashes in tightly-controlled Muslim region of China leave 27 dead
The simmering conflict in China's western province of Xinjiang boiled over again Wednesday, with state media reporting 27 people died in the latest violence to hit the largely Muslim region.
The simmering conflict in China's western province of Xinjiang boiled over again Wednesday, with state media reporting 27 people died in the latest violence to hit the largely Muslim region.
A new outbreak of violence in China's far-western Xinjiang region, home to its Muslim Uighur minority, has left 27 people dead, according to state reports 鈥� the area's deadliest unrest since 2009.
According to state media, "riots" broke out in Lukqun, a township about 120 miles southeast of the regional capital, Urumqi, during which police opened fire on "knife-wielding mobs," reports Agence France-Presse.
AFP adds that Xinhua did not explain the cause of the violence, and that state officials were unresponsive to requests for comment.
The Associated Press reports:
Uighur activist Dilxat Raxit, based in Germany, issued a statement saying the violence was caused by China's 鈥渟ustained repression and provocation鈥� of the Uighur community.
Such events are not uncommon in Xinjiang, however, nor is the state's silence about them. 海角大神 reported just two months ago, after a similar clash between knife-wielding "suspected terrorists" and local authorities left 21 people dead, that "violence flares sporadically" in the region between its native population and job-seeking immigrants from China's Han majority. The worst instance occurred in 2009, when almost 200 people, mostly Han, were killed in riots across Urumqi.
Chinese officials have claimed in the past that such attacks were the work of Islamic separatists, and have attempted to quell outbreaks with a massive security presence in the region. But the native population says the problems run deeper.
"Local people complain that their culture and language are being eroded and that Han now outnumber original inhabitants, who are ethnic Uighurs, with linguistic and cultural ties to central Asian peoples," the Monitor's Peter Ford reported.
Ultimately, it is difficult to determine precisely what is happening in Xinjiang, Mr. Ford wrote in March 2012, because of the tight restrictions the Chinese authorities keep on media in the region. Writing after yet another attack by "violent mobs" that left 12 dead, he wrote that "the authorities have been largely successful in hiding what has been going on from outsiders."