Results tagged “xinjiangriots”

Six more people have been sentenced to death over murders committed during the Xinjiang riots, bringing the total number of people facing execution up to twelve. Three of the six were given the death penalty with a two-year reprieve, which usually means that they will be commuted to life in prison. The new verdicts come after a Han Chinese man was put on death row for murdering two Uyghurs over rape rumors in Shaoguan, Guangdong - the act which triggered protests in Xinjiang in the first place.

Over 200 people will be going on trial this week for their involvement in the Xinjiang riots, according to the Associated Press. The trials will take place in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang and the city where most of the violence happened. The charges range from vandalizing public property to murder. Want to learn more about China's worst ethnic violence in decades? We've covered the Xinjiang riots from when they began to the conflicts of the second day to the final embers of the fourth day and into the various stories published afterwards.

• Protest at China TV tower [The Straits Times] "Demonstrators gathered outside a fire-gutted tower near the new China Central Television (CCTV) headquarters in Beijing on Tuesday, protesting against what they called forced eviction, state press said. About 30 residents accused the state-run television station of trying to get them to move from the area to make way for the massive and nearly completed construction project, Xinhua news agency said. After about an hour, police persuaded the protesters to put away their banners and leave, the report said. "
• China Backs Off Latest Rio Tinto Claims [WSJ] "Chinese officials distanced the government from allegations on a state-backed Web site that employees of mining giant Rio Tinto PLC had used years of "deceit" to obtain state secrets that cost China's steel industry more than $100 billion — spotlighting the murky and often confusing way China handles such secrecy cases. The allegations, published over the weekend, had quickly gained widespread attention, as they appeared to represent the government ratcheting up pressure over the case of four Rio Tinto employees, including an Australian citizen, who were detained last month by the Shanghai State Security Bureau on vague accusations of using bribery to obtain secrets that harmed China's national interests."
• Another suspect dies in Kunming police custody [GoKunming] "A man being held in detention in Kunming died in a hospital on Saturday with no clear cause of death, according to a Xinhua report. According to a police spokesperson speaking to reporters on Sunday, 43-year-old Wang Shukun (王树坤) had been held in the Guandu District Detention Center since July 19 before being checked into a hospital by police on August 6. After undergoing emergency procedures to save his life, Wang died early Saturday, the spokesperson said."

• Former Beijing airport boss executed in China [AP] "The former head of Beijing airport's management company was executed Friday following his conviction on corruption charges, state media reported. An intermediate court found 60-year-old Li Peiying guilty in February of accepting almost $4 million in bribes and embezzling about $12 million in public funds over the past 14 years, the Xinhua News Agency said."
• Australia Plans to Make Arrangements for Second Hu China Visit [Bloomberg] "Australia will soon be making arrangements for a second consular visit with Rio Tinto Group executive Stern Hu, detained in China for allegedly stealing state secrets, a government spokeswoman said. 'According to the consular agreement, visits must take place at least once per month,' a spokeswoman for the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, who asked not to be named, said today in an e-mailed statement."
• Uighur unrest shows China's failures - Dalai Lama [Reuters] "Ethnic riots in northwest China have exposed the failings of Beijing's minority policies, and a more "realistic" stance toward Tibetans and others could emerge within a decade, the Dalai Lama said on Thursday. The Tibetan spiritual leader said the Uighur unrest in Xinjiang province in July, in which 197 people died according to the official death toll, showed the need for the Chinese Communist Party to rethink its approach."

File this under "Things to take with a grain of salt": Rebiya Kadeer's family in China has apparently written a letter (in the Uyghur language) to the separatist leader, which was then translated into Chinese and English by Xinhua. The letter starts out thusly: "You once were the richest person in Xinjiang just because you were granted a lot of business opportunities and convenience by the Communist Party of China and the Government. But, despite repeated leniency of the Party and the Government, you ended up in prison under other people's enticement. You were allowed to go to the United States thanks to, once again, our government's leniency. You pledged to our government not to participate in any separatist activity before you departed for the United States. You broke your words anyway." If that caught your fancy, read the rest of it here.

• Chinese Army opens (small) window on operations [CSMonitor] "Foreign reporters this week got a rare peek inside an infantry base of the People's Liberation Army (PLA). At the same time, officials were reportedly putting the final touches to a bilingual PLA website that is due to go live on Aug. 1, the 82nd anniversary of its foundation. Taken together, these efforts are designed to signal greater transparency by a 2.3 million-strong military whose rapid expansion has stirred unease among other foreign powers, including Japan and the United States. But these baby steps seem unlikely to silence the debate over China's military capacity and how it intends to use it in future."
• Hidden Gobi Desert relics found [BBC] "Rare Buddhist treasures, not seen for more than 70 years, have been unearthed in the Gobi Desert. The historic artefacts were buried in the 1930s during Mongolia's Communist purge, when hundreds of monasteries were looted and destroyed."
• The last tattooed women of the Dulong people [China News Wrap] "The Xinhua News Agency website has a headline photo story about the the last women of the Dulong people in China’s Yunnan province - one of China’s smallest and remote ethnic groups - to have traditional facial tattoos. According to the news story, the custom of facial-tattooing amongst China’s Dulong ethnic group is first described in historical records from the Tang Dynasty (7th to 10th centuries C.E.)."

China has released a most wanted list - 15 people it says had roles in the Xinjiang riots, which killed over 190 people and wounded over 1,700. 14 of the names released appeared to be Uyghur, according to the AP, while one was Han Chinese. The notice urged the suspects turned themselves in within the next 10 days if they wanted leniency. Those who the government had to hunt down would be "dealt with severely according to the law." Meanwhile, while China hasn't responded to Rebiya Kadeer's requests to hold talks, it did dispute her recent claim that 10,000 people are missing. A Xinjiang government spokesperson called the figure "groundless," adding "If there were more than 10,000 missing, how many more of them would have taken part in the riot?"

The Xinjiang riots has not only affected the political climate, now it looks like it´s also leaking over to the artistic area as well. Last week China made an attempt to stop a film from being screened at Australia´s biggest film festival, Melbourne International Film Festival.

• NKorea's Kim Jong Il looks OK in new photographs [AP] "North Korea released new photographs of Kim Jong Il touring a factory following reports earlier this week that the 67-year-old leader has pancreatic cancer and less than five years to live. Wearing sunglasses and a short-sleeved shirt, Kim appeared generally OK in the images released Tuesday night — thin but no worse than in other recent photographs. He has grown frailer over the past year after reportedly suffering a stroke last summer."
• How China Wins and Loses Xinjiang [Foreign Policy] "The government's crackdown on the Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking Muslim minority group that has long chafed under Beijing's rule, was nasty, brutish, and short. Overnight curfews were imposed. Thousands of police officers dispersed. President Hu Jintao left the G-8 summit in Europe to focus on putting out fires at home. But not all aspects of China's policies toward Uighurs and other minorities are characterized by such precision."
• Something’s Rotten in Chinese Steel Industry [NYT Dealbook] "Long before four employees of the Anglo-Australian mining giant Rio Tinto were detained in Shanghai last week on suspicion of stealing state secrets, people working in China’s steel industry were complaining about bribery, deceit and a system turned rotten, The New York Times’s David Barboza writes."

• Xinjiang Info-War [RConversation] "Exiled Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer mistakenly made prominent use in interviews of a photo that turned out to be from riots in Shishou, Hubei province, in late June. Roland Soong at ESWN has a full account of how the photo came to be misconstrued and misused. Apparently, the source of the error was Reuters, who had sourced the photo from Twitter and put it out on the wire before recalling it."
• China's Urumqi tense after police shooting [AFP] "URUMQI - A mosque was closed and many businesses were shuttered near where police shot dead two Muslim Uighurs, as ethnic tensions simmered in China's restive Urumqi city."
• Drawing Critics, China Seeks to Dominate in Renewable Energy [NewYorkTimes] "BEIJING - When the United States’ top energy and commerce officials arrive in China on Tuesday, they will land in the middle of a building storm over China’s protectionist tactics to become the world’s leader in renewable energy."

Here's our translation of an article we found on Global Times 《环球时报》dated July 11 entitled "Turkey in open support of Xinjiang independence terrorist elements, and stoking the flames of anger among Chinese netizens". It gives you a good idea of the standard fare in Chinese papers today on the recent Xinjiang developments:

• James Fallows finds a sign advertising for restaurant staff at a hotel in Kashgar. Basically, it says that "No Uighurs Need Apply".
• Zhong Dajun, a prominent economic consultant in China who is definitely more "nationalist" than "left wing", is now circulating a piece (Chinese only) called “The Xinjiang Incident Reveals Significant Flaws in Government Management.”
• The Globe and Mail's Mark MacKinnon describes getting kicked out of Kashgar... well, kind of kicked out of Kashgar.

As the dust settles on the Xinjiang unrest of the past few days, reports are coming out about acts of kindness shown by both Uighurs and Han Chinese, presumably in a PR move to show solidarity between the two ethnicities. The Shanghai Daily printed a story today about a math teacher from Shanghai who was attacked in the riots on Sunday:

We've entered into the fourth day of the Xinjiang incident, and it seems that - at least for now - Chinese officials have finally gotten everything under some semblence of control. Wednesday was marked by sporadic violence as Han mobs continued their Tuesday front, arming themselves with meat cleavers, shovels and other makeshift weapons for - depending what side you're on - protection or revenge killings. The body count for the last two days has not yet been released.

• Why China might turn on North Korea [CSMonitor] "China has long seen its national interests served by the status quo on the Korean Peninsula. According to a cold-war perspective about strategic balance and a post-cold-war emphasis on internal development, Beijing prioritized maintaining a buffer state and preventing North Korea's problems from spilling over China's border. While Beijing retains these priorities, the chances of it getting tough with Pyongyang are low. However, the China of today is not the China that came to Pyongyang's aid during the Korean War - its national identity has evolved over decades of rapid development and international integration. The ideas of communist solidarity and laying low to focus on modernization are becoming obsolete."
• Beijing Always Wins [NYTimes] "THE riots in the Xinjiang region, the home of China’s Muslim Uighur minority, will affirm to many analysts outside the country that social unrest is a direct threat to the continued rule of the Communist Party. If officials don’t take a long, hard look at how to avoid such uprisings, this argument will run, the government could eventually fall. If only Chinese officials saw things that way."
• Shenzhen Mayor Under Investigation [eChinacities] "Xu Zongheng(许宗衡), 54, was removed from his post as mayor of Shenzhen and is under investigation into allegations of corruption and graft that have stretched to include a former Olympic gymnast and several actresses. Xu became mayor of Shenzhen in 2005, advocating changes in the city’s bureaucracy. Many view Xu as partially responsible for the subsequent collapse of Shenzhen’s real estate market. The allegations revolve around bribes received for awarding government posts and bids."

Those hoping that the Xinjiang riot death count would be contained once the day was over are going to be incredibly disappointed. It's day two over there and it seems that, at least for the Han Chinese living there, the fear has given way to rage.

It's now been two days since the rioting in Xinjiang first began, and the official media is now stating that 1,434 people in the province have been arrested in connection to the unrest. According to the AP, Amnesty International has added its opinions to the matter, urging China to "fully account" for the deaths of those killed and an explanation for the mass detention of people. The death count is currently still at 156 and The Guardian reported that the majority of the 800 plus people injured are Han Chinese. Meanwhile, protests have spread out of Urumuqi, with over 200 people gathering at a mosque in Kashgar and more allegedly being organized in other Xinjiang cities. Al Jazeera's Melissa K Chan has been sporadically tweeting what she's seeing in Urumuqi - definitely worth looking at if you can get past the twitter block.

Twitter has been blocked (as has Danwei, presumably because of their coverage) and Internet is allegedly down everywhere in Urumuqi - basically, it's information crackdown time since the proverbial shit has hit the fan.