URUMQI, Xingyang. Violent street battles killed at least 140 people and injured 828 others in the deadliest ethnic unrest to hit China's volatile western Xinjiang region in decades, and officials said Monday the death toll was expected to rise.
Security forces have clamped down on the city of Urumqi and set up checkpoints to catch any fleeing rioters, state media reported, after tensions between ethnic Muslim Uighur people and China's Han majority erupted into riots.
Uighurs make up the largest ethnic group in Xinjiang, but not in the capital of Urumqi, which has attracted large numbers of Han Chinese migrants. The city of 2.3 million is now about overwhelmingly Chinese — a source of frustration for native Uighurs.
Many Uighurs yearn for independence for Xinjiang, a sprawling region rich in minerals and oil that borders eight Central Asian nations. Critics say the millions of Han Chinese who have settled here in recent years are gradually squeezing the Turkic people out of their homeland.
Voice of America
State-run Xinhua news agency says Sunday's fighting left more than 800 injured in the provincial capital Urumqi.
China tightly controls Xinjiang province, where it refers to some Uighurs as "violent separatists" looking to create an independent country called "East Turkestan."
Hundreds are believed to be killed after riots in the capital of Xinjiang on the 5th of July. There are reports of Han police firing indiscriminantly into crowds of protestors armed with kthe Uighur population of China's far West has grown increasingly resentful of Chinese rule which activists say discriminates against the local Muslim population in favour of Han Chinese. nives and other weapons.
Such is the scale of the influx that Han Chinese, who accounted for just six per cent of the Xinjiang's population in 1949 when China sent troops to 'liberate' the region, now make up more than 40 per cent of the total population.
Xinjiang is officially an autonomous region covering an area about three times the size of France in China's west.
Region is sparsely populated but has large reserves of oil, gas and minerals.
Xinjiang was formerly a key transit point on the ancient Silk Road linking China to Europe.
Region's Turkic speaking Uighur population number around 8 million.
Uighur activists say migration from other parts of China is part of official effort to dilute Uighur culture in their own land.
Uighurs say they face repression on a range of fronts, including bans on the teaching of their language.
Uighur separatists have staged series of low-level attacks since early 1990s.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090706/ap_on_re_as/as_china_protest
http://www.registan.net/index.php/2009/07/06/clhttp://www.voanews.com/english/2009-07-06-voa6.cfmash-in-xinjiang-july-5-2009/
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/5755863/China-riots-worst-outbreak-of-ethnic-violence-in-33-years.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-EVRZEUyCM
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia-pacific/2009/07/20097641242376417.html
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