AFP

Uyghurs at an Internet cafe in Urumqi, capital of China’s northwestern Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, April 1, 2008.

HONG KONG—Chinese authorities in the northwestern region of Uyghurs are maintaining tight controls over the Internet and long-distance phone calls, almost four months after ethnic clashes that left nearly 200 people dead.

The curbs appear to come as part of an effort to maintain stability after deadly rioting in July between Han Chinese and ethnic minority Uyghurs in the regional capital, Urumqi.

Uyghurs living in Central Asia, North America, and Europe meanwhile report that they are almost entirely unable to phone, text, or email relatives in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR).

“Communication is a big problem,” an Urumqi branch office manager for the Shen Ou Communications Equipment Co. said.

“We have to use alternative methods like express delivery to send out documents,” said the manager, who asked to be identified by his surname, Cao.

He said many Urumqi-based companies have now relocated to neighboring Gansu province, more than 1,000 kms (620 miles) away, where there is still a reliable Internet connection.

“Many companies have moved their offices from Urumqi to places like Lanzhou, in Gansu,” Cao said. “We communicate with them by telephone and fax.”

He said he is hoping that the Internet will return to normal in Urumqi by the end of the year.

“If we are not online, people cannot find us,” he said.

In a report Oct. 29, the nonprofit press freedom group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said its survey had found more than 85 percent of Web sites dedicated to the Uyghur community—in Uyghur, Mandarin, and English—were “blocked, censored, or otherwise unreachable” in Xinjiang.

The RSF survey in October examined around 100 Uyghur Web sites, portals, forums, blogs, and other kinds of online platforms.

Texting unreliable

An Urumqi-based Han Chinese office worker surnamed Zhang said that telephone networks, both fixed-line and mobile, are also often unreliable.

“Text messages cannot be sent out, and we cannot surf the Internet either. There is simply no Internet connection,” she said.

“Internet companies have suffered big losses. Xinjiang is going to be left behind again as a result of this,” she said.

An employee at an Internet telephony service provider in Urumqi confirmed that they had suffered huge losses following the riots.

“Our company’s service was immediately shut down,” he said. “No Internet service is running. The losses were big.”

Internet-based service providers have suffered the most during the information lockdown, according to a second local employee, surnamed Zhang.

“Those who depend on the Internet to do business don’t know what to do,” he said.

New law passed

One businessman said he is hanging on in Urumqi, trying to conduct his foreign trade business out of the offices of the Xinjiang Council for the Promotion of Trade.

After pulling the plug on the entire region’s Internet and phone services in the immediate wake of the violence in July, the Xinjiang authorities passed a law making it a criminal offense to discuss separatism on the Internet.

Xinjiang’s People’s Congress Standing Committee passed the “Information Promotion Bill” banning people in the region from using the Internet in any way that undermines national unity, incites ethnic separatism, or harms social stability.

Armed police now stand guard in public places around the XUAR and are detaining anyone found with footage of ethnic riots in July.

According to a 26-year-old American blogger living in Xinjiang, Dunhuang city in neighboring Gansu has become a mecca for businessmen from Xinjiang.

“Pretty much the first city outside of Xinjiang with Internet access, Dunhuang has become the place for all businessmen and foreigners to go to regain access to email and business contacts,” he wrote in an Oct. 19 posting.

“Hotels and coffee shops tell me they’ve seen a noticeable increase in Xinjiang traffic,” he wrote.

Long history

Urumqi residents have frequently reported being cut off from the outside world entirely, as the authorities block media and social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

Officials say terrorists, separatists, and religious extremists used the Internet, telephones, and mobile text messages to spread rumors and hatred during the ethnic violence, sparking one of the most comprehensive Internet shutdowns ever reported.

Clashes first erupted between Han Chinese and ethnic Uyghurs on July 5. Twelve people have since been sentenced to death in connection with the violence, which was the worst the country has experienced in decades.

New York-based Human Rights Watch last week said it has documented the disappearances of 43 men and boys in the Xinjiang region, but that the actual number of disappearances is likely far higher.

Police have meanwhile detained more than 700 people in connection with the unrest, according to earlier state news reports.

Uyghurs, a distinct and mostly Muslim ethnic group, have long complained of religious, political, and cultural oppression by Chinese authorities, and tensions have simmered in the Xinjiang region for years.

www.rfa.org

ABOUT HUMAN RIGHTS IN EAST TURKISTAN Uyghur Foundation Stichting Oeigoeren Nederland Stichting Uighur Jurat Barat  Stichting Uyghur Oost-Turkestan Uyghur Logo Nederlanders Holland Europe HUMAN RIGHTS  Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region Erkin Alptekin Rebiya Kadeer

The post Internet Blocked in Uyghur Autonomous Region appeared first on uighur.nl.

HONG KONG—Relatives of a man who died in police custody in China’s remote Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region are in a tense standoff with authorities over their demand for an inquiry into how he died, villagers and the local police chief said.

One villager, contacted by telephone, said eight trucks of soldiers and two other armed vehicles had surrounded the man’s family home in Lengger [in Chinese, Langan] village in Qorghas [in Chinese, Huocheng]county, Ili prefecture.

Surrounding streets were blockaded, and another witness said police told him to remain inside when he tried to walk several blocks to Tursun’s family home.

“The police are asking us to bury the body early in the morning, otherwise they said they will bury him themselves,” Haji Memet, a relative of Shohret Tursun, 31, said. “We want to find out how he was killed.”

“We are asking the authorities to investigate—we want photos taken of his bruised body, we want justice, we want whoever killed our son to be punished,” he said.

Police returned Tursun’s body to his family at 2 p.m. Saturday, relatives said.

Deadly violence

Tursun, a member of the Uyghur ethnic minority, was among some 40 men from Qorghas detained around the time of deadly protests July 5 in the regional capital, Urumqi.

The protests by Uyghurs, a largely Muslim Turkic people, followed alleged official mishandling of earlier ethnic clashes in far-away Guangdong province.

The July 5 protest sparked days of deadly rioting in Urumqi, pitting Uyghurs against majority Han Chinese, and ending with a death toll of almost 200, by the government’s tally.

Badly disfigured

The Langer police chief, who identified himself as Enver, said police were trying to convince the family to bury Tursun early Sunday.

The village imam, Alim Kari, described Tursun’s body as badly disfigured but said he was required to urge the family to bury Tursun.

“I saw the dead body—it was bruised and dark all over,” Kari said. “All the family was crying…his mother was slapping herself. The whole neighborhood is in chaos.”

“I don’t know how the body was injured, how it has so many bruises. The authorities are asking the imam, the elders, relatives, and neighbors to persuade the family to bury him. I am a peasant and I don’t know much about the law.”

“I have to do what the government asks me to do…and I have to believe them. We are working hard to persuade the family to bury Shohret Tursun early Sunday morning,” Kari said.

“After the family’s strong opposition, the authorities agreed to bury him Sunday morning. This has been confirmed and the funeral attendants have been selected and invited,” he said.

Earlier death alleged

About 10 days ago, relatives said, Tursun—along with Pazilat Akbar, Rabigul, Eli Hesenjan, and more than 35 others—were transferred from Urumqi to the Qorghas county jail.

Another villager, also contacted by telephone, said another man, 22-year-old Dilshat Ismayil, was beaten to death by police July 29 after he ran away from police trying to detain him.

That account couldn’t immediately be confirmed.

Uyghurs say they have long suffered ethnic discrimination, oppressive religious controls, and continued poverty and joblessness despite China’s ambitious plans to develop its vast northwestern frontier.

Xinjiang is a strategically crucial vast desert territory that borders Russia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India.

The region has abundant oil reserves and is China’s largest natural gas-producing region.

www.rfa.org

The post Standoff Over Death in Custody appeared first on uighur.nl.

Riots leave many dead in China

Violence in China’s restive western region of Xinjiang has left at least 156 people dead and more than 800 people injured, state media say.
Several hundred people were arrested after a protest, in the city of Urumqi on Sunday, turned violent.
Beijing says Uighurs went on the rampage but one exiled Uighur leader says police fired on students.
The protest was reportedly prompted by a deadly fight between Uighurs and Han Chinese in southern China last month.
The BBC’s Chris Hogg says the violence is some of the worst reported in the country since Tiananmen Square in 1989.
‘Dark day’
Eyewitnesses said the violence started on Sunday in Urumqi after a protest of a few hundred people grew to more than 1,000.
Xinhua says the protesters carried knives, bricks and batons, smashed cars and stores, and fought with security forces.
Wu Nong, news director for the Xinjiang government, said more than 260 vehicles were attacked and more than 200 shops and houses damaged.
Most of the violence is reported to have taken place in the city centre, around Renmin (People’s) Square, Jiefang and Xinhua South Roads and the Bazaar.
See detailed map of Urumqi city centre
The police presence was reported to be heavy on Monday.
Adam Grode, an American studying in Urumqi, told Associated Press: “There are soldiers everywhere, police are at all the corners. Traffic has completely stopped.”

UIGHURS AND XINJIANG
Uighurs are ethnically Turkic Muslims
They make up about 45% of the region’s population. 40% are Han Chinese
China re-established control in 1949 after crushing short-lived state of East Turkestan
Since then, large-scale immigration of Han Chinese
Uighurs fear erosion of traditional culture
Sporadic violence since 1991
Attack on 4 Aug 2008 near Kashgar kills 16 Chinese policemen

In pictures: Xinjiang protests
Q&A: China and the Uighurs
China tells its own story
Accounts of Xinjiang violence
A witness in the Xinjiang city of Kashgar told AP there was a protest there on Monday of about 300 people but there were no clashes with police.
It is still unclear who died in Urumqi and why so many were killed.
The Xinjiang government blamed separatist Uighurs based abroad for orchestrating attacks on ethnic Han Chinese.
But Uighur groups insisted their protest was peaceful and had fallen victim to state violence, with police firing indiscriminately on protesters in Urumqi.
Dolkun Isa, a spokesman for the World Uyghur Congress (WUC) in Munich, disputed the official figures, saying the protest was 10,000 strong and that 600 people were killed.
He rejected reports on Xinhua that it had instigated the protests.
Xinhua had quoted the Xinjiang government as blaming WUC leader Rebiya Kadeer for “masterminding” the violence.
But Mr Isa said the WUC had called on Friday only for protests at Chinese embassies around the world.

More than 260 vehicles were destroyed in Urumqi, officials said
Alim Seytoff, the vice-president of another Uighur group – the US-based Uighur American Association – condemned the “heavy-handed” actions of the security forces.
“We ask the international community to condemn China’s killing of innocent Uighurs. This is a very dark day in the history of the Uighur people,” he said.
When asked about the rioting, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said that all governments must protect freedom of speech and “the life and safety of civilian populations”.
A spokesman for UK PM Gordon Brown said Britain was urging “restraint on all sides”.
Italian President Giorgio Napolitano said he had raised the issue of human rights with visiting Chinese President Hu Jintao in Rome.
Internet blocks
The Uighurs in Urumqi were reportedly angry over an ethnic clash last month in the city of Shaoguan in southern Guangdong province.
A man there was said to have posted a message on a local website claiming six boys from Xinjiang had “raped two innocent girls”.

FROM THE TODAY PROGRAMME

More from Today programme
Police said the false claim sparked a vicious brawl between Han and Uighur ethnic groups at a factory. Two Uighurs were killed and 118 people were injured.
BBC sources in China report they have been unable to open the Twitter messaging site in Shanghai and that message boards on Xinjiang on a number of websites were not taking posts.
Reports from Xinjiang suggest some internet and mobile phone services have been blocked.
Analysts say the government’s so-called Great Firewall of China, which it uses to block unwanted internet material, will prevent large-scale dissemination of information but that dedicated internet users can bypass it fairly easily.
BBC China editor Shirong Chen says there has been ethnic tension in Xinjiang since before the founding of the People’s Republic.
Some of its Uighur population of about eight million want to break away from China and its majority Han Chinese population.
The authorities say police are securing order across the region and anyone creating a disturbance will be detained and punished.
However, our China editor says there may be questions asked about their inability to prevent a protest they knew about days in advance.

Return to story
14 July 2009: This article has been amended to remove an audio track that contained misleading information about the protests.

The post Scores killed in China protests appeared first on uighur.nl.