L'agence de press Chinoise a annoncé lundi que 140 personnes ont etaient tues lors d'un affrontement entre les Uighurs et les Han-Chinois dans la province Xinjiang .

Ce nouveau bilan est loin du premier, qui annoncé juste trois personnes et un policier sont mort.

Si les chiffres sont exactes, ce serait le plus serieux probleme survenu en chine depuis plusieurs annees. Mais il semblerait plutot que les autorites Chinoises veulent gonfler les chiffres pour pour avoir une excuse a opprimer les uighurens, qui eux sont musulmans.

La Chine, amie des musulmans en afrique du nord..mais pas chez elle.

BEIJING — The Chinese state news agency reported Monday that at least 140 people were killed and 816 injured when rioters clashed with the police in a regional capital in western China after days of rising tensions between Muslim Uighurs and Han Chinese.
The casualty toll, if confirmed, would make this the deadliest outbreak of violence in China in many years.

The rioting broke out Sunday afternoon in a large market area of Urumqi, the capital of the vast, restive desert region of Xinjiang, and lasted for several hours before riot police officers and paramilitary or military troops locked down the Uighur quarter of the city, according to witnesses and photographs of the riot.

At least 1,000 rioters took to the streets, throwing stones at the police and setting vehicles on fire. Plumes of smoke billowed into the sky, while police officers used fire hoses and batons to beat back rioters and detained Uighurs who appeared to be leading the protest, witnesses said.

The Associated Press reported Monday that protests had also spread to a second city, Kashgar, citing eyewitness accounts.

The casualty numbers in Urumqi appeared to be murky and shifting on Monday. Xinhua, the state news agency, said the toll so far was 140 dead and 828 wounded, citing regional police officials. It was not possible to independently verify the government’s reported death toll, but two city hospitals reported comparatively light casualties. An unidentified official at Urumqi First People’s Hospital, the closest medical facility to the unrest, said before abruptly hanging up that 40 people had been admitted and that at least one had died. At Urumqi Friendship Hospital, another unidentified official was unable to say how many people had been admitted but said that none of the injuries appeared to be life-threatening.

Both spoke to a researcher on Monday afternoon Beijing time, more than half a day after troops in Urumqi had quelled the violence.

One American who watched the rioting at its height said he did not see people being killed or corpses in the streets, though he said he did see Uighurs shoving or kicking a few Han Chinese. Images of the rioting on state television showed some bloody people lying in the streets and cars burning.

Dozens of Uighur men were led into police stations on Sunday evening with their hands behind their backs and shirts pulled over their heads, one witness said. Early Monday, the local government announced a curfew banning all traffic in the city until 8 p.m.

In Geneva,Secretary General Ban Ki-moon of the United Nations responded to questions about the violence by saying that all governments should protect their citizens and respect their rights to free speech and free assembly, the Associated Press reported. The riot was the largest ethnic clash in China since the Tibetan uprising of March 2008, and perhaps the biggest protest in Xinjiang in years. Like the Tibetan unrest, it highlighted the deep-seated frustrations felt by some ethnic minorities in western China over the policies of the Communist Party, and how that can quickly turn into ethnic violence. Last year, in Lhasa, the Tibetan capital, at least 19 people were killed, most of them Han civilians, according to government statistics.

Many Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking Muslim group, resent rule by the Han Chinese, and Chinese security forces have tried to keep oil-rich Xinjiang under tight control since the 1990s, when cities there were struck by waves of protests, riots and bombings. Last summer, attacks on security forces took place in several cities in Xinjiang; the Chinese government blamed separatist groups.

Early Monday, Chinese officials said the latest riots were started by Rebiya Kadeer, a Uighur human rights advocate who had been imprisoned in China and now lives in Washington, Xinhua reported. As with the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader, Chinese officials often blame Ms. Kadeer for ethnic unrest; she denies the charges.

China’s central government also moved swiftly on Monday to take command of the public depiction of the Urumqi protests and to cripple protesters’ ability to communicate.

Local Internet service was largely disabled, and online bulletin boards and search engines across China were purged of references to the violence.

The social networking service Twitter, which effectively rallied demonstrators in Iran last month, was also disabled. China Mobile, the nation’s largest cellphone provider, curtailed service in Urumqi, and cellphone calls from some Beijing numbers to the area were blocked.

There was also a rumor circulating on Sunday in Urumqi that a Han man had killed a Uighur in the city earlier in the day, said Adam Grode, an English teacher living in the neighborhood where the rioting took place.“This is just crazy,” Mr. Grode said by telephone Sunday night. “There was a lot of tear gas in the streets, and I almost couldn’t get back to my apartment. There’s a huge police presence.”

Mr. Grode said he saw a few Han civilians being harassed by Uighurs. Rumors of Uighurs attacking Han Chinese spread quickly through parts of Urumqi, adding to the panic. A worker at the Texas Restaurant, a few hundred yards from the site of the rioting, said her manager had urged the restaurant workers to stay inside. Xinhua reported few details of the riot on Sunday night. It said that “an unknown number of people gathered Sunday afternoon” in Urumqi, “attacking passers-by and setting fire to vehicles.”

Uighurs are the largest ethnic group in Xinjiang but are a minority in Urumqi, where Han Chinese make up more than 70 percent of the population of two million or so. The Chinese government has encouraged Han migration to the city and other parts of Xinjiang, fueling resentment among the Uighurs. Urumqi is a deeply segregated city, with Han Chinese there rarely venturing into the Uighur quarter.

The Uighur neighborhood is centered in a warren of narrow alleyways, food markets and a large shopping area called the Grand Bazaar or the Erdaoqiao Market, where the rioting reached its peak on Sunday.

Mr. Grode, who lives in an apartment there, said he went outside when he first heard commotion around 6 p.m. He saw hundreds of Uighurs in the streets; that quickly swelled to more than 1,000, he said.

Police officers soon arrived. Around 7 p.m., protesters began hurling rocks and vegetables from the market at the police, Mr. Grode said. Traffic ground to a halt. An hour later, as the riot surged toward the center of the market, troops in green uniforms and full riot gear showed up, as did armored vehicles. Chinese government officials often deploy the People’s Armed Police, a paramilitary force, to quell riots.

By midnight, Mr. Grode said, some of the armored vehicles had begun to leave, but bursts of gunfire could still be heard.

In a telephone interview Monday, one Urumqi resident described a scene of deserted streets, an omnipresent police force and almost palpable tension.

“All around the Erdaoqiao area is very very tense,” said a taxi driver who works near the market, but refused to be identified. “The area is deserted, like you’re driving around in the wee hours of the morning. This morning when I was driving around, I saw three or four burnt-out cars. There’s ash and glass all over the place. Buses, taxis, vans, all with their windows smashed in, empty.”

An ethnic Han woman who lives in an apartment overlooking the Erdaoqiao market said the streets were effectively under a police curfew. “The area is completely closed off to traffic. The people outside can’t come in, we can’t go out,” she said. “When something big happens, it’s best to stay home. Nothing’s open outside anyways, no stores are open. where are you going to go?

“What they should do is crack down with a lot of force at first, so the situation doesn’t get worse. So it doesn’t drag out like in Tibet,” she added. “Their mind is very simple. If you crack down on one, you’ll scare all of them. The government should come down harder.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/07/