Violent street battles between ethnic Muslim Uighur people and China's Han majority killed at least 140 people and injured 828 others on Sunday. It was the deadliest ethnic unrest to hit China's volatile western Xinjiang region in decades. The government blamed Uighur exiles for stoking the unrest. Exile groups said the violence started only after police began violently cracking down on a peaceful protest. The demonstrators had been demanding justice for two Uighurs killed last month during a fight with Han Chinese co-workers at a factory in southern China. Accounts differed over what happened when about 1,000 to 3,000 people gathered Sunday in the regional capital Urumqi for the protest, but the violence seemed to have started when the crowd of protesters refused to disperse. The rioters overturned barricades, attacking vehicles and houses, and clashed violently with police, according to media and witness accounts Wu Nong, director of the news office of the Xinjiang provincial government, said more than 260 vehicles were attacked or set on fire and 203 houses were damaged. She said 140 people were killed and 828 injured in the violence. She did not say how many of the victims were Han or Uighurs. Witnesses said the protest spread Monday to Kashgar city in Xinjiang province when more than 300 protesters demonstrated outside the Id Kah Mosque. Maimaiti, a man who said he worked at the mosque, said he could hear the protesters and police shouting outside. “At present, the situation is still seriously complicated,” the China News Service quoted Nur Bekri, the chairman of Xinjiang as saying. – Agencies‘Dark day' – exiles“We are extremely saddened by the heavy-handed use of force by the Chinese security forces against the peaceful demonstrators,” said Alim Seytoff, vice president of the Washington, D.C.-based Uyghur American Association. “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,” said Alim Seytoff, vice president of the Washington, D.C.-based Uyghur American Association. The association, led by a former prominent Xinjiang businesswoman now living in America, Rebiya Kadeer, estimated that 1,000 to 3,000 people took part in the protest.‘Organized crime'Xinjiang Governor Nur Bekri said in a televised address early Monday that Uighur exiles led by Kadeer caused the violence, saying, “Rebiya had phone conversations with people in China on July 5 in order to incite, and Web sites ... were used to orchestrate the incitement and spread propaganda.” A government statement quoted by Xinhua said the violence was “a pre-empted, organized violent crime. It is instigated and directed from abroad and carried out by outlaws in the country.” Seytoff dimissed the accusations. “It's common practice for the Chinese government to accuse Ms. Kadeer for any unrest” in Xinjiang, he said.Critics say... ...the millions of Han Chinese who have settled in Xinjiang in recent years are gradually squeezing the Turkic people out of their homeland. But many Chinese... ... believe the Uighurs are backward and ungrateful for the economic development the Chinese have brought to the poor region. __
