Fresh demo in riot-hit China region

Jul 7 2009

Ethnic Uighurs have clashed with armed Chinese police in a fresh protest in Xinjiang, where at least 156 people have been killed and more than 1,400 arrested.

Most of the group of about 200 Uighurs were women protesting against the arrests of their husbands in a massive crackdown on members of the Muslim minority by Chinese authorities, prompted by the violence in the Xinjiang provincial capital on Sunday.

The incident was played out in front of reporters who were being taken around the capital Urumqi to see the aftermath of Sunday's riots, when hundreds of vehicles and shops were attacked.

The women, wearing ornate flowered headscarves, blocked a road. Some screamed that their husbands and children had been arrested. Riot police were at one end of the road and paramilitary police at the other.

One woman said her husband was taken away and she would rather die than live without him.

As they marched down the street, paramilitary police in green camouflage fatigues with sticks marched towards them and pushed the crowd back. A woman fell. The brief scuffle ended when the police retreated. Police in black uniforms with assault rifles and tear gas guns took up positions on the other side of the crowd.

The women, however, stayed in the street, pumping their fists in the air and wailing. Meanwhile, police tried to weed the men out of the crowd, herding them down a side street. Two boys ran out of a side alley, and a policeman barked at them, "Go home" and grabbed one around the neck, pushing him.

The 90-minute protest ended when the women walked back into a market area without any resistance. The new protest came after state media said that police had arrested 1,434 suspects over Sunday's riot.

The violence does not bode well for China's efforts to mollify long-simmering ethnic tensions between the minority Uighur people, largely Muslim, and the ethnic Han Chinese in Xinjiang -- a sprawling region that shares borders with Pakistan, Afghanistan and other Central Asian countries.

Mobile phone services and the social networking site Twitter have been blocked and internet links were also cut or slowed down.