RIOTING HITS WEST CHINA AS MUSLIMS BATTLE POLICE

by Steven Mufson

The Herald Tribune, Tuesday, February 11, 1997

BEIJING - Riots broke out in a western Chinese town as about 1,000 Muslim separatists battled the police, destroyed shops and burned cars, according to reports Monday by Western news agencies and a Hong Kong newspaper. More than 10 persons were killed, more than 100 injured and as many as 500 arrested before security forces quelled the unrest Wednesday and Thursday in the town of Yining, about 50 kilometres (30 miles) from the border of the former Soviet republic of Kazakstan, the reports said. The bodies of many victims of the disturbances were burned, reports said. The unrest was the latest in a series of incidents in the far western province of Xinjiang, a vast but sparsely populated territory in China where tensions have often flared between Han Chinese and the mostly Muslim ethnic Uighurs, who had their own Republic of East Turkestan from 1944 to 1949. In recent months, there have been bombings by Muslim separatists and several assassinations of pro-Beijing religious figures and government officials. Ac

cess to the region is restricted and journalists who have travelled there have been closely monitored. Covering a sixth of China, Xinjiang has a population of 16.6 million, of whom 38 percent are ethnic Han Chinese, according to Chinese figures. Despite the region's sparse population, Beijing governments have long viewed the nominally autonomous Xinjiang region as being important to the security of China's western frontier and as an integral part of China. In addition, foreign oil companies have been exploring major deposits of oil and natural gas in a desert area in the territory. According to an account by Reuters, the latest unrest erupted after a Chinese policeman tried to arrest a Uighur criminal suspect. Quoting a local source, Reuters said that the suspect and, his family resisted arrest. The scene attracted neighbors and onlookers and the crowd swelled to more than 1,000 and turned into rioting. Later, demonstrators marched on a government building and demanded an end to Han Chinese rule, a Xinjiang

government official told Reuters. Reports quoted local people as saying that a policeman had been stabbed to death and that hundreds of paramilitary police had been called in to restore order.