From: WUNN (Special Report), Feb.10, 1997

Copyright 1997 Nando.net

Copyright 1997 The Associated Press

BEIJING (Feb 10, 1997 11:12 a.m. EST) -- Crowds of young Muslims beat people to death and torched cars during pro-independence riots in far western China, a policeman said Monday.

Those reported killed in the melee varied widely, from at least four people dead to nearly 300. There was no way to immediately reconcile the conflicting death tolls.

The riots last Wednesday and Thursday were the worst to hit Yining, in the restive Chinese province of Xinjiang (pronounced sin-jeeang), since the 1949 Communist takeover, the Yining city police officer said.

The city is near the border with the former Soviet republic of Kazakstan. Four or five people were killed, some of them beaten to death, said the officer, reached by telephone from Beijing. He refused to give his name. Security forces arrested up to 500 people and released some later, he said. Three cars were set on fire and police fired shots into the air to calm the crowds, he said.

Ming Pao, a Hong Kong daily, said local TV reported more than 10 Chinese were killed and their bodies set on fire, and over 100 people injured in the riots. It quoted a Yining resident as saying that 1,000 Muslims beat up, killed and burned their victims before police quashed the violence.

Modan Mukhlisi, a spokesman for the United National Revolution Front, a Uighur separatist group based in Kazakstan, said 30 Uighurs died in the riots. Ismail Cengiz, the secretary general of a pro-independence Uighur group based in Istanbul, Turkey, claimed that 200 Muslim rioters and about 100 Chinese soldiers were killed in the melee.

The Yining policeman said the rioters were USE CONSULATE.

XINJIANG IS IN THE REMOTE NORTHWEST OF CHINA AND IS OFFICIALLY CALLED THE XINJIANG UIGHER AUTONOMOUS REGION. THERE HAS BEEN SEPARATIST SENTIMENT AMONG UIGHER MUSLIMS. CHINESE AUTHORITIES BLAME THE UNREST ON A SMALL MINORITY OF ISLAMIC RADICALS. ACCORDING TO UIGHERS LIVING IN NEIGHBORING KAZAKHSTAN, 57 THOUSAND PEOPLE WERE ARRESTED IN XINJIANG LAST YEAR IN AN ANTI-SEPARATISM CRACKDOWN BY CHINESE AUTHORITIES. (SIGNED)

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