Published by: THE WORLD UYGHUR NETWORK NEWS October 17, 1997

10/17/97, Eastern Turkistan Information Center

[ETIC, 10/17/97] On October 15, a large anti government demonstration, involving several thousands of Hui Muslims, broke out in front of the government building in Xian city of China's Shaanxi province. Apparently, the rally is still taking place. The demonstrators chanted and held Islamic and anti government slogans.

The event was sparked by an arrest of a Hui religious figure two weeks earlier. On mass religious services in mosques, this person strongly protested to government officials in handling an incident of a death of one Hui boy. The boy was brutally beaten to death by the Chinese police in October last year.

Since then, the boy's relatives were denied in releasing the body, which was kept frozen by the authorities in a local morgue. The relatives and friends wrote numerous petitions to various government offices, but the officials turned a deaf ear to their pleas. [Abdiljelil Karkash, Abdullah Pamir]