Urumqi Riots Death Sentences Likely To Prompt More Protests

The death sentence imposed on a Han Chinese in connection with the fatal factory fight in Guangdong seen as the trigger of July’s ethnic riots in Urumqi was always only the prelude. Six men have now been sentenced to death for their involvement in the riots themselves, China’s most deadly violent protest in decades.
All six [...]

Urumqi Party Boss, Xinjiang Police Chief Sacked

As this Bystander expected, official heads have started to roll  over the revival of unrest in Urumqi. Li Zhi, party boss in Urumqi, has been sacked, Xinhua reports. So, too, Xinjiang police chief, Liu Yaohua. These sackings represent relatively rare cases of regional party leaders being held responsible for social unrest, but even Tibet hasn’t [...]

Mysterious Syringe Stabbings Prompt More Urumqi Protests

This Bystander has little idea about what to make of reports that Uighurs in Urumqui are stabbing Han Chinese with hypodermic syringes beyond the obvious observation that tension between the two groups remains taut.
Xinjiang TV reported that 476 people, 433 of whom were Han, has sought treatment for such stabbings. This has brought “tens of [...]

Hu Heads Home To Restore Party Credibility

President Hu Jintao’s return to China, cutting short his attendance at the G8 meeting in Italy, reinforces how seriously the Party leadership takes the challenge to its credibility caused by the ethnic unrest in Xinjiang.
Security forces will be able to reassert control, if not necessarily peace, in Urumqi, but the risk of further outbreaks there [...]

New Rail Line To Xinjiang To Be Built

A concrete infrastructure spending proposal: 120 billion yuan to build a 1,900 kilometer passenger rail line to from Gansu to Xinjiang, Xinhua repots. The new line will run parallel to the existing Lanxin railway, which will be turned over to freight exclusively, easing a bottleneck to the transport of Xinjiang’s oil, coal and cotton to [...]

More Violence In Xinjiang

More violence in the far west, with reports of a gunfight close to Kashgar in which two police died in a clash with seven suspected Uighur militants. At least, two more police are reported to have been wounded.
It is the fourth such deadly incident in the border regions of Xinjiang province in as many weeks. [...]

More Deadly Violence In ‘Restive’ Xinjiang

Restive: “Unable to keep still or silent, or becoming increasingly difficult to control, esp. because of impatience, dissatisfaction or boredom” is the dictionary definition. It has become the international media’s adjective of choice for Xinjiang, where three more officials died following an attack on Tuesday by knife-wielding assailants assumed to be Uighur separatist militants. The [...]

Kuqa Bombings Update

Xinhua has published details of the early Sunday morning attacks in Kuqa in Xinjiang, which the agency says left eight dead — seven of whom were attackers — in a dozen bombings.
The largest attack seems to have been a suicide truck bombing of the public security bureau. Two civilians, a security guard and two of [...]

Terrorism Confirmed In China Southern Airplane Incident

As noted on Mar. 9:
No doubt those responsible for the thwarted China Southern airplane attack on Friday will be found by the Chinese authorities to have similar links.
The party-controlled Global Times now says, “This was a well-prepared, meticulously planned, tightly co-ordinated terror attack” and that police are investigating the “terrorist organization backing” the 19-year-old Uighur [...]

Olympic Terror

It is perhaps no surprise that there should be plots against the Beijing Olympics. It is more surprising that they should become public. China keeps as tight a lid on the appearance of threats of dissidence as it does on the dissidence itself.
State media did report in January 2007 a police raid on a “terrorist [...]