Chinese riot police break up fresh ethnic protests

• Hundreds take to streets wielding sticks and shovels• Unrest breaks out after 1,434 arrests
Tania Branigan in Urumqi
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 7 July 2009 09.21 BST
Article history

Soldiers in the back of a truck in Urumqi, China. Photograph: Oliver Weiken/EPA
A new wave of violence swept through the capital of the Chinese region of Xinjiang today as riot police were forced to break up crowds of Han Chinese who marched through Urumqi attacking Muslim Uighurs two days after at least 156 people were killed in ethnic clashes.
Hundreds, possibly thousands, of protesters from China's predominant Han ethnic group wielding wooden sticks, lead pipes, shovels and hoes amassed around People's Square in the centre of this large city before rampaging through a Uighur district smashing shops and stalls.
Large numbers of paramilitary police looked on, but little early attempt was apparently made to restrain them. Later riot police did intervene with teargas to try to break up the crowd.
Journalists were bundled away from the scene "for their own safety". Banks closed their doors and staff crouched inside, some holding staves. Hotel windows were taped up.
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China protests: 'It's a huge wave of violence' Link to this audio
The crowd was diverse: a young woman in a colourful pattern top and white diamante mules clutched a piece of metal pipe. A father held his young son in one hand and a length of wood in the other. No one seemed able to explain why they expected trouble or what had started rumours.
The ethnic Han Chinese were worst hit by the violence on Sunday, when as many as 3,000 Uighurs gathered to protest oppression and the death of some of their kin in a riot in southern China. Witnesses described brutal apparently random attacks on Han people.
Today Uighur residents erupted into protests again during an official media tour of the riot zone in the face of hundreds of officers. Thousands of riot and armed paramilitary police have flooded the southern part of the capital.
Women in the market place burst into wailing and chanting as foreign reporters arrived, complaining that police had taken away Uighur men. Authorities have arrested 1,434 people in connection with Sunday's unrest.
"The policemen took away my husband last night. I don't know why and I don't know where he is," said Abdurajit.
"Mine was taken too. They still have him," broke in another woman.
As they streamed out on to the main street, the crowd swelled to about 200, with Uighur men and more women joining them, shouting and waving their fists.
And then a single old woman, propped on a crutch, forced armoured personnel carriers and massed paramilitary ranks into a slow – if temporary – retreat.
No one noticed her at first. She emerged from the crowd and moved slowly down the street.
A Uighur police officer came forward to escort her away. She could not be persuaded.
As older residents stepped forward and attempted to calm the crowd, she advanced steadily towards the line of armoured vehicles. She halted inches in front of one. The driver started its engine.
For a long moment they faced each other.
Then the carrier slowly began to roll backwards and the line of officers inched away, back down the road.
She walked forward. They inched back. She continued while the officer pleaded with her to step away.
Suddenly, he turned to me and grabbed my notebook, ripped out a page and scribbled a note for her; apparently his name and identity number. He thrust it at her. Reluctantly, she agreed to leave.
For now, it seemed, tensions had ebbed in this riven city.
Earlier, the Guardian watched as the crowd surrounded a police van and smashed the windscreen. A woman thrust photographs of her family at a helmeted officer, screaming at him to look at them, but the mood soon turned nasty and hands in the crowd reached out to hit and punch him. He had to be pulled out by fellow officers.
Suddenly, the massed might of the Chinese authorities looked very much like one scared and vulnerable man – like many of the young officers stationed around the city.
As the crowd grew, paramilitaries began to move down the street and push them back. Officers lashed out with batons and shields, but were restrained by their superiors.
Then the old woman stepped forward. By the time she turned aside, about 30 minutes after the protests burst out, numbers had dwindled to just a few dozen, sandwiched between the paramilitaries and a second line of armed riot police who had emerged behind them.
Officials attempted to remove reporters – telling them that it was not safe and did not fit in with media arrangements – as the stand-off continued.
"You see old women and children now. But on Sunday night it was men – you should go to the hospital and see the victims," said one.
The Guardian and other media left today's confrontation only when protesters had left the road, a few at a time, returning to the market area.
Before the confrontation, many residents in the mainly Uighur area had been reluctant to talk about what happened on Sunday night.
"Not too clear," or "I'm not really sure," several said.
But one young Uighur man said it began because Uighur men were killed in mass violence at a factory in Guangdong last month and said there were other resentments.
"People just wanted to protest peacefully," he said.
"The Chinese want to keep us down. They will not let us have our own country."
Uighur Muslims make up almost half of the population of Xinjiang – an area three times the size of France. Many resent controls on their religion and growing Han immigration and accuse the government of eroding their culture. The region has seen sporadic eruptions of violence, but the scale of this weekend's mass killings staggered everyone.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jul/07/fresh-protests-break-out-china