By Alishba I. Kassim
Impunity Watch Reporter, Asia
BEIJING, China – China says it has accumulated evidence that the riots in Urumqi that ended up killing nearly 200 people were part of a coordinated attack.
Security officials were quoted on Monday in the state-run press as saying that surveillance videos showed women in Islamic robes and head coverings issuing orders to rioters. One woman is said to have given out clubs for the attack. “Such dressing is very rare in Uqumqi, but these kind of women were seen many times at different locations on surveillance cameras that day.”
The rioting broke out several hours after police allegedly calmed a crowd of thousands of protesting Uighurs, a Turkic minority. The Uighurs were speaking out against the discrimination they face by the Chinese authorities. Authorities claim that “gangs” of Uighurs attacked the Han majority of China at random, and rampaged through Urumqi, a city of 2.3 million. The state-run media sources claim the attacks began simultaneously at 50 different locations throughout the city.
The Chinese government has been insisting that the riots were planned, and are now presenting evidence after being criticized internationally for not stopping the violence. Rohan Gunaratna, a Singapore-based “terrorism expert” said, “It is true that there is significant radicalization of a tiny segment of the Uighur community, but the Chinese government has not as yet presented convincing evidence that this was a coordinated attack.”
The Uighurs used to be a majority in northwestern China, but have now become a minority having lost jobs and influence due to a heavy influx of the Han population. Rebiya Kadeer, president of the World Uighur Congress, said, the Chinese government is “obscuring the truth in order to conceal a mass killing of Uighurs by Chinese security forces.”
For more information, please see:
Los Angeles Times – China Says it has Evidence Riots were Planned – July 20, 2009
The New York Times – China Says its Forces Killed 12 – July 20, 2009
The Wall Street Journal – Uighurs Lose Economic Ground to Han – July 20, 2009
