Businesses reopen in riot-hit Urumqi amid heightened security+

URUMQI, China, July 9 Kyodo -
Four days after bloody protests broke out this city in China's far western
Xinjiang region, shuttered businesses reopened their doors Thursday and
residents ventured out as security forces flooded the city.

Local authorities lifted traffic restrictions Urumqi, capital of the Xinjiang
Uygur Autonomous Region, except for areas around mosques and other sensitive
locations.
A sound truck, followed by a convoy of vehicles packed with armed police,
traveled around the city broadcasting an announcement that the situation has
been brought under control since Sunday's riot left at least 156 people dead
and more than 1,000 injured.
The violence stemmed from discord between ethnic Uyghurs, a Turkic people who
share linguistic, cultural and religious bonds with central Asia, and the Han
Chinese, China's majority ethnic group.
Meanwhile, Chinese leaders reiterated that those found to have played key roles
in what Beijing claims was organized and premeditated violence will face harsh
punishment.
Senior Chinese leader Zhou Yongkang, visiting with civilians injured in the
riot, called on troops and police officers in the city to ''crush any attempt
by hostile forces from home and abroad,'' according to the official Xinhua News
Agency.
He said the government and the ruling Communist Party will severely punish
''outlaws'' while cracking down hard on violence and safeguarding ethnic unity
in the region, the report said.
Urumqi's Communist Party chief Li Zhi had said Wednesday evening that those
rioters found guilty of committing crimes with ''cruel means'' would be
executed.
Earlier, Xinhua had reported that President Hu Jintao, who cut short his trip
in Europe to attend to the situation in Xinjiang, had convened an urgent
meeting of party Politburo's Standing Committee on Wednesday night to discuss
the situation in Xinjiang.
At the meeting, it was reportedly agreed that stability in Xinjiang is a ''most
important and pressing task'' and that ''severe punishment'' should be meted
out to those who played a key role in the rioting.
Meanwhile, the Foreign Ministry on Thursday brushed aside comments made a day
before by Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan that Turkey, which currently
holds a nonpermanent seat on the U.N. Security Council, will put the violence
in Xinjiang on the council's agenda.
At a press briefing, the ministry's spokesman Qin Gang insisted the unrest is a
domestic affair, and said there is ''no reason to ask the Security Council to
discuss this.''
''China has taken decisive measures according to the law,'' he said.
The People's Daily, the Communist Party's mouthpiece, in an editorial Thursday
called the riot ''a serious violent crime and was in extreme violation of
China's laws and regulations.''
Chinese authorities had soon after Sunday's violence blamed ''separatist
forces'' outside the country, singling out self-exiled Uyghur rights leader
Rebiya Kadeer as a mastermind of the riot and claiming to have records of phone
conversations in which she had communicated with accomplices in China.
Kadeer, a former successful businesswoman in Xinjiang who was later jailed for
harming national security, leads the World Uyghur Congress, which estimates as
many as 800 people were killed by Chinese security forces in Sunday's unrest
and thousands more were injured.
In a statement Tuesday, it quoted Uyghur eyewitnesses as saying over 1,000
Uyghurs had protested peacefully Sunday to call for justice for two Uyghur
workers who were reportedly beaten and killed late last month by an ethnic Han
mob at a toy factory in Guangdong Province.
The security forces, having initially used tear gas to disperse the protesters,
later started shooting at any Uyghur in sight, the statement says.
Chinese authorities say the Uyghur protesters began rioting after defying
authorities' orders for them to leave.
Qin, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, urged the international community to grasp
what really happened Sunday in Urumqi, understand and support the Chinese
government's efforts to safeguard national unity, territorial integrity, ethnic
unity and social stability.
An Uyghur man involved in the planning of the protest told Kyodo News that it
was meant to be nonviolent and that it was originally planned for Friday when
many Uyghur gather at mosques for prayers.
But after Chinese authorities caught wind of it and tried to block it, the
protest action was delayed until Sunday, another day people would find it easy
to meet for an event, he said.
The Global Times, an English-language newspaper published under the People's
Daily, on Thursday accused Washington-basded Kadeer of using a ''fake'' photo
allegedly taken in Urumqi on Sunday to assert that Uyghur protestors had
demonstrated peacefully but were beaten up by Chinese security forces, sparking
the riot.
It said Kadeer, while giving an interview to the Al Jazeera network, used an
old news photo of a different incident in Shishou, in central China's Hubei
Province, thousands of kilometers away, which had been first published in local
newspaper Nanfang Weekly's website on June 26.
''News of the fake photo spread over China's Internet quickly and stirred
indignation,'' the report said.
==Kyodo