FIVE PEOPLE have died during protests in the riot-torn Chinese city of Urumqi, Chinese officials said yesterday.
Security forces used tear gas to break up fresh protests as ethnic Han Chinese marched on Communist Party offices to protest over a lack of public security after a series of syringe stabbings that appear ethnically motivated.
“Tear gas has been deployed to disperse the protesters,” ran a terse English-language report on the Xinhua news agency.
Urumqi is still in a state of high alert two months after riots left almost 200 people dead, when tensions flared up between minority Uighurs – who form a majority in Xinjiang province – and ethnic Han Chinese.
Violence started when demonstrations by Uighurs escalated into deadly attacks on Han Chinese. In following days, groups of Han armed themselves and roamed the streets seeking revenge.
This week hundreds of young Han Chinese men protested outside the headquarters of Xinjiang party secretary Wang Lequan – an ally of President Hu Jintao – and called for him to step down.
The Hong Kong broadcaster RTHK said about 5,000 Han Chinese carrying national flags protested peacefully on Renmin Road, demanding that Wang step down. The report said paramilitary police fired several tear gas rounds to disperse them.
One Han Chinese eye-witness, who gave his surname as Miao, said: “There are still tensions in the city. There are few people on the road and there is a martial law. All the shops along the areas under martial law are closed.”
Riot police marched into the crowd to push people back. After several surges, the police broke up the demonstrators, some of whom were singing the Chinese national anthem.
“If Han people go on the street they have to be careful. But those rioters are only a few, not as many as before. The Han protest is because they think the government is being too soft and not helping the Han Chinese to protect their relatives and friends, and they want the government to protect their children,” Mr Miao said.
The protesters want the ringleaders behind the July clashes between Han Chinese and Muslim Uighurs to be punished. They are also anxious about a series of stabbings with syringes or needles in the past two weeks in which Han Chinese appear to have been the chief targets.
“There have been syringe attacks in various places, not just one place.
“Those people don’t openly attack with syringes, they just do it randomly,” said the witness.
“All primary schools, middle schools and high schools have been closed,” he said.
So far, a total of 476 people have sought treatment for stabbings, with 433 of them Han, a TV report said. The rest are from eight other ethnic groups.
Only 89 had obvious signs of having been pricked, and no deaths, infections or poisonings had occurred, according to a TV report. Xinhua said 21 people had been detained.
Vehicles are banned from the streets of the city of 2.5 million, and almost all shops and schools are closed. Restrictions on telecommunications and internet use remain in place. The only website which people can easily access is the local site www.tianshan.com. All other websites are closed.
“The government is afraid some people will say bad things online,” said Mr Miao.