China city tense after police shooting kills 2

[July 14, 2009]  URUMQI, China (AP) -- The capital of China's western Xinjiang region was tense amid tight security Tuesday, a day after police fatally shot two Uighur men and wounded a third, more than a week after deadly ethnic rioting.

It was the first time the government has acknowledged that its security forces opened fire since the violence hit Urumqi on July 5. The government says at least 184 people have been reported killed, most of them Han Chinese, and another 1,680 wounded.

At the site of Monday's shooting, paramilitary police with shields and rifles blocked access to an alley of dingy apartment blocks where many poorer minority Uighurs live.

Troops blocked nonresidents from entering. A band of spikes lay across the road. Roads leading into the main Uighur district near the Grand Bazaar market continued to be blocked.

A police van parked at the mouth of the alley blared messages in the Uighur language, attacking Rebiya Kadeer, the prominent exiled Uighur activist whom the Chinese government blames for inciting the unrest. It has not provided evidence.

Kadeer, who lives in Washington, D.C., has denied the charges and blames government policies for causing the violence.

In the latest incident, the city government said three Uighur men, who were attacking a fourth Uighur with long knives and batons, turned on police who tried to break up the fight. The police shot and killed two of the men when they ignored warnings, the government said. The third man was wounded and taken to a nearby hospital, where his condition was unknown.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang on Tuesday rejected allegations the unrest would hurt Beijing's ties with Muslim countries, saying the violence was not based on religion.

"If they have a clear idea about true nature of the incident, they would understand China's policies concerning religion and religious issues and understand the measures we have taken," he said at a regular news conference.

In the Arab world, two extremist Islamic Web sites affiliated with al-Qaida called for killing Han Chinese in the Middle East, noting large communities of ethnic Chinese laborers work in Algeria and Saudi Arabia.

China has poured tens of thousands of security forces into Urumqi (pronounced uh-ROOM-chee), and its leaders have sought to play down tensions between the ethnic groups.

The July 5 violence began when Uighurs (pronounced WEE-gers) who were protesting last month's deaths of fellow factory workers in a brawl in southern China clashed with police. Crowds scattered throughout the city, attacking ethnic Han Chinese and burning cars.

Of the 184 reported killed July 5, the government has said 137 were Han Chinese and 46 were Uighurs, along with one minority Hui Muslim. Uighurs say they believe many more from their ethnic group died in the government crackdown.

The Uighurs, who number 9 million in Xinjiang, have complained about an influx of Han Chinese and government restrictions on their Muslim religion. They accuse the Han of discrimination and the Communist Party of trying to erase their language and culture.

Han Chinese, many of whom were encouraged to emigrate to Xinjiang by the government, believe the Uighurs should be grateful for the region's rapid economic development, which has brought schools, airports, and oil wells to the sprawling, rugged region the size of Texas.

Meanwhile, more than 100 Chinese writers and intellectuals have signed a letter calling for the release of Ilham Tohti, an outspoken Uighur economist who disappeared from his Beijing home last week and has apparently been detained.

Tohti had in recent months sharpened his critique of problems in Xinjiang on Uighurbiz.cn, a Chinese-language Web site that became a lively forum about Uighur life and views.

"Professor Ilham Tohti is a Uighur intellectual who devoted himself to friendship between ethnic groups and eradicating conflicts between them. He should not be taken as a criminal," said the letter, which demanded information about his case and was posted online Monday.

Xinjiang Gov. Nur Bekri in a televised speech July 6 accused Tohti's Web site and another popular one of helping "to orchestrate the incitement and spread propaganda," a day after the riot.

[Associated Press; By GILLIAN WONG]

Associated Press writer Josef Federman in Cairo contributed to this report.

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