Han Chinese protest poor security in riot-hit city
Asia-Pacific News
Sep 3, 2009, 8:45 GMT


Beijing - Hundreds of Han Chinese residents gathered on Thursday in China's far western city of Urumqi, where scores died in rioting in July, to protest poor public order, witnesses said.

Some 2,000 Han Chinese flocked to the city centre, monitored by hundreds of security personnel, a receptionist at a hotel near Urumqi's central People's Square told the German Press Agency dpa by telephone.

The receptionist said the protest could be linked to a recent spate of stabbings with hypodermic needles in Urumqi, which is the capital of China's ethnically divided Xinjiang Autonomous Region.

A spokesman for the city's public security office declined to confirm the protest but said all officers were deployed on Thursday.

'All the police officers are on the streets today to keep order,' the police spokesman said.

He said the public order problems in Urumqi were 'not serious.'

The city is still recovering from rioting in early July that left 197 people dead and more than 1,600 injured after protestors from the mainly Muslim Uighur minority rampaged through Urumqi and attacked Han Chinese residents and police, according to official reports.

Uighur exile groups said that up to 800 people died in the violence, many of them Uighurs shot or beaten to death by police.

State media on Thursday said police had arrested 15 suspects after a recent spate of stabbings with needles.

The reports did not give the ethnicity of the suspects but said the attacks were reported by residents from the Han, Uighur and several other ethnic groups.

Another Han Chinese witness to Thursday's protest said rumours were circulating in Urumqi that more than 400 people had been stabbed with needles.

The witness, a worker at the Wangdefu Hotel, told dpa by telephone that Xinjiang regional officials had addressed the protestors in People's Square.

'Around 2 pm this afternoon, the (Communist) party chief of Xinjiang, Wang Lequan, gave a speech in the square,' she said.

State media did not report any speech by Wang to the protestors.

Source:http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/asiapacific/news/article_1498980.php/Han-Chinese-protest-poor-security-in-riot-hit-city