Ten killed in riot in China's restive west: Xinhua

Beijing: Rioters wielding knives killed at least 10 people in China’s Xinjiang region on Tuesday night, the official Xinhua news agency reported, in the latest spasm of violence to strike the ethnically divided northwest area. The Xinhua report said the killing occurred in Yecheng County near Kashgar, a city in the south of Xinjiang that has been beset by tensions between the mainly Muslim Uighur people and the Han Chinese. “A few rioters killed at least 10 people Tuesday evening and injured others,” said the report issued late on Tuesday. “Police shot death at least two killers and are chasing the rest.” The Uighur people account for just over 40 percent of the region’s 21 million people. But they are the majority in Kashgar and other parts of the region’s south and many chafe at government controls on their culture and religion. [caption id=“attachment_228740” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Armed police officers patrol an ethnic Uighur area in Kashgar, in China’s Xinjiang province. Reuters”] [/caption] In July 2009, Uighurs rioted against Han Chinese residents in Urumqi, the regional capital of Xinjiang, killing at least 197 people, mostly Han, according to official estimates. In January, authorities said that seven people killed by police in Xinjiang had been trying to leave the country to wage “holy war”. In September 2010, courts in Xinjiang sentenced four people to death for violence in two cities in which 32 people were killed. Beijing sees Xinjiang as a bulwark facing the predominantly Muslim nations of central Asia. The region, with a sixth of the country’s land mass, is also rich in natural resources, including oil, coal and gas. The government has blamed the earlier violence on religious hardliners who want to establish an independent state called East Turkestan. But exiled Uighur groups and human rights activists say China overstates the threat posed by Islamic militants in energy-rich Xinjiang, which sits astride south and central Asia. Reuters