Khotan – also spelled Hotan was the scene of unrest. This small, remote oasis city on the edge of the Taklamakan desert is about two hours distance by air and some 34 hours by train and bus from Urumqi, the capital of the Turkic-speaking Uighur Muslim majority province.
Official agencies are as usual short on details though the authorities have pinned the blame on separatist Uighur groups notably, East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM).
Piecing together reports from various sources including microblogs it is clear that the police have gunned down “several rioters” and that the rioters attacked the local police station, about 200 yards to the southeast of the ‘Grand Bazaar’ around mid-day, assaulted the police, took hostages and set fire to the station. Two hostages and two security personnel were killed while another security official was severely injured. Armed police rescued six other hostages and regained control of the situation by around 1:30 p.m. local time.
A spokesman for the Xinjiang regional government, Hou Hanmin, has termed the Khotan clashes as ‘an organized terrorist attack’.
However, the World Uighur Congress rejected the contention saying it was a clash between demonstrators and police, who fired at the protesters. Its general secretary. Dolkun Isa has put the death toll at 14. Trouble broke out a land dispute and demonstration by about 100 people he said, adding that the police had raided several homes and detained several young men over the past two weeks.
“Today (Monday, July 18), some of their friends and family members got angry and asked the government to release those people, but the police did not want to respond and attacked that gathering,” said Dolkun Isa quoting local people.
It was the third such attack on security officials in as many years in Xinjiang and comes two weeks after the anniversary of 2009 ethnic riots that claimed at least 197 lives.
A similar attack in the city of Aksu in Aug 2010 had left seven dead. An unidentified attacker detonated explosives in a crowd of paramilitary officers. In August 2008, sixteen police officers were killed when a police station was attacked in the border town of Kashgar.
The July 18 attack spotlights China’s ethnic tensions, which also came upfront afresh in Inner Mongolia, which borders Xinjiang, and in Tibet, which lies just to the south of Xinjiang, in recent weeks.
A major security clampdown and propaganda drive has been unveiled in Tibet these past few days in order to ensure ‘peace’ during the celebrations planned to mark the 60th anniversary of what Beijing refers to as the ‘peaceful liberation’ of the region by Communist forces in 1951.
Significantly, the Khotan unrest was reported two days after the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s spiritual leader met President Barrack Obama at the White House. The American leader expressed his support for Tibetans’ cultural, linguistic and religious traditions, and underscored the importance of protecting their human rights.
Uighur have been complaining of restrictions on religious freedom. They are also bitter at the flood of Han Chinese into Xinjiang as a part of state policy with an eye on its natural resources particularly oil. Rising inequalities and high unemployment among young Uighurs have turned the area into a restive province.
China denies the charge. But it has not gained an upper hand in the battle against Uighur groups. Beijing sees such groups as part of a terrorist organization with links to al -Qaeda; it has not named Pakistan though it is known that the armed Uighur groups get armed training and weapons from the state patronised jihadi outfits.
One reason for not publicly ticking off Pakistan is Beijing’s success in recent months in the dealings with the Pak terror groups, to whom unarmed Chinese engineers and workers are an easy prey in the tribal belt. The Chinese officials are known to directly negotiate with the militant outfits for the release of kidnapped countrymen.
Another factor is (was) Beijing’s leverage over Islamabad as an all –weather friend. During Musharraf regime for instance, when the mullahs of ‘Lal Masjid’ kidnapped Chinese women working in nearby beauty parlours, Beijing arm twisted Islamabad into action.
The Chinese government has recently announced plans to boost the region’s per capita GDP to bring it to the national average by 2015. Earlier this year, the regional government also unveiled a U.S. $130 million plan to boost employment.
Zhang Chunxian, who was appointed as the regional Communist Party chief following 2009 riots, has promised to address local grievances. He strikes a softer image than his predecessor, Wang Lequan, who ‘ruled’ Xinjiang for more than a decade as the Mr. Stable with his focus on maintaining ‘order’. July 18 is a grim reminder to him that he has many miles to cover before he can rest on his image.
