China says a riot that shook the capital of western Xinjiang region on Sunday was a plot against its power, after at least three people died in the eruption of ethnic unrest and authorities launched a crackdown.Not so fast there.
Hundreds of locals took to the streets of the regional capital, Urumqi, some burning and smashing vehicles and confronting ranks of police and anti-riot troops.
It seems that there was a *bit* more to it than that:
Violence in China's restive western region of Xinjiang has left 129 people dead, state media say - a sharp increase on an earlier reported toll.Some sources are putting an even higher number of deaths, but those are not yet second-sourced.
This matters, besides the obvious matter of more than a hundred dead people, in that Xinjiang is the western border territory held by the P.R.C., is a vital part of their energy and resource development plans, and is a little less than half-populated by Uighur (Uyghur)... the Turkic people shared across Central Asia... and they (collectively) haven't exactly taken well to being a part of Han-dominated China. There are perfectly peaceful nationalist Uighur groups, but there are some bad apples as well (cf. East Turkestan Islamic Movement) that have ended up on the wrong side of the GWOT, and then there are armed liberation groups.
The P.R.C. government finds it useful to lump them all under the "terrorist" label, and treats the problem as such.
There may not be that many "terrorist" Uighurs out there, but after today, there may well be more rebels.
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UPDATE 6.July, late
The death toll is over 156, and official P.R.C. sources put the number arrested at 1,434. Protests have spread in the region, but there has been a massive movement of security forces to counter this uprising.
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