The confrontation later ebbed to a tense standoff between about 100 protesters, mostly women, some carrying infants, and riot police in black body armor and helmets, tear-gas launchers at the ready, in a Uighur neighborhood pocked with burned-out homes and an automobile sales lot torched during the Sunday riots.
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The fighting on Sunday was the deadliest episode of ethnic violence in China in decades. The bloodshed here, along with the Tibetan uprising last year, shows the extent of racial hostility that still pervades much of western China, fueled partly by economic disparity and by government attempts to restrict religious and political activity by minority groups.
The rioting, which began as a peaceful protest calling for a full government inquiry into an earlier brawl between Uighurs and Han Chinese at a factory in southern China, took place in the heart of Xinjiang, an oil-rich desert region where Uighurs are the largest ethnic group but are ruled by the Han, the dominant ethnic group in the country.
Protests spread Monday to the heavily guarded town of Kashgar, on China’s western border, as 200 to 300 people chanting “God is great” and “Release the people” confronted riot police officers about 5:30 p.m. in front of the city’s yellow-walled Id Kah Mosque, the largest mosque in China. They quickly dispersed when officers began arresting people, one resident said.
Internet social platforms and chat programs appeared to have unified Uighurs in anger over the way Chinese officials had handled the earlier brawl, which took place in late June thousands of miles away in Shaoguan, Guangdong Province. There, Han workers rampaged through a Uighur dormitory, killing at least two Uighurs and injuring many others, according to the state news agency, Xinhua. Police officers later arrested a resentful former factory worker who had ignited the fight by spreading a rumor that six Uighur men had raped two Han women at the site, Xinhua reported.
But photographs that appeared online after the battle showed people standing around a pile of corpses, leading many Uighurs to believe that the government was playing down the number of dead Uighurs. One Uighur student said the photographs began showing up on many Web sites about one week ago. Government censors repeatedly tried to delete them, but to no avail, he said.
“Uighurs posted it again and again in order to let more people know the truth, because how painful is it that the government does bald-faced injustice to Uighur people?” said the student, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution from the government.
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A call for protests spread on Web sites and QQ, the most popular instant-messaging program in China, despite government efforts to block online discussion of the feud.
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By Tuesday morning, more than 36 hours after the start of the protest, the police had detained more than 1,400 suspects, according to Xinhua. More than 200 shops and 14 homes had been destroyed in Urumqi, and 261 motor vehicles, mostly buses, had been burned, Xinhua reported, citing Liu Yaohua, the regional police chief.
Police officers operated checkpoints on roads throughout Xinjiang on Monday. People at major hotels said they had no Internet access. Most people in the city could not use cellphones.
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At the local airport, five scrawny, young men wearing black, bulletproof vests and helmets stood outside the terminal, holding batons. The roadways leading into the city center were empty early on Tuesday, except for parked squad cars and clusters of armored personnel carriers and olive military trucks brimming with paramilitary troops. An all-night curfew had been imposed.
Residents described the central bazaar in the Uighur enclave, where much of the rioting took place, as littered with the charred hulks of buses and cars. An American teacher in Urumqi, Adam Grode, and another foreigner said they had heard gunfire long after nightfall Sunday.
Xinhua did not give a breakdown of the 156 deaths, and it was unclear how many of them were protesters and how many were other civilians or police officers. There were no independent estimates of the number of the death toll. At least 1,000 people were described as having protested.
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Photographs online and video on state television showed injured people lying in the streets, not far from overturned vehicles that had been set ablaze. Government officials gave journalists in Urumqi a disc with a video showing bodies strewn in the streets.
The officials also released a statement that laid the blame directly on Rebiya Kadeer, a Uighur businesswoman and human rights advocate who had been imprisoned in China and now lives in Washington. It said the World Uighur Congress, a group led by “the splittist” Ms. Kadeer, “directly ignited, plotted and directed the violence using the Shaoguan incident in Guangdong.” The statement said bloggers first began calling for the protest on Saturday night and also used QQ and online bulletin boards to organize a rally at People’s Square and South Gate in the Uighur quarter of Urumqi.
The World Uighur Congress rejected the accusations and said that it condemned “in the strongest possible terms the brutal crackdown of a peaceful protest of young Uighurs.” The group said in a statement on Monday that Uighurs had been subject to reprisals not only from Chinese security forces but also from Han Chinese civilians who attacked homes, workplaces or dormitories after the riots on Monday.
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The violence on Sunday dwarfed in scale assaults on security forces last year in Xinjiang. It was deadlier, too, than any of the bombings, riots and protests that swept through the region in the 1990s and that led to a government clampdown.
Uighurs make up about half of the 20 million people in Xinjiang but are a minority in Urumqi, where Han Chinese dominate. The Chinese government has encouraged Han migration to many parts of Xinjiang, and Uighurs say that the Han tend to get the better jobs in Urumqi. The government also maintains tight control on the practice of Islam, which many Uighurs cite as a source of frustration.
But an ethnic Han woman who lives in an apartment near the central bazaar said in a telephone interview that the government should show no sympathy toward the malcontents.
“What they should do is crack down with a lot of force at first, so the situation doesn’t get worse, so it doesn’t drag out like in Tibet,” she said after insisting on anonymity. “Their mind is very simple. If you crack down on one, you’ll scare all of them. The government should come down harder.”
Die autonome Region Xinjiang

 In der im Nordwesten Chinas liegenden Provinz Xinjiang ist es zu Unruhen gekommen. Dabei sollen mehr als 140 Menschen umgekommen und 816 verletzt worden sein. Diese Zahl hatte sich am 6. Juli deutlich erhöht. Zuvor hatte die Nachrichtenagentur Xinhua von drei getöteten Demonstranten und einem toten Polizisten berichtet. Man habe hunderte von Personen festgenommen, darunter seien auch die Anstifter, berichtete das staatliche chinesische Fernsehen.

Bei den ethnischen Auseinandersetzungen zwischen Han-Chinesen und muslimischen Uiguren im 3270 km westlich von Peking liegenden Ürümqi, der Hauptstadt der autonomen Region, wurden Häuser, Hotels und 261 Fahrzeuge in Brand gesetzt. Nach Berichten der Nachrichtenagentur Xinhua wurden in der 2,7 Millionen Einwohner zählenden Stadt 203 Geschäfte zerstört. Xinhua berichtete darüber, dass uigurische Randalierer mit Messern, Latten und Steinen Han-Chinesen gejagt hätten.

Die chinesischen Behörden beschuldigten die im US-Exil lebende Rebiya Kadeer, die Vorsitzende des Uigurischen Weltkongresses, die Unruhen angezettelt zu haben. Dilxat Raxit, eine im schwedischen Exil lebende Sprecherin der Organisation, wies die Anschuldigung zurück. „Sie schieben uns die Schuld zu, um dadurch die Aufmerksamkeit der Uiguren von der Diskrimination und der Unterdrückung abzulenken, die diesen Protest ausgelöst hat.“

Der Gouverneuer Xinjiangs Nur Bekri erklärte, dass hinter dem Aufruhr „die drei Kräfte des Terrorismus, Separatismus und Extremismus“ steckten. Diese Formulierung steht im amtlichen chinesischen Sprachgebrauch für islamistische Aufständische, die für die Unabhängigkeit der Region kämpfen. China wirft der Islamischen Partei Turkestans und der Islamischen Bewegung Ostturkestan Kontakte zu al-Qaida vor. Uigurische Terroristen sollen in den letzten zwei Jahrzehnten etwa 300 Anschläge begangen haben, denen mehr als 160 Personen zum Opfer gefallen sein sollen. 

Die ethnisch begründeten Auseinandersetzungen zwischen Han-Chinesen und muslimischen Uiguren nahmen ihren Anfang am Nachmittag des 5. Juli, als auf einem Markt der Regionalhauptstadt Ürümqi die Polizei einen zunächst friedlichen Protestmarsch aufhalten wollte. Die Demonstranten forderten eine offizielle Untersuchung von Tumulten zwischen Uiguren und Han-Chinesen in der Provinz Guangdong. Dabei wurden am 25. und 26. Juni in einer Spielzeugfabrik zwei Uiguren getötet und 118 Personen verletzt. Diese Tumulte hatten sich an einem Gerücht entzündet, sechs uigurische Männer hätten zwei Han-Frauen in der Fabrik vergewaltigt.

China hatte das frühere Ostturkestan 1949 besetzt und 1955 annektiert. Das Gebiet grenzt an Pakistan und Afghanistan. Es verfügt über große Vorkommen an Bodenschätzen, darunter Kohle, Gold, Uran und vermutlich Erdgas und Erdöl. Das Gebiet dient der Volksrepublik auch als Zugangsweg für den Handel mit den zentralasiatischen Republiken. Heute sind 40 Prozent der Einwohner Han-Chinesen, die zum größten Teil erst nach 1990 hier angesiedelt wurden. Etwa die Hälfte der knapp 19,6 Millionen Bewohner sind Uiguren. Außerdem leben hier 45 weitere ethnische Gruppen. Amnesty International beschuldigt die Volksrepublik, die Uiguren unter Verwendung von Folter und Verhaftungen zu unterdrücken. Mehr als 3.000 Uiguren seien inhaftiert und über 200 hingerichtet worden, sagt AI.

China ist ein Vielvölkerstaat mit 55 weiteren Völkern, wobei die Han-Chinesen mit einem Anteil von 91,6 Prozent an der Bevölkerung allerdings die Mehrheit stellen.