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http://www.documentingreality.com/fo...injiang-28774/ The July 2009 Ürümqi riots were a series of violent riots over several days that broke out on 5 July 2009 in Ürümqi, the capital city of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, in northwestern China. The first day's rioting, which involved at least 1,000 Uyghurs, began as a protest but later escalated into violent attacks which mainly targeted Han ("ethnic Chinese") people. People's Armed Police were deployed, and two days later hundreds of Han people clashed with both police and Uyghurs. In total, officials said that 197 people died, with 1,721 others injured and many vehicles and buildings destroyed; on the other hand, Uyghur groups say the death toll is higher. Many Uyghur men disappeared during wide-scale police sweeps in the days following the riots; Human Rights Watch documented 43 cases and said that this was likely to be just the tip of the iceberg.
Rioting began when the police confronted the march calling for a full investigation into the Shaoguan incident, a brawl in southern China several days earlier in which two Uyghurs had been killed. Observers disagree, however, on what caused the protests to become violent. The Chinese central government alleges that the riots themselves were planned from abroad by the World Uyghur Congress (WUC) and its leader Rebiya Kadeer, while Kadeer denied fomenting the violence in her struggle for her people's right to self determination. Uyghur groups claim that the escalation was caused by the police's use of excessive force.
Chinese media covered the riots extensively, and the Ürümqi riot coverage was compared favourably to the coverage of the unrest in Tibet in 2008. In the weeks following the riots, official sources reported that over 1,000 Uyghurs were arrested and detained; mosques were temporarily closed, and communication services curtailed. The communication limitations and armed police presence remained in place as of January 2010. By November 2009, over 200 individuals—both Uyghur and Han—have faced criminal charges for their actions during the riots, and seventeen have received death sentences.
