Uighurs Provoke Beijing

With old Kashgar is being demolished to make way for an "Anti-Terrorism City", and the continuing suppression of their culture and political power, it's not surprising that Uighurs are rioting provoking Beijing, those radicals. Surely Chen Shui-bian must be behind this latest rise in Cross-Desert tensions, which, everyone knows, Uighurs ratchet up whenever they have domestic political issues. Don't they realize they are interfering with big profits smooth relations between the US and China? Meanwhile AP via the Taipei Times reports:

Violent street battles killed at least 140 people and injured 828 others in the deadliest ethnic unrest to hit China’s western Xinjiang region in decades and officials said yesterday that the death toll was expected to rise.

Police sealed off streets in parts of the provincial capital, Urumqi, after discord between ethnic Muslim Uighurs and China’s Han majority erupted into riots. Witnesses reported a new protest yesterday in a second city, Kashgar.

Columns of paramilitary police in green camouflage uniforms and flak vests marched around Urumqi’s main bazaar — a largely Uighur neighborhood — carrying batons, long bamboo poles and slingshots yesterday. The mobile phone service was blocked and Internet links were also cut or slowed down.

Rioters on Sunday overturned barricades, attacked vehicles and houses, and clashed violently with police in Urumqi, media and witness accounts said. State TV aired footage showing protesters attacking and kicking people on the ground. Others, who appeared to be Han Chinese, sat dazed with blood pouring down their faces.

The news services like the term "ethnic unrest" -- the Uighur riots are "ethnic unrest" in the same sense that the Gallic Revolt or the Sepoy Mutiny or Little Big Horn are examples of "ethnic unrest." Say rather that the Uighurs are a colonized people and seethe at the injustices they must deal with every day.

People in Taiwan tend to think that "this can't happen to us." It can and it might when the Anschluss arrives. Remember the violence when Germany's China's envoy Chen Yunlin came to visit Prague Taipei, and how many were injured in that relatively minor event between locals? UPDATE: As a friend pointed out to me, this comes on the heels of Ma praising China's human rights improvements on the Tiananmen Anniversary.

While the front pages of other papers were dominated by stories and pictures of the unimportant events in Xinjiang, Apple Daily was there leading with the really key story of the day, the tawdry tale of some poor girl who had been chained and raped by her father for three years. The sensational sells....

_______________________
[Taiwan] Don't miss the comments below! And check out my blog and its sidebars for events, links to previous posts and picture posts, and scores of links to other Taiwan blogs and forums!