Tuesday, 21 July 2009
The representatives of Uygur diaspora, living in Kazakhstan, asked the world community to objectively investigate July conflict in Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region (XUAR), where the hundreds of Uygurs were killed. This was declared during the protest meeting against the policy of Chinese government, which took place in Almaty last Sunday, KazTAG reports.
According to the agency correspondent, the meeting was attended by about 8 thousand people. Initially, the protest was planned to be organized in the suburb of the city in the park, behind Sary-Arka Movie Theater. However, later on the venue was rescheduled to the Palace of republic. Such precaution was taken by Uygurs in order to avoid possible provocations.
"We were warned that various types of provocations are possible to occur during the meeting. Therefore, upon our request the local authorities provided the Palace of republic", the Chairman of Republic cultural center of Uygurs in Kazakhstan, Akhmetzhan Shardinov informed.
Waving the flag of Eastern Turkestan republic that existed in the years of Uygur autonomy in 1930s, the meeting attendants chanted slogans, blaming the violence against Uygurs, committed by Chinese government. They asked UN and other human rights organizations to run independent investigation of the tragedy.
"Giving a speech, people shared the pain. They have simple requests to the world community: to give objective estimate of the bloody incident in Urumqi and find out who organized the pogrom. We also ask Chinese government to suppress Uygurs, participating in this disturbance. Moreover, we ask to put away "Uygur terrorism" cliché. The terrorism does not have ethnic belonging. We are not comfortable with that because we are like any other nation. This is not fair in relation to Uygur", Shardinov noted.
The duration of the meeting was about 1.5 hours with no incidents.
It was earlier reported that on June 26 the mass fight between Uygurs and Han population, the biggest ethnic group in China, took place in the toy-producing plant, located in Shaoguan, Guangdong province. The fight lasted for two hours. 400 policemen were attracted to restore the order. As a result, two Uygurs were killed and at least 118 people were injured. Later on, Uygurs blamed Chinese government in unwillingness to investigate the reasons of the conflict. According to them, this was the exact reason for organization of response actions against Han (Chinese) population in XUAR.
The police took strict measures, using tear-gas, truncheon and firearms. The additional forces were urgently called in the city. The police arrested about 1500 people. The number of people killed in the riots and later on reached 197 people. Nonetheless, according to the World Uygur Congress, there are much more victims than official press reports.
