MGI watch: Urumqi

No time for anything detailed right now, but Roland Soong has the best roundup of coverage, including embedded videos, and Global Voices gives the context to the original demonstration, namely a riot on June 26 between Han and Uighur workers at a toy factory in Guangdong, which left two dead. This is what the Urumqi protests were originally about, apparently.

However, the government has characterized the protest as “beating, looting, smashing and robbing”, a formulation which indicates that there will be no attempt to find a political or administrative resolution – that the authorities acknowledge no social dimension to the protest. They’re also attempted to pin it on the World Uighur Congress, based in Sweden, from where a Chinese diplomat was recently expelled for spying on local Uighur exiles.

The casualty figures are horrendous. Reports generally converge at the figure of 3000 protestors, of which 140 are claimed to be dead and over 800 injured. This is theoretically consistent with two heavily armed groups fighting, or far more likely a police and paramilitary massacre. I wouldn’t rule out the idea that there may have been some violence directed at Han Chinese: in fact, I think it’s quite likely given the feelings that exist between the two communities. But there’s a strong whiff of colonial panic and overkill about the response that made me think of Amritsar.

There have been reports that disturbances have soread to Kashgar, where the old Muslim city is in the process of being razed and Haussmanized. But media coverage is starting to get meta, with lots of stuff about twitter being blocked. I take it that this means its all over but mopping up the bloodstains and arranging the show trials.

Xinjiang blog New Dominion has longer and better analysis and would seem to be the place to go for more of the same.