MCLC: Urumqi struggles to move on

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: Urumqi struggles to move on
***********************************************************

Source: NYT 
(5/23/14):http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/24/world/asia/residents-try-to-mov
e-on-after-terrorist-attack-in-china.html

In China’s Far West, a City Struggles to Move On
By ANDREW JACOBS 

URUMQI, China — They were hard-core bargain hunters, gray-haired bus
drivers and bureaucrats on modest pensions who woke up early to find the
cheapest produce in this increasingly expensive city. For the driver of
the sport utility vehicle seeking to maximize the mayhem, they were the
easiest of targets.

“The driver zigzagged down the street like he was drunk, knocking people
over and crushing others under the tires,” one witness said. “These poor
old people never had a chance.” Moments later, another S.U.V. barreled
down North Park Street, its occupants tossing small explosive devices out
of the windows as the driver ran over those who lay wounded in the street.

By the time the vehicles exploded at opposite ends of the block, 43 people
were dead, including four of the assailants, and more than 90 people were
wounded, according to an updated casualty list. A fifth suspect was
arrested Thursday night, the state media reported. Most of the victims
were ethnic Han, the dominant ethnic group in China.

On Friday morning, a day after one of China’s worst terrorist attacks
<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/23/world/asia/deadly-attack-in-western-chin
a.html> in recent memory, North Park Street had a veneer of normalcy. The
bakeries, noodle makers and fishmongers were open for business. A
restaurant serving rice pilaf and lamb was packed with Uighur men and
young bank employees on their lunch break. A few paces from the shattered
window of a pawnshop, schoolchildren in matching track suits boisterously
traded penny candy.

But this city of three million remains on edge. The authorities, fearing
revenge attacks by Han citizens, deployed a thick cordon of heavily armed
police officers in front of Uighur schools and neighborhoods. Security
guards at markets and malls asked shoppers to open their bags; those
carrying bottled drinks were told to take a sip to show that they were not
filled with gasoline. The United States Embassy issued a warning advising
its citizens to avoid traveling here in the Xinjiang region, in China’s
far west.

In Beijing, the authorities promised a merciless campaign against the
Uighur separatists who in recent months have been expanding their range of
targets, shedding the blood of tourists in Beijing, train passengers in
the southwest city of Kunming and now elderly shoppers in Urumqi, the
bustling regional capital.

“This is the vile political murder of innocent people who know nothing and
care less about the so-called ‘cause’ their murderers wish to promulgate,”
Xinhua, the state news agency, wrote in an editorial on Friday. “Such
crimes are not to be tolerated in any civilized country or ethnic group.”

Here in Urumqi, Han and Uighur residents tried to put on a brave face,
saying the attack would not succeed in driving a wedge between them. “Most
Uighurs are good,” said Xu Chen, 36, a Han businessman who was born and
raised in Xinjiang and who said he counted many Uighurs among his best
friends. “It’s just a tiny minority who would seek to cause trouble.”

Korban Ismail, 26, a Uighur taxi driver, uttered almost the exact same
words, but then he recalled an incident earlier in the day, when he
stopped to pick up three Han women who had flagged him down. Seeing his
face, one of the women refused to get in, and Mr. Ismail drove away in
anger. “When I got married, I had more Han guests than Uighurs,” he said.
“This kind of behavior can’t be good for ethnic harmony.”

Urumqi is emblematic of the challenges facing Beijing as it tries to stem
the mounting strife, which has taken more than 200 lives this year. A
booming city that is more than 75 percent Han, it is home to a large
Uighur middle class that has mastered the Mandarin language and prospered
by landing secure government jobs.

A broken window near the market in Urumqi. CreditThe New York TimesBut
south of the neon-lit hotels and restaurants that surround People’s
Square, with its granite plinth honoring the People’s Liberation Army,
thousands of poor Uighurs, many of them rural migrants, crowd into
ramshackle tenements.

Many of the more recent arrivals, young men from the Uighur heartland in
the south, have few marketable skills and speak only Uighur, a Turkic
language.

It was here in July 2009 that young Uighur men went on a rampage,
slaughtering Han in the streets after a demonstration by Uighur students
was broken up by the police. Nearly 200 people died in the days that
followed, although exile groups say that figure does not include Uighurs
subsequently killed by vengeful Han mobs.

Back on North Park Street, the authorities worked to erase evidence of the
previous day’s violence. After removing several charred vehicles and
cleaning up the blood and crushed vegetables, they cut down the top half
of a large sycamore tree whose leaves had been seared by the flames of a
burning car.

As armed police officers with riot shields paraded up and down the street,
neighbors traded stories of loss and near misses. One 76-year-old woman
tearfully described how her husband’s hair caught fire; another recounted
seeing a man clutching an open wound in his chest that was filled with
scraps of metal. An egg vendor said her life was saved by a customer who
took the brunt of an explosive device, which one witness said resembled a
paint can.

Yang Tanghui, 81, listened to the stories and shook his head. An army
veteran who was among the first to arrive in Xinjiang in the early 1950s,
part of a massive campaign to pacify the region through Han migration, he
said he had nothing but warm feelings for the Uighurs.

Back then, when Uighurs outnumbered Han 10 to one, there were frequent
conflicts between the two groups, many because of language barriers.
“Things are much better now,” he said.

These days, he said, any attempt to stir up trouble would end badly for
Uighurs, who are increasingly outnumbered in Urumqi and other big cities
in the north of Xinjiang.

“We’re all human beings,” he said. “We all have mothers and we all just
want to live our lives. But if it comes to war, and we start killing each
other, the Han will come out ahead.”

Mia Li contributed research.