Page 119 - Conflict, Terrorism, and the Media In Asia

108 Michael Dillon
handed in petitions to local authorities and called for the end of Chinese rule in
the Ghulja region and its incorporation into Kazakhstan. They carried banners
with slogans including ‘Establish a Kazakh State’, ‘End Communist Rule in
Xinjiang’and ‘Long Live Uyghur Xinjiang’. More than 3,000 residents of Zhaosu
and Gongliu are said to have surrounded local government offices, driven lorries
at police stations and stolen guns and police vehicles. The local government
offices in Zhaosu are reported to have been completely ransacked. Public
Security Bureau police and People’s Armed Police Units dispersed the crowd with
armoured vehicles but were faced with return fire from light machine guns man-
ufactured in the former Soviet Union. Military units from Ghulja and Bole were
sent to the two towns to restore order. Zhaosu was placed under curfew on
25 April and over eighty people suspected of involvement in the disorder
were arrested. As many as 220 people may have been killed or injured and over
8,500 rounds of ammunition were fired.
The towns of Nilka and Qapqal experienced equally serious disturbances.
Demonstrations on 22 April were followed by a sit-down protest at the offices of the
municipal government on the 23 April and strikes on the 24 April, during which
water, electricity and gas supplies were cut off. Crowds surrounded the government
offices on the 25 April, breaking into them in the afternoon and into the Public
Security headquarters and People’s Armed Police barracks in the evening. As many
as 3,000 demonstrators surrounded the local military base, demanding Chinese
withdrawal from Xinjiang and the establishment of an independent state of
Uyghuristan. Troops fired back and issued an ultimatum that if the demonstrators
did not depart by nine o’clock in the evening, they would take further action: in
return the demonstrators demanded that police who had opened fire be prosecuted.
In the town of Khotan, a demonstration began on 7 July 1995 after reports
circulated among local Muslims that an Imam at the Baytulla mosque had been
arrested. Several hundred members of his congregation went to the local police
and government offices to demand his release and a disturbance broke out when
this was refused. The fifty or so officers and men of the People’s Armed Police
who were stationed there were reinforced by large numbers of armed troops and
police and there were many injuries to protesters, police and government offi-
cials. There were arrests on the day and in the weeks that followed, and over
20 people were imprisoned after trials that took place in September of the same
year (Amnesty International 1999).
Between February and April 1996 there were a number of serious incidents in
four counties of the Aksu region, which is approximately half way between
Kashghar and Urumqi. They all had links with the separatist struggle and were
almost certainly connected. On 10 February four men dressed in old-style police
uniforms and carrying pistols, drove a Beijing 2020 jeep to Bozidun farm in
Wensu county where they robbed six herding families. They stole hunting rifles,
ammunition, gunpowder, telescopes and over ¥4,000 Renminbi in cash. The local
border police were called, and two police officers and one of the robbers died in
the subsequent gun battle. This was reported as a crime but was almost certainly
an operation by separatists to secure funds and weapons.