URUMQI, China – Riots and street battles killed at least 140 people in China's western Xinjiang province and injured 828 others in the deadliest ethnic unrest to hit the region in decades. Officials said Monday the death toll was expected to rise.
Police sealed off streets in parts of the provincial capital, Urumqi, after discord between ethnic Muslim Uighur people and China's Han majority erupted into violence. Witnesses reported a new, smaller protest Monday in a second city, Kashgar.
The unrest is another troubling sign for Beijing at how rapid economic development has failed to stem — and even has exacerbated — resentment among ethnic minorities, who say they are being marginalized in their homelands as Chinese migrants pour in.
Columns of paramilitary police in green camouflage uniforms, helmets and flak vests marched Monday around Urumqi's main bazaar — a largely Uighur neighborhood — carrying batons and shields. Mobile phone service and social networking site Twitter were blocked, and Internet links were also cut or slowed down.
There never was a riot or any large scale human activity that didn't have some other kind of formal or informal leadership. Even if something starts spontaneously, leaders arise. The important fact is that people don't confront armed authority without serious grievances. Just because someone says "do this" or "do that" will not move anyone to act in a way that is dangerous if there isn't a need to do so.
The talking point of governments that there are "agitators" or "leaders" behind protest movements should always be denounced and debunked by the press as attempts to deflect attention away from the real problem. There are and will always be in every society dissatisfied people saying "rise up and protest!" but people face down armed authority and subject themselves to harm only when conditions become truly insufferable.