 | November 2, 2004
Ethnic Clashes Are Confirmed by Beijing; Toll Is Unclear
By JOSEPH KAHN
BEIJING, Nov. 1 - Riots in the central Chinese province of Henan resulted in 7 deaths and 42 injuries and were quelled after authorities imposed martial law, the New China News Agency said Monday, offering the first official bulletin on unrest that began late last week.
The brief dispatch did not describe the reasons for the riots, which local residents said involved sustained clashes between Hui Muslims and Han Chinese after a traffic accident. It gave a much lower death toll than some residents reported.
One person told about an internal account of the riots, prepared for higher authorities in Beijing, that said the police had counted 148 deaths, including 18 police officers. Western news agencies reported varying death tolls, quoting local residents as saying that as many as 30 people were killed.
The police prevented access to the county of Zhengmou, situated between Kaifeng and Zhengzhou in Henan Province, where much of the violence occurred. Reporters and photographers entering the area were detained and expelled. It was difficult to reach residents because phone connections appeared to have been blocked.
The incident is the latest challenge for the authorities in a society that has become markedly prone to social unrest. A growing wealth gap and persistent corruption and backwardness in rural areas have fueled riots in the countryside and in secondary cities. Large-scale demonstrations, some violent, are no longer rare.
Ethnic violence is less common. Hui Muslims, one of the country's 56 official ethnic groups, trace their origins to Central Asia. But they resemble Han Chinese, who make up about 90 percent of the population, and are considered well integrated into Chinese society.
The details of the Henan incident remain sketchy and the number of casualties is in dispute. But it appears to have been one of the largest and most sustained ethnic clashes in many years.
The violence erupted Friday after a traffic dispute pitted mostly Han residents of one village against Hui Muslims from a neighboring village. Local residents said tempers first flared after a Hui taxi driver ran over and killed a young Han girl.
Relatives and fellow villagers of the girl descended on the Hui village to demand compensation. Fighting erupted, and scores of local peasants took up farm implements to battle one another.
As word of the confrontation spread, Han and Hui in adjoining areas joined the fray. Several reports said as many as 500 people were involved in fighting over the weekend.
Officers from the paramilitary People's Armed Police were deployed in the region and put it under martial law. Residents estimated that thousands of police officers had been deployed. The New China News Agency did not specify the number of police officers involved.
A related incident may have occurred in neighboring Qi County when the police intercepted a convoy of vehicles carrying other Hui Muslims to the area. Estimates by local residents of the number of outsiders trying to join the fray were as high as several hundred. Residents described to Western news agencies a violent standoff between the Hui outsiders and police officers who stopped the convoy, with some additional deaths.
An imam at a mosque inside the barricaded zone, who spoke by mobile phone, said that order had been restored but that Hui residents feared that local Han planned to continue fighting.
"The battles were intense and broke out in several places," the man said. "I know of several people who died in my village and of about 10 people in another village."
The most recent clash between Hui and other Chinese occurred in 2002, when a struggle broke out between Hui and Tibetans in western Qinghai Province. A large number of injuries were reported, but like many such incidents the matter was ignored or played down by the state-controlled media.
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发表于 2004-11-2 13:50:00
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发表于 2004-11-2 16:23:00
发表于 2004-11-2 22:54:00
