Deadly ethnic clashes between Hui Muslims and Han Chinese in central China were met yesterday with a military blockade and a news blackout as officials attempted to curb the unrest and cover it up.
Despite the heavy presence of paramilitary police in Zhongmou, the rural county in Henan Province where a sudden outburst of violence killed at least seven, possibly many more, local residents remained uneasy.
"We don't dare go out in the fields to work," said a peasant woman in Nanren village, which is predominantly Muslim and has been a flashpoint in the riots that began last Thursday and were only brought under control on Sunday.
Farmers from Nanren clashed with their neighbors in Nanwei, which is Chinese, after tempers flared over a traffic dispute. As well as the dead, 42 were injured, state-run Xinhua news agency said.
Locals disputed the official toll, saying as many as 20 had lost their lives as ethnic animosities flared across this county of rice fields fed by the water of the Yellow River.
Eighteen people were arrested, according to Xinhua, which carried a brief report only on its English-language service, which targets a mainly foreign readership.
None of the Chinese media mentioned the unrest and reports of the incident were blacked out when broadcast by the BBC and CNN television networks.
"All the 18 detained are Han Chinese," a teacher at a Nanren elementary school told reporters. "They were held because they killed a Hui child who was on his way to school."
On Tuesday, Nanren resembled a ghost town, as police officers and communist party leaders patrolled the streets to prevent new disturbances, locals said.
There were unconfirmed reports Muslims from other parts of China had tried to get to Nanren to join the fight.
Some of them attempted to travel to Henan by train, but were prevented by police from getting off, while others arrived in buses and managed to break through the cordons, according to locals.
Foreign journalists trying to enter Nanren Monday were either turned back or detained.
Most residents in Zhengzhou, the Henan provincial capital less than 40km east of Zhongmou, appeared to have heard only vague rumors about the riots, and many were shocked as the vehemence of the clashes.
China's Huis are descendants of Arab and Persian traders. Over the centuries they have mixed so thoroughly with the Han Chinese that they are indistinguishable from each other but for religion, customs and dress codes.
In related developments, officials have vowed to "severely punish" organizers of a mass protest in southwest China amid a simmering conflict over farmland requisition for a hydroelectric project, residents said yesterday.
Around 100,000 people are to be relocated to make way for the Pubugou dam in Sichuan Province's Hanyuan County, and many are unhappy at the compensation payments offered.
Tempers boiled over on Thursday and Friday last week when villagers said at least one person was killed and scores were injured as tens of thousands of people clashed with armed police.
Some protesters were savagely beaten by police in the melee, villagers said.
"They were beating people. Some people were crying, some were on their knees begging for mercy," a resident surnamed Peng from Jinyan village told reporters.
The accusations were denied by an official, surnamed Liu, at the local migration bureau. Liu also denied that anyone died in the clash.
Villagers said officials were now trying to hunt down the protest leaders.
"They said that they will arrest those who led the protests, those who are responsible," said a farmer from Dashu village who identified herself only as Wang.
Another resident surnamed Dong from the same village said officials had made a television appeal to urge people to turn themselves in.
"They said those who don't turn themselves in will be arrested," she said.
Local officials, led by Sichuan Provincial Party Committee Vice Secretary Li Chongxi, met with villagers Monday to listen to their requests, Sichuan newspaper Ya'an Daily said.
Li was quoted as saying that the Pubugou hydroelectric project -- temporarily suspended due to the protests -- must go ahead and people who incited the protests must be punished to ensure social stability.
But residents remained defiant and said unless they receive more reasonable compensation, they will take to the streets again.
They said officials had visited several villages to admonish and calm down residents but have not yet offered new conditions for compensation payments.
"The riot has died down, but this is only temporary. We have to go out there again because the compensation is just too low. How can we make a living like this?" Peng said.
Villagers said they had been offered between 180 and 320 yuan (US$21 and US$38) per mu (0.0667 hectares) of land which they say is not enough to make up for the annual income of 7,000 yuan from each mu they make from growing wheat, turnip and beans.
"Premier Wen Jiabao (
The lands of some 100,000 farmers in 40 townships spread throughout three counties are expected to submerged by the dam project. Up to one million farmers, many unhappy about their future prospects, are expected to be relocated to make way for the Yangtze's Three Gorges Dam, when the world's biggest hydroelectric project is fully completed by 2009.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to