The police told Abdullah not to leave home on Monday’s anniversary of deadly ethnic violence in China’s Urumqi city, where the bustle belies continued deep racial divisions and fears of more unrest.
“They told us we can’t go out on July 5 and they also came around on Thursday to gather all our big knives,” the 46-year-old said, drinking tea at his restaurant in the Uighur quarter.
Capital of far-western Xinjiang region, Urumqi was torn in two on July 5, 2009 as the mainly Muslim Uighur minority vented decades of resentment of Chinese rule with attacks on members of China’s dominant Han ethnic group. Han mobs took to the streets in the following days seeking revenge.
Nearly 200 people were killed and 1,700 injured in all, the government says, in the worst ethnic violence in China in decades.China blamed “separatists” for orchestrating the unrest. Tensions in the city again boiled over in September after a spate of syringe attacks — which many victims blamed on Uighurs — led to days of protests that left five people dead.
Uighurs, Xinjiang’s Turkic-speaking, central Asian people, say they live under fear of being detained on suspicion of fomenting trouble, while some Han say they are prepared for the worst if trouble breaks out again. Authorities appeared to be bracing for the anniversary, with the police conducting massive anti-riot exercises and 40,000 security cameras installed throughout the city. Residents say security forces have deployed in ever greater numbers in recent days, with the armed police and riot police seen patrolling the city of over two million people on Sunday.