Hu skips G8 meet to deal with Xinjiang riots

Urumqi (China): Chinese President Hu Jintao abandoned plans to attend a G8 summit in Italy on Wednesday, returning home early to deal with ethnic violence that has left at least 156 dead in China's northwestern region of Xinjiang.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry said on its website that Hu had left for China "due to the situation" in energy-rich Xinjiang, which borders central Asia, where 1,080 were people have been injured and 1,434 arrested in unrest between Han Chinese and Muslim Uighurs since Sunday.

State Councillor Dai Bingguo will attend the G8 summit in Hu's place, the ministry added.

The summit was due to open in the central Italian city of L'Aquila later on Wednesday and Hu had been scheduled to join the talks on Thursday. He arrived in Italy on Sunday and had visited Florence on Tuesday.

Urumqi, Xinjiang's regional capital, woke up on Wednesday after an overnight curfew that authorities imposed after thousands of Han Chinese stormed through its streets demanding redress and sometimes extracting bloody vengeance for Sunday's violence.

The city was quiet, except for soldiers shouting in unison as they went about their morning exercises.

Squads of anti-riot police blocked off main streets, while armoured personnel carriers cruised back and forth.

Late on Tuesday, mobs of Han Chinese wielding clubs, metal bars, cleavers and axes had melted away, but many said Sunday's killings had left a lasting stain of anger.

Li Yufang, a Han who owns a clothes store in Urumqi, said he was still outraged by what had happened over the weekend, and wanted to protest again, although he admitted it was unlikely amid the heavy presence of troops.

"I couldn't sleep last night I was so angry," he said, clutching a club and what appeared to be a carving knife wrapped in a black plastic bag.

"Uighurs are spoiled like pandas. When they steal, rob, rape or kill, they can get away with it. If we Han did the same thing, we'd be executed," Li added, as a friend standing next to him nodded in agreement.

Ethnic tensions

On the other side of Urumqi's now tensely divided neighbourhoods, Uighurs protested on Tuesday, defying rows of anti-riot police and telling reporters that their husbands, brothers and sons had been taken away in indiscriminate arrests.

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Xinjiang has long been a tightly controlled hotbed of ethnic tensions, fostered by an economic gap between many Uighurs and Han Chinese, government controls on religion and culture and an influx of Han migrants who now are the majority in most key cities, including Urumqi.

But controlling the torrid anger on both sides of the region's ethnic divide will now make controlling Xinjiang, with its gas reserves and trade and energy ties to central Asia, all the more testing for the ruling Communist Party.

The government has sought to bridge that divide by blaming the Sunday killings on exiled Uighurs seeking independence for their homeland, especially Rebiya Kadeer, a businesswoman and activist now living in exile in the United States.

Kadeer, writing in the Asian Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, condemned the violence on both sides, and again denied being the cause of the unrest.

"Years of Chinese repression of Uighurs topped by a confirmation that Chinese officials have no interest in observing the rule of law when Uighurs are concerned is the cause of the current Uighur discontent," she wrote.

The Communist Party boss of Xinjiang, Wang Lequan, sought to press forward that effort in a speech broadcast on regional TV and handed out as a leaflet to Urumqi residents late on Tuesday.

"This was a massive conspiracy by hostile forces at home and abroad, and their goal was precisely to sabotage ethnic unity and provoke ethnic antagonism," said Wang.

"Point the spear towards hostile forces at home and abroad, towards the criminals who took part in attacking, smashing and looting, and by no means point it towards our own ethnic brothers," he said, referring to Uighurs.

Uighurs, a Turkic people who are largely Muslim and share linguistic and cultural bonds with Central Asia, make up almost half of Xinjiang's 20 million people. The population of Urumqi, which lies around 3,300 km (2,000 miles) west of Beijing, is mostly Han.