An Analysis - NYT 7/7 Report

 An Analysis - NYT 7/7 Report

Dec 4, 2009 9:17 AM

An Analysis - NYT 7/7 Report "China Locks Down Restive Region After Deadly Clashes"

Reference :

China Locks Down Restive Region After Deadly Clashes

Ng Han Guan/Associated Press

Urumqi residents on Monday walked past burned cars. The government sent police officers into the city after deadly fighting

July 7, 2009

China Locks Down Restive Region After Deadly Clashes

By EDWARD WONG

URUMQI, China — The Chinese government locked down this regional capital of 2.3 million people    and other cities across its western desert region on Monday and early Tuesday, imposing curfews, cutting off cellphone and Internet services and sending armed police officers into neighborhoods after clashes erupted here on Sunday evening between Muslim Uighurs and Han Chinese. The fighting left at least 156 people dead and more than 1,000 injured, according to the state news agency.
But hundreds of Uighur protesters defied the police again on Tuesday morning, crashing a state-run     tour of the riot scene for foreign and Chinese journalists. A wailing crowd of women, joined later by scores of Uighur men, marched down a wide avenue with raised fists and tearfully demanded that the police release Uighur men who they said had been seized from their homes after the violence. Some women waved the identification cards of men who had been detained.
As journalists watched, the demonstrators smashed the windshield of a police car and several police officers drew their pistols before the entire crowd was encircled by officers and paramilitary troops in riot gear.
“A lot of ordinary people were taken away by the police,” a protester named Qimanguili, a 13-year-old  girl clad in a white T-shirt and a black headscarf, said, crying. She said her 19-year-old brother had    been taken away by police officers on Monday, long after the riots had ended.
The confrontation later ebbed to a tense standoff between about 100 protesters, mostly women, some carrying infants, and riot police in black body armor and helmets, tear-gas launchers at the ready, in a Uighur neighborhood pocked with burned-out homes and an automobile sales lot torched during the Sunday riots.
The fighting on Sunday was the deadliest episode of ethnic violence in China in decades. The bloodshed here, along with the Tibetan uprising last year, shows the extent of racial hostility that still pervades   much of western China, fueled partly by economic disparity and by government attempts to restrict religious and political activity by minority groups.
The rioting, which began as a peaceful protest calling for a full government inquiry into an earlier      brawl between Uighurs and Han Chinese at a factory in southern China, took place in the heart of Xinjiang, an oil-rich desert region where Uighurs are the largest ethnic group but are ruled by the Han,  the dominant ethnic group in the country.
Protests spread Monday to the heavily guarded town of Kashgar, on China’s western border, as 200 to 300 people chanting “God is great” and “Release the people” confronted riot police officers about 5:30 p.m. in front of the city’s yellow-walled Id Kah Mosque, the largest mosque in China. They quickly dispersed when officers began arresting people, one resident said.
Internet social platforms and chat programs appeared to have unified Uighurs in anger over the way Chinese officials had handled the earlier brawl, which took place in late June thousands of miles away    in Shaoguan, Guangdong Province. There, Han workers rampaged through a Uighur dormitory, killing    at least two Uighurs and injuring many others, according to the state news agency, Xinhua. Police officers later arrested a resentful former factory worker who had ignited the fight by spreading a      rumor that six Uighur men had raped two Han women at the site, Xinhua reported.
But photographs that appeared online after the battle showed people standing around a pile of corpses, leading many Uighurs to believe that the government was playing down the number of dead Uighurs.   One Uighur student said the photographs began showing up on many Web sites about one week ago. Government censors repeatedly tried to delete them, but to no avail, he said.
“Uighurs posted it again and again in order to let more people know the truth, because how painful is      it that the government does bald-faced injustice to Uighur people?” said the student, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution from the government.
A call for protests spread on Web sites and QQ, the most popular instant-messaging program in China, despite government efforts to block online discussion of the feud.
By Tuesday morning, more than 36 hours after the start of the protest, the police had detained more    than 1,400 suspects, according to Xinhua. More than 200 shops and 14 homes had been destroyed in Urumqi, and 261 motor vehicles, mostly buses, had been burned, Xinhua reported, citing Liu Yaohua,    the regional police chief.
Police officers operated checkpoints on roads throughout Xinjiang on Monday. People at major hotels said they had no Internet access. Most people in the city could not use cellphones.
At the local airport, five scrawny, young men wearing black, bulletproof vests and helmets stood   outside the terminal, holding batons. The roadways leading into the city center were empty early on Tuesday, except for parked squad cars and clusters of armored personnel carriers and olive military trucks brimming with paramilitary troops. An all-night curfew had been imposed.
Residents described the central bazaar in the Uighur enclave, where much of the rioting took place, as littered with the charred hulks of buses and cars. An American teacher in Urumqi, Adam Grode, and another foreigner said they had heard gunfire long after nightfall Sunday.
Xinhua did not give a breakdown of the 156 deaths, and it was unclear how many of them were protesters and how many were other civilians or police officers. There were no independent estimates   of the number of the death toll. At least 1,000 people were described as having protested.
Photographs online and video on state television showed injured people lying in the streets, not far from overturned vehicles that had been set ablaze. Government officials gave journalists in Urumqi a disc    with a video showing bodies strewn in the streets.
The officials also released a statement that laid the blame directly on Rebiya Kadeer, a Uighur businesswoman and human rights advocate who had been imprisoned in China and now lives in Washington. It said the World Uighur Congress, a group led by “the splittist” Ms. Kadeer, “directly ignited, plotted and directed the violence using the Shaoguan incident in Guangdong.” The statement    said bloggers first began calling for the protest on Saturday night and also used QQ and online bulletin boards to organize a rally at People’s Square and South Gate in the Uighur quarter of Urumqi.
The World Uighur Congress rejected the accusations and said that it condemned “in the strongest  possible terms the brutal crackdown of a peaceful protest of young Uighurs.” The group said in a statement on Monday that Uighurs had been subject to reprisals not only from Chinese security        forces but also from Han Chinese civilians who attacked homes, workplaces or dormitories after  the riots on Monday.                                                                                           
The violence on Sunday dwarfed in scale assaults on security forces last year in Xinjiang. It was  deadlier, too, than any of the bombings, riots and protests that swept through the region in the 1990s   and that led to a government clampdown.
Uighurs make up about half of the 20 million people in Xinjiang but are a minority in Urumqi, where    Han Chinese dominate. The Chinese government has encouraged Han migration to many parts of Xinjiang, and Uighurs say that the Han tend to get the better jobs in Urumqi. The government also maintains tight control on the practice of Islam, which many Uighurs cite as a source of frustration.    But an ethnic Han woman who lives in an apartment near the central bazaar said in a telephone     interview that the government should show no sympathy toward the malcontents.“What they should     do is crack down with a lot of force at first, so the situation doesn’t get worse, so it doesn’t drag        out like in Tibet,” she said after insisting on anonymity. “Their mind is very simple. If you crack      down on one, you’ll scare all of them. The government should come down harder.”Michael Wines, Jonathan Ansfield and Xiyun Yang contributed reporting from Beijing, and David Barboza from    Shanghai. Huang Yuanxi contributed research from Beijing, and Chen Yang from Shanghai.

===============================================================

(1)

URUMQI, China — The Chinese government locked down this regional capital of 2.3 million people and other cities across its western desert region on Monday and early Tuesday, imposing curfews, cutting off cellphone and Internet services and sending armed police officers into neighborhoods after clashes erupted here on Sunday evening between Muslim Uighurs and Han Chinese. The fighting left at least 156 people dead and more than 1,000 injured, according to the state news agency.

• URUMQI, China — The Chinese government locked down this regional capital of 2.3 million people and other cities across its western desert region on Monday and early Tuesday, imposing curfews, cutting off cellphone and Internet services and sending armed police officers into neighborhoods after clashes erupted here on Sunday evening between Muslim Uighurs and Han Chinese. The fighting left at least 156 people dead and more than 1,000 injured, according to the state news agency.

Notes:

(1)

• In this report, the author admitted that the police was sent " into neighborhoods after clashes erupted here on Sunday evening between Muslim Uighurs and Han Chinese."

Has the author, Mr. Edward Wong suffered from memory loss that he couldn't remember his previous report 7/6 New York Times Deadly Riots in China ( internet version : Riots in Western China Amid Ethnic Tension) , had clearly defined at the very beginning of his report that :  "The clashes on Sunday began when the police confronted a protest march held by Uighurs to demand a full government investigation of a brawl between Uighur and Han workers that erupted in Guangdong Province overnight on June 25 and June 26."  ?
Now, let's recall the details sourced by Mr. Adam Grode, the roadside witness who had told the author about the two rumors, of which, one was about the Uighur being killed by a Han while another one was about the Han being killed by the Uighur, that caused the act of violence from both the Uighurs and the Hans.

According to Mr. Grode that he

• first heard commotion around 6 pm
  
• went outside
  
• saw hundreds of Uighurs in the streets
  
• the Uighurs quickly swelled to more than 1,000
  

• Police officers soon arrived.
  
• Around 7 p.m., protesters began hurling rocks and vegetables from the market at the police
  

• Traffic had ground to a halt.
  

• An hour later, the riot surged toward the center of the market,
  
• troops in green uniforms and full riot gear showed up, as did armored vehicles.
  

• By midnight, some of the armored vehicles had begun to leave,
• bursts of gunfire could still be heard.

And then the new version to define the clashes is that Chinese government sent armed police officers into neighborhoods  after clashes erupted here on Sunday evening between Muslim Uighurs and Han Chinese.

So far, there are now three versions about the nature of this riot now !  Version 1: clashes began when the police confronted a protect march held by Uighurs Version 2:  Uighurs gathered and swelled quickly from hundreds to more a thousand. Police came and then the Uighurs throw rocks and vegetables at the police.  An hour later, the riots surged toward the center of the market. Version 3:  police officers were sent after clashes erupted between Muslims Uighurs and Han Chinese. 


A Guide to an In-depth "Appreciation" to Mr. Edward Wong's "Art" of Word-Manipulation : Version 1: clashes began when the police confronted a protect march held by Uighurs
"The clashes on Sunday began when the police confronted a protest march held by Uighurs to demand a full government investigation of a brawl between Uighur and Han workers that erupted in Guangdong Province overnight on June 25 and June 26."  ?

 What kind of messages was the author trying to force into the readers' brains through this sentence ? 

1. the police confronted the Uighurs' protest march

2. the Uighurs' protest march was about demanding a full government investigation on the murder case of the Guangdong factory. 

3. the clashes on Sunday happened when the police confronted the protest march.

The interest groups that Mr. Edward Wong has been writing for and representing for require the world to have an impression that Chinese police is bad.  Uighurs are good. All violence and clashes are caused by Chinese police's mismanagement of the mass


Version 2:  Uighurs gathered and swelled quickly from hundreds to more a thousand. Police came and then the
Uighurs throw rocks and vegetables at the police.  An hour later, the riots surged toward the center of the market.

Mr. Grode, who lives in an apartment there, said he went outside when he first heard commotion around 6 p.m. He saw hundreds of Uighurs in the streets; that quickly swelled to more than 1,000, he said.   Police officers soon arrived. Around 7 p.m., protesters began hurling rocks and vegetables from the market at the police, Mr. Grode said. Traffic had ground to a halt. An hour later, as the riot surged toward the center of the market, troops in green uniforms and full riot gear showed up, as did armored vehicles. Chinese government officials often deploy the People’s Armed Police, a paramilitary force, to quell riots.  By midnight, Mr. Grode said, some of the armored vehicles had begun to leave, but bursts of gunfire could still be heard.

The author is an expert of using contrast in his writing to demonize the Chinese police force. 

protesters -  hurling rocks and vegetables from the market at the police,

v.s.  
troops -   in green uniforms and full riot gear showed up, as did armored vehicles.


I am sure that the author would not miss using these words like "assaulting", "attacking", "storming", "bombarding" if it was the police throwing rocks and vegetables instead of the protesters did it.  He chose the lightest word - "hurling" - to describe the act of aggression because it's done by the protesters.

When it's the turn to talk about the police force, he only used heavy words. He could not just say troops and armored vehicles arrived. He has to "pull his pants off when he made a fart".   What does "
troops -   in green uniforms and full riot gear showed up, as did armored vehicles." really mean ???  It means nothing more than "the troops and armored vehicles arrived".   Why did Mr. Edward Wong have to say " in green uniform" and "full riot gear" when he talked about the police ?  Did he expect the police to arrive with a white flag on each  instead of full riot gear ? 

Version 3:  police officers were sent after clashes erupted between Muslims Uighurs and Han Chinese. 

Muslims Uighurs

v.s.

Han Chinese

He wouldn't say Uighurs Chinese and Han Chinese.
He wouldn't say Muslims Uighurs and Buddhist Chinese, or Atheist Chinese.
He got to say ...."Muslims Uighurs" and "Han Chinese". 

This is to reinforce what he said in the previous report that :
Many Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking Muslim group, resent rule by the Han Chinese, and Chinese security forces have tried to keep oil-rich Xinjiang under tight control since the 1990s, when cities there were struck by waves of protests, riots and bombings. Last summer, attacks on security forces took place in several cities in Xinjiang; the Chinese government blamed separatist groups.

In the previous report, both "version 1" and "version 2" which were supposed to define the nature this riot, we couldn't see any emphasis on 'Muslims".  Most likely Mr. Edward Wong got "spanked" by his "Masters" therefore here came the third version of the riot's nature that police officers were sent after clashes erupted between Muslims Uighurs and Han Chinese. 
Evidently, certain interest groups require that religion to be factored into the nature of the Urumqi Riot therefore we can see here Mr. Edward Wong made an instant  adjustment right after his first day report of the 7-5 Riot.

.

(2)

But hundreds of Uighur protesters defied the police again on Tuesday morning, crashing a state-run tour of the riot scene for foreign and Chinese journalists. A wailing crowd of women, joined later by scores of Uighur men, marched down a wide avenue with raised fists and tearfully demanded that the police release Uighur men who they said had been seized from their homes after the violence. Some women waved the identification cards of men who had been detained.

The author pumped a lot of details in order to format a pre-programmed image of these protesters who were mostly women and children.  

• A wailing crowd of women, joined later by scores of Uighur men, 
• marched down a wide avenue with raised fists and tearfully
  
• demanded that the police release Uighur men
  
• who they said had been seized from their homes after the violence.
  
• Some women waved the identification cards of men who had been detained.

As journalists watched, the demonstrators smashed the windshield of a police car and several police officers drew their pistols before the entire crowd was encircled by officers and paramilitary troops in riot gear.

Protesters smashed the windshield of a police car

v.s.
several police officers

• drew their pistols

• before the entire crowd was encircled by officers and paramilitary troops in riot gear.

The details of the confrontation the author employed here is unbelievable:   paramilitary troops are of course in riot gear.   Interesting ! Why did you Mr. Edward Wong has to emphasize that the Chinese paramilitary troops were equipped with  riot gear ?  

“A lot of ordinary people were taken away by the police,” a protester named Qimanguili, a 13-year-old girl clad in a white T-shirt and a black headscarf, said, crying. She said her 19-year-old brother had been taken away by police officers on Monday, long after the riots had ended.
Comment: ordinary people What's so ordinary about these people ?

• So, why was Qimanguili's brother being taken away by police officers and Qimanguili was left free to be interviewed by you Mr. Edward Wong ?  Would that not be because Qimanguili's brother had done something breaching the laws ?  What is the definition of "ordinary people" ?  If Qimanguili's brother was considered to be "ordinary people" in Mr. Edward Wong's article, how would Mr. Edward Wong label Qimanguili, the girl who was left free to be interviewed by foreign press ?

The confrontation later ebbed to a tense standoff between about 100 protesters, mostly women, some carrying infants, and riot police in black body armor and helmets, tear-gas launchers at the ready, in a Uighur neighborhood pocked with burned-out homes and an automobile sales lot torched during the Sunday riots.

Comment:

Mr. Edward Wong's favorite and most used propaganda technique is to contrast the image of the Uighurs against the image of the Chinese police.

•  100 protesters, mostly women, some carrying infants

v.s.

•  riot police in black body armor and helmets, tear-gas launchers at the ready,

.

(3)


The fighting on Sunday was the deadliest episode of ethnic violence in China in decades. The bloodshed here, along with the Tibetan uprising last year, shows the extent of racial hostility that still pervades much of western China, fueled partly by economic disparity and by government attempts to restrict religious and political activity by minority groups.

With a  four-line paragraph,  Mr. Edward Wong successfully stole China's right to explain her own history

• The fighting on Sunday was the deadliest episode of ethnic violence in China in decades. 

It was an ethnic violence but it was not purely an ethnic violence.  That's very important. It was also an act of terrorism but the author didn't want to talk about it.

• The bloodshed here, along with the Tibetan uprising last year,
  

Instead of talking about Uighur terrorists being trained in Al-Quada training camps in Pakistan for the purpose of messing up China, the author aggressively defined this riot and the one in Tibet last year were both a result of racial hostiliy .

• shows the extent of racial hostility that still pervades much of western China,

This hostily is a common phenomenon in much of western China

• fueled partly by economic disparity and by government attempts to restrict religious and political activity by minority groups.

In short, everything is the Chinese government's fault !

(4)

The rioting, which began as a peaceful protest calling for a full government inquiry into an earlier brawl between Uighurs and Han Chinese at a factory in southern China, took place in the heart of Xinjiang, an oil-rich desert region where Uighurs are the largest ethnic group but are ruled by the Han, the dominant ethnic group in the country.
Why did I have no respect to this author ?  It's because his writing skill is exceptionally filthy!  See how he forced totally irrelevant details into every possible occasion.  In a sentence which was supposed to be talking about his so-called peaceful protest blah blah blah blah,

• The rioting, which began as a peaceful protest calling for a full government inquiry into an earlier brawl between Uighurs and Han Chinese at a factory in southern China, took place in the heart of Xinjiang, 

he could suddenly forced his own definition about Xinjiang

• an oil-rich desert region where Uighurs are the largest ethnic group but are ruled by the Han, the dominant ethnic group in the country.

into the same sentence !


Learning from the way this author badmouth us, we should always remember that in the future, every time when we write about Rebiya Kadeer or the World Uighurs Congress, etc.. we should also add a very long "tail" to describe them. 

For example,  >>>

Rebiya Kadeer, a fake Uighur Muslim who always claimed to be a human right activist but had never condemned the USA on behalf of the suffering of fellow Muslim brothers & sisters under the US invasion at Afghanistan and Iraq,  lives in Washington D.C. at the courtesy of the US taxpayers via funding received from the National Endowment for Democracy, a US non-profit organization with CIA background and  a long record of launching the notorious color revolution which had toppled a number of ex-USSR satellite states in Central Asia and Eastern Europe.


(5)

Protests spread Monday to the heavily guarded town of Kashgar, on China’s western border, as 200 to 300 people chanting “God is great” and “Release the people” confronted riot police officers about 5:30 p.m. in front of the city’s yellow-walled Id Kah Mosque, the largest mosque in China. They quickly dispersed when officers began arresting people, one resident said.
This is kind of interesting. 
Riot happened on Sunday in Urumqi.
Immediately, on Monday,  people in Kashgar already knew about what happened in Urumqi and
immediately organized 200-300 people to confront with the riot police in front of Id Kah Mosque. 
If this is not an organized network committing an organize crime of promoting chaos to destroy public orders,  then, what is it ?
Internet Era ?
I am interested in knowing the percentage of internet users v.s. the Uighur population in Kashgar. 

If they all have computers and know how to communicate with each other via the internet,

that is a great evidence that life is good amongst the Uighurs under Han leadership. 

(6)

Internet social platforms and chat programs appeared to have unified Uighurs in anger over the way Chinese officials had handled the earlier brawl, which took place in late June thousands of miles away in Shaoguan, Guangdong Province. There, Han workers rampaged through a Uighur dormitory, killing at least two Uighurs and injuring many others, according to the state news agency, Xinhua. Police officers later arrested a resentful former factory worker who had ignited the fight by spreading a rumor that six Uighur men had raped two Han women at the site, Xinhua reported.
But photographs that appeared online after the battle showed people standing around a pile of corpses, leading many Uighurs to believe that the government was playing down the number of dead Uighurs. One Uighur student said the photographs began showing up on many Web sites about one week ago. Government censors repeatedly tried to delete them, but to no avail, he said.
“Uighurs posted it again and again in order to let more people know the truth, because how painful is it that the government does bald-faced injustice to Uighur people?” said the student, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution from the government.
A call for protests spread on Web sites and QQ, the most popular instant-messaging program in China, despite government efforts to block online discussion of the feud.
------------------------------ --------------------

• Internet social platforms and chat programs appeared to have unified Uighurs in anger over the way Chinese officials had handled the earlier brawl, which took place in late June thousands of miles away in Shaoguan, Guangdong Province.

• There, Han workers rampaged through a Uighur dormitory, killing at least two Uighurs and injuring many others, according to the state news agency, Xinhua.

• Police officers later arrested a resentful former factory worker who had ignited the fight by spreading a rumor that six Uighur men had raped two Han women at the site, Xinhua reported.

• But photographs that appeared online after the battle showed people standing around a pile of corpses, leading many Uighurs to believe that the government was playing down the number of dead Uighurs. One Uighur student said the photographs began showing up on many Web sites about one week ago. Government censors repeatedly tried to delete them, but to no avail, he said.

• “Uighurs posted it again and again in order to let more people know the truth, because how painful is it that the government does bald-faced injustice to Uighur people?” said the student, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution from the government.

• A call for protests spread on Web sites and QQ, the most popular instant-messaging program in China, despite government efforts to block online discussion of the feud.

The author tried to give the most details about the background of the protest to the readers and convince readers that the protest was justified though illegal.  Examine carefully for the arrangement: 

He presented two side of the information.  One side is Xinhua state news agency but the other side, he chose a student as the information source provider.  What a contrast ! 

State news agency

v.s.

 a student - not just any student but a student who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution from the government !