New Express
July 8, 2009

The fight at the Xuri toy factory in Shaoguan, Guangdong Province that has been called one of the causes of the current unrest in Xinjiang (see yesterday's post) made the cover of today's New Express.

A major fight broke out at the factory on June 26 between Han and Uighurs workers, leaving two men from Xinjiang dead, but according to today's paper, which features a big cover photo of smiling Uighur women working at the factory, production has resumed.

The Hong Kong-funded company normally has a staff of 18,000, but on June 27, only 3,000 workers showed up. The following day, the local government sent a team to explain the incident to them. Now over 16,000 workers have returned to the job and production is back to normal.

According to the report, 13 participants in the gang fight, including three from Xinjiang, are currently in police custody. Police are gathering evidence and preparing for prosecution. Among the 60 Xinjiang workers who were hospitalized, 29 have already been discharged.

The Haikou-based Nanguo Metropolis Daily and a number of other newspapers reported some remarks made by Li Wei, an anti-terrorism expert, who compared the riot with last year's March 14 riot in Lhasa.

Li believes that the World Uighur Congress, headed by Rebiyа Kаdeer, maintains close link with the "Dаlai clique," and suggests that it is possible that the architects of the July 5 riot were inspired by and actively imitated the Lhasa riot:

Upon the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Autonomous Region, Rebiyа openly calling for the East Turkestаn organization to carry out an attack similar to the March 14 incident. Now when we look back at the two incidents, there's so much looking similar.
...
The Kuche explosion and the unsuccessful attempt to blow up an airliner* were to a large degree due to the influence the WUC exerts through the Internet. It has always been preparing sabotage. The Shaoguan incident served only as a catalyst. Even if there had been no such incident, they would have found another excuse to carry out their plot.

Li Wei said that the Congress carefully timed this riot to coincide with the China's 50th anniversary, and also suggested that there might be subsequent riots in the future. "As long as the overseas East Turkestаn forces still exist and keep on infiltrating China, incidents like this will happen again."

Xinjiang police say they have intercepted and recorded phone conversations involving the overseas organizations giving instructions to perpetrators inside the country.

Note: On August 10, 2008, eleven people were killed in an explosion in Kuche county, Xinjiang Autonomous Region. On March 7, a Uirgur woman on board a China Southern Airlines flight from Urumqi to Beijing was found with a bottle of gasoline.