Separatists 'used Web to promote plot'

By Zhao Huanxin in Urumqi and Cui Xiaohuo in Beijing (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-07-10 07:30

Separatist groups "intentionally manipulated hatred" among young Uygurs over a dispute in Guangdong province to plot the deadly Urumqi riots, a Xinjiang government official said Thursday.

Rebiya Kadeer, the leader of the separatist World Uyghur Congress (WUC) group, is believed to have used the June 26 Guangdong factory brawl between ethnic Uygur and Han workers to "create chaos" in China, officials said.

The factory brawl left two people dead and 118 others injured, while the latest riots in Urumqi killed at least 156 people and injured more than 1,000 others. Hou Hanmin, director of the information office of Xinjiang, said the WUC had named June 26 as a "memorial day" to incite Uygurs and planned to use the incident as an opportunity to seek support from the international community for its separatist causes.

Kadeer and the WUC had spread the message calling for massive protests both within and outside Xinjiang, by sending messages through Web portals, telephones and cellphones, Hou said.

According to the authorities, on July 1, the WUC held a special meeting, plotting to instigate unrest by sending messages via the Internet, telephones and mobile phones.

On July 4, some people inside the country began to flood the Internet with posts encouraging people to go to Renmin Square in Urumqi to stage protests on July 5.

At 1:06 am on July 5, police in Urumqi were tipped off that some people were posting

illegal information calling for a gathering at Renmin Square at 7 pm on July 5.

Phone recordings showed that at 11 am July 5, Kadeer called her younger brother in Urumqi and said, "A lot of things have happened, and we all know something might happen in Urumqi tomorrow night."

On July 6, Kadeer held an emergency meeting with some senior members of her group to make plans to further stir up both domestic and overseas demonstrations, and to call for intervention from foreign governments and human rights institutions.

Their plans were carried out through the subsequent attacks on China's consulate in Munich, Germany, on Monday morning, as well as the violence staged by more than 150 separatists in front of the Chinese embassy in the Netherlands that afternoon.

On July 7, Dorikun Askarjiang, a senior leader of the WUC, was also believed to have said: "Urumqi is merely just the beginning of the success."

Xinhua contributed to the story