Muslim Uighurs Clash with Han Chinese, Two Dead

(Guangdong Province, China) In Shaoguan City, the government has pressured factories to hire poor people from western provinces. As a result, the Early Light Toy factory recruited about 800 Muslim Uighurs in the past two months from Xinjiang Province, home to eight million Uighurs.

Unfortunately, persistent ethnic friction between the Han Chinese and the Muslim Uighurs sparked into violence last Thursday by alleged Uighur assaults on Han Chinese girls.

One source indicates that Uighurs committed a series of robberies in addition to rapes.

According to a former female Early Light factory worker, the first rape occurred in the woods behind the factory and the perpetrators were three Uighur male workers. One week later, another female worker went out for a midnight snack and was dragged into the Uighur dormitory and gang raped. When the security guards brought her out, she was stark naked. The factory offered her 10,000 RMB to keep quiet. This was the last straw for the Han workers.

On the night before yesterday, the Han workers in dormitory buildings number one and two began to chant: "Chase the Uighurs off!" They began to vandalize things. The space between the two buildings was littered with garbage receptacles and fire extinguishers. More than one hundred people went wild and used wood sticks to break the window glass. Some of them charged into the Uighur dormitory to assault people. They dragged one Uighur after another one and beat them.

The Uighur retaliated with knives. The Han summoned more than 200 people and the brawl got vicious. Since this incident involves an ethnic minority group, the police acted very cautiously because they wanted to avoid a political incident.

Two people died in the confrontation, both Uighurs. Injuries were reported at 118, injured Uighurs accounted for 79. And, naturally, the incident caught the attention of the all-seeing central government.

The authorities have reportedly told major Internet chatrooms to remove postings about the clash as it could impede the government's policy of encouraging coastal provinces to hire minorities from China's less-developed western region.

Another source makes no mention of any rapes but does indicate that a Han Chinese girl was harassed by Uighurs and she screamed, thereby igniting violence. In any event, the tension between the Uighurs and Han Chinese is great enough that virtually anything could trigger violence.

I would speculate that the conflict is not just ethnic. The Han Chinese might be a bit pissed that the government is importing workers to take jobs away from their families and friends.