Uighurs in France demand world pressure on China

AFP, Paris

Several dozen Uighurs and their supporters in France took to the streets of Paris on Saturday to urge the world to put pressure on China to end what they called "genocide" in Xinjiang.
Some of the protesters were seen holding up banners that read "Stop killing Uighurs" and "Uighurs want justice," as well as images of the Uighur dissident leader in exile, Rebiya Kadeer.
"The international community must intervene to put pressure on China and stop the Chinese authorities' policy of repression," said Yusufu Akbar, president of the Uighur association in France, through a translator.
"This is not new. Since 1949, China has undertaken a policy of genocide against Uighurs. This massacre has to stop."
Xinjiang, the remote northwest corner of China and homeland of the Muslim and Turkic-speaking Uighurs, burst into global prominence when riots in its capital Urumqi on July 5 left 197 dead, according to an official toll. Meanwhile, Chinese police shot dead 12 people during unrest in the western Xinjiang region, the government said Sunday, in a rare admission security forces opened fire in the worst ethnic violence in decades.
Police shot and killed 12 "mobsters" during disturbances in the regional capital Urumqi on July 5, Xinhua news agency said in a report issued early Sunday that quoted the head of the Xinjiang regional government, Nur Bekri.
Some of Xinjiang's Uighur minority, a mainly Muslim, central Asian people, went on the rampage on July 5, assaulting members of China's dominant Han ethnic group in attacks that left at least 192 dead.
Uighurs say police sparked the rioting by shooting peaceful protesters who were demanding an investigation into a recent factory brawl in southern China that left at least two Uighur migrant workers dead.
However, Nur Bekri said police opened fire to prevent further bloodshed, according to Xinhua. "The police showed as much restraint as possible during the unrest," he said, adding they had initially fired shots into the air but that had failed to disperse "extremely vicious" thugs. Three of those shot died on the spot, with nine others dying after medical treatment failed, he said.
The report gave no details of the ethnicity of the deceased or those involved in the unrest, but authorities have already pinned the blame for the unrest on Uighurs, many of whom complain of decades of Chinese repression. Thousands of Han Chinese armed themselves with clubs and other weapons and marched through Urumqi seeking vengeance on Uighurs in the days after the riots, but were mostly thwarted by a huge security force.