On the 5th of July rioting and violence broke out after a peaceful demonstration in Urumqi the capital of China’s autonomous province of Xinjiang. The demonstration was organised to demand an investigation into a violent incident in a toy factory between Uyghurs and Han Chinese in the South of China, several weeks earlier. Vehicles were attacked, houses and shops were damaged and a deadly fight erupted between Han Chinese and Uyghurs.
After the riots police searched houses of the Uyghurs and arrested more than 1400 men. Uyghur women started protesting their husbands’ arrests. Although they did that peacefully, police fired on them. According to official reports more than 150 people have now been killed and hundreds have been wounded. In reality the number of people who died in the violence is much higher. Much damage has been done to shops and houses both in Chinese and in Uyghur quarters of the city. At the moment of writing a curfew is in place. The unrest is spreading to Kashgar in the west of Xinjiang. According to an Open Doors worker in Central Asia this could be the beginning of more turmoil in Xinjiang.
Xinjiang is a very volatile region with intense ethnic tensions between the Uyghur minority and the Han Chinese. The Uyghurs feel discriminated in many ways. China is wary of Islamic fundamentalist influences in this region and is making great efforts to fight against religious extremism. Thousands of Uyghur Muslims have been detained in recent years. Any religious activity, any publication, any association which is not formally approved by the government is technically illegal.
Christians are an extremely small minority among ten million Uyghurs who are predominantly Muslim. The approximately 500 Christian Uyghurs feel on themselves threefold pressure: as a national minority, as MBB’s from their Islamic environment and as Christians from the communistic / atheistic government of China.
Please pray for an end to the violence in Xinjiang and for justice to be done to all parties. Pray especially for the protection of the Uyghur Christian community in this tense situation.
