URUMQI, China (Reuters) – Chinese President Hu Jintao abandoned plans to attend a G8 summit in Italy yesterday, returning home early to deal with ethnic violence in the restive northwestern region of Xinjiang.
The official state-run Xinhua news agency said Hu had left for China “due to the situation” in energy-rich Xinjiang, which borders central Asia, where 156 people died in weekend riots between the Han Chinese majority and minority Muslim Uighurs.
State Councilor Dai Bingguo will attend the G8 summit in Hu’s place, the report added.
The summit was due to open in the central Italian city of L’Aquila later today and Hu had been scheduled to join the talks tomorrow. Hu arrived in Italy on Sunday and had visited Florence yesterday.
Urumqi, Xinjiang’s regional capital, woke up after a curfew that authorities imposed after thousands of Han Chinese stormed through its streets demanding redress, and sometimes bloody vengeance, after Uighurs rioted on Sunday. The city was quiet, except for soldiers shouting in unison as they went about their morning exercises.
Anti-riot police blocked off main streets, while armoured personnel carriers cruised back and forth.
Late yesterday, the mobs of Han Chinese wielding clubs, metal bars, cleavers and axes had melted away. But many of the Han Chinese protesters said the killings of Sunday had left a deep stain of anger that would last.
“How can I feel my family is safe after women and children were slain on these streets,” one of the protesters said later yesterday. He gave only his surname, Zhong.
“Security is a basic human right, isn’t it? If the government can’t protect it, we’ll have to do it ourselves.”
On the other side of Urumqi’s now tensely divided neighbourhoods, Uighurs protested yesterday, defying rows of anti-riot police and telling reporters that their husbands, brothers and sons had been taken away in indiscriminate arrests.
Xinjiang has long been a tightly controlled hotbed of ethnic tensions, fostered by an economic gap between many Uighurs and Han Chinese, government controls on religion and culture and an influx of Han Chinese migrants who now are the majority in most key cities, including Urumqi.