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Security was tight ahead of the first anniversary of deadly ethnic riots in Urumqi, in China's Xinjiang region. Armed police were deployed in the city, while thousands of "riot-proof"
While over a thousand people were injured, approximately 200 people were killed, in the violence that erupted on the 5th July 2009, between Han Chinese and Uighur Muslims. It was the area’s worst ethnic violence in decades, as thousands of Han residents armed with clubs, ran onto the streets. Just two days earlier 1000 members of the Uighur minority had demonstrated and rioted.
It was the worst outbreak of public violence in China since Beijing’s Tiananmen, when Square the People’s Liberation Army soldiers killed several hundred people during the 1989 crackdown on demonstrators.
The violence came to an end only after many sections of the city had been set on fire and large numbers of troops were deployed in the remote western area.
The authorities severed the area's communication connections to the rest of the world, straight after the riots, including the internet, international telephone calls and text messaging.
"We have confidence and we totally have the ability to maintain stability in Xinjiang," chief of the local paramilitary police, Major General Qi Baowen, said.
One restaurant owner told the AFP news agency that police had taken all the large kitchen knives from his restaurant and told him to stay indoors.
Surveillance cameras had been put up in stations, schools and shops and were monitored around the clock. The cameras were inside protective casings.
China held that last year's violence was the fault of the local ethnic Uighur population, saying most of the recorded deceased were Han Chinese.
Amnesty International has challenged the official Chinese version of events, saying police used unnecessary force against Uighurs, followed by mass arrests and torture.
While Han Chinese equate to more than 75 percent of Irumqui’s population, over one million Uighurs live in Xinjiang, which forms a border with Central Asia. Many are unhappy about the large influx of Han Chinese immigrants, which they say has increasingly marginalized their interests and culture.
"It is hard for you to understand what it is like to be a Uighur. Uighur people can't get jobs," said a 25-year-old Uighur man named Musa.
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