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Xinjiang riot well planned by foreign wire-pullers

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2009-07-12 09:25

ISLAMABAD: The riot in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region on Sunday had been well planned and organized by foreign forces behind the scenes, a Pakistani newspaper chief said on Saturday.

"We saw riots in Tibet last year. It was expected that the Tibet scene would be replayed in Xinjiang though it is late. According to my assessment it was going to happen before or around the Beijing Olympics," Baber Makhdoom, editor-in-chief of the English-language Daily Mail newspaper, told Xinhua.

"While the Chinese government was already doing a lot for the natives of Uygur Autonomous Region, these clashes erupted, now one can easily understand who is behind it. It is not the people who are living there, it's someone from the outside, who is pursuing them, who is forcing them,or misguiding them," he said.

Makhdoom said the hands behind the Xinjiang riot were the same as those behind the Tibet riot last year.

He said anti-China forces have been creating troubles, including terrorism, for China.

Some terrorist groups want to engage certain ethnic groups like the Uygur people in China and brainwash them, and use them to fulfill their political goals, he said.

Makhdoom kept visiting China for the past seven years, almost four or five times a year. "Every time I go to Urumqi, the capital city of Xinjiang, I see tremendous harmony among the Uygurs and non-Muslim Chinese," he said. "There have never been any hatred between them. They were enjoying a peaceful life."

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Makhdoom said he had met many Uygur people who are peace-loving citizens. "They were very happy, they were having complete religious independence and religious freedom," he added.

Makhdoom said the Chinese government has always been smart in responding to such unrest.

"The Chinese government has shown great governance and its love for its people, and for the unity of the nation, and they have taken the right steps at the right time and I think that every government should be doing the same thing," he said.

He said the Chinese government has been paying special attention to improving the living standards of the Uygur people with a lot of development projects being initiated in areas of minority ethnic groups.

Sunday's rioting in Urumqi, the capital city of the Xinjiang region, has killed at least 184 people and injured more than 1,000 others.