China 'anti-terror' rallies: thousands of troops on streets of Urumqi

Thousands of troops have poured on to the streets of one of west China’s most important cities for the second time in just over a week, as a senior Communist party leader heralded an “all-out offensive” against terrorism in the violence-stricken region. More than 10,000 rifle-toting forces gathered at the heart of Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, for the latest in a series of spectacular mass “anti-terror rallies”. Chen Guoquan, the region’s powerful party boss, called on troops to “bury the corpses of terrorists in the vast sea of the people’s war [on terror]”. Photographs published by local media showed convoys of bulletproof vehicles snaking through Urumqi’s streets and a sea of troops assembled beneath a banner reading: “The people and the army are united as one.” The government-run Xinjiang Daily urged security forces to “hold aloft their swords and prepare for battle”. “It is a battle between good and evil, lightness and dark, between progressive and reactionary forces,” the broadsheet said in an editorial. The newspaper described the parades – held in at least three other regional cities since mid-February – as a way of “mobilising the armed forces to fight against … enemies of the people”. Passenger planes packed with armed troops were reported to have been dispatched to three cities in southern Xinjiang – Hotan, Kashgar and Aksu – which authorities hailed the frontline of their war on terror. Xinjiang has experienced repeated outbreaks of killing in recent years, including an explosion of ethnic rioting in 2009 in which at least 197 people died and 1,700 were injured. Beijing blames the bloodshed on Islamic extremists but experts believe it is also driven by the harshness with which authorities treat Xinjiang’s native Uighur ethnic minority. At least two deadly incidents have been reported since December ending what had appeared to be a period of relative calm. Nevertheless, James Leibold, a Xinjiang expert from La Trobe University in Australia, said he had been surprised by the authorities’ “disproportional” show of force. “It’s safe to say that we haven’t seen this level of public sabre-rattling since the aftermath of the 2009 riots.