Introduction
On 5 July 2009, Ürümqi, the capital of Xinjiang, saw one of the deadliest episodes of ethnic violence in the history of the People’s Republic of China. A protest demanding a full investigation into a factory brawl in Shaoguan, Guangdong, turned into violent rioting against civilians that night; two days later, Han residents took to the streets in retaliation. Chinese officials eventually reported 197 people dead and 1,721 injured; Uyghur organisations abroad maintain that the real death toll was far higher. Because the authorities never published a complete list of the dead and never allowed an independent investigation — and because Xinjiang’s internet was cut for nearly ten months afterwards — the true casualty figures can no longer be verified. This page sets out the competing accounts, each with its sources, without adjudicating between them.
Background and trigger
Uyghurs make up about 45 per cent of Xinjiang’s population and Han Chinese about 40 per cent (2000 census). In Ürümqi, however, roughly 75 per cent of the city’s 2.3 million residents are Han and only about 12.8 per cent are Uyghur. For decades, Uyghur grievances had accumulated over gaps in jobs and income, restrictions on religious and cultural life, and continued Han in-migration; some Han residents, in turn, regarded Uyghurs as beneficiaries of preferential policies. A series of attacks around the 2008 Olympics brought tighter controls, and ethnic tensions kept rising.
The immediate spark was lit more than two thousand kilometres away, in Shaoguan, Guangdong. The Xuri (“Early Light”) Toy Factory, owned by Hong Kong-based Early Light International, employed some 16,000 workers. In May 2009, under a labour-transfer programme, it took in about 800 Uyghur workers from Shufu County in the Kashgar prefecture — since early 2008, some 200,000 young Uyghurs had been sent to work in inland factories under such schemes. On the night of 25–26 June, a disgruntled former employee posted a fabricated claim online that Uyghur workers had raped Han women; an official investigation later said there was no evidence to support the rape allegation. Hundreds of Han workers armed themselves and stormed the Uyghur dormitories, and the brawl lasted for hours. According to official figures, two Uyghur workers were killed and 118 people injured — 79 Uyghurs and 39 Han, 16 of them seriously — but eyewitnesses and overseas Uyghur groups believed the toll was understated.
Video of the brawl spread quickly online. When the news reached Xinjiang, calls to investigate Shaoguan and punish those responsible spread by internet and text message, and the 5 July protest in Ürümqi was organised online.
What happened
5 July, afternoon: the protest gathers
At around 5:00 pm, demonstrators gathered at People’s Square and around the Grand Bazaar in Ürümqi, demanding a full investigation into the Shaoguan incident. Official and eyewitness accounts put the crowd at about 1,000 people; the World Uyghur Congress (WUC) said some 10,000 protesters took part.
5 July, evening: protest turns into rioting
How the violence began is disputed. The government says protesters began throwing rocks and attacking passers-by at about 7:00 pm, and that the violence was planned in advance. The WUC says police used deadly force to disperse a peaceful protest, and that police shot dead “scores” of demonstrators. According to the timeline later given by Ürümqi mayor Jirla Isamuddin, at about 8:15 pm some protesters overturned guardrails and smashed three buses; from 8:30 pm, arson and attacks escalated around South Jiefang Road and Longquan Street; some 700 to 800 people then moved from People’s Square towards the Daximen and Xiaoximen areas, beating, smashing, looting and burning along the way; at 9:30 pm officials received reports of three people killed and 26 injured; by about 10:00 pm police controlled the main roads, but attacks continued in side streets and alleys through the night. About 1,000 police and paramilitary officers were deployed and, by various reports, used batons, tear gas, water cannon and live ammunition; officials said one paramilitary officer was killed by thrown rocks. The night’s violence was directed mainly at Han civilians; media also recorded cases of Uyghur and Han residents sheltering and rescuing one another.
6 July: sweeps and a rising toll
Security forces launched large-scale sweeps in Uyghur neighbourhoods such as Erdaoqiao and Saimachang. Mobile phones, internet access and international phone lines were cut. The official death toll rose from three on the first night to 129 by midday on 6 July, and kept climbing in the days that followed.
7 July: retaliatory crowds
Some 200 to 300 Uyghur women gathered to protest the indiscriminate detention of Uyghur men, in a tense but non-violent standoff with police. The same day, large crowds of Han residents, many armed, took to the streets vowing revenge — Western media estimates of their numbers ranged from hundreds to 10,000 — and police used tear gas and roadblocks to disperse them, while Ürümqi party secretary Li Zhi stood on the roof of a police car with a megaphone appealing for calm. Citywide traffic controls were imposed that night. Unrest and arrests were also reported in Kashgar and elsewhere in Xinjiang.
8 July: riots subside, Beijing responds
The mass rioting had largely subsided and a curfew was imposed in Ürümqi. President Hu Jintao cut short his trip to Italy for the G8 summit, returned to Beijing and convened an emergency meeting of the Politburo Standing Committee; Standing Committee member Zhou Yongkang was dispatched to Xinjiang to “guide stability-preservation work”. On 10 July the authorities closed the city’s mosques and suspended Friday prayers; large crowds of Uyghurs gathered anyway, two mosques were allowed to open, and several hundred people who demonstrated afterwards over the detentions were dispersed.
The death toll: figures that do not agree
How many people died? The Chinese government has never published a complete list, and the figures offered by different sides diverge sharply:
- How the official figure evolved: three deaths were reported on the first night; by midday on 6 July Xinhua put the toll at 129; after several upward revisions it settled on 18 July at 197 dead and 1,721 injured.
- The official ethnic breakdown (two versions): On 10 July, Xinhua reported that of the 184 dead counted at that point, 137 were Han, 46 Uyghur and one Hui. In August 2009, officials gave a breakdown of the 156 victims classed as “innocent civilians”: 134 Han, 11 Hui, 10 Uyghur and one Manchu. Officials also said police had shot dead 12 rioters who were in the act of attacking civilians.
- What foreign reporters observed: Journalists from The Times and The Daily Telegraph reported that most of the dead appeared to be Han, and Ürümqi hospitals said about two-thirds of the injured were Han.
- The WUC’s figures: The World Uyghur Congress put the death toll at around 600, far above the official count, and said many Uyghur deaths had gone unrecorded. Rebiya Kadeer also claimed that nearly 10,000 people had “disappeared” overnight — meaning detained — after the riots.
- Human rights groups: Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch both said the official figures were likely incomplete. Human Rights Watch’s October 2009 report documented 43 cases of enforced disappearance and described them as only “the tip of the iceberg” (see below).
Competing accounts and reactions
The Chinese government characterised the riots as a “premeditated, organised violent crime, instigated and directed from abroad and carried out by outlaws”. On 6 July, regional chairman Nur Bekri accused the World Uyghur Congress, led by Rebiya Kadeer, of exploiting the Shaoguan incident to incite the unrest; the authorities cited as evidence WUC records of protest planning, Kadeer’s public statements and recordings of her phone calls. Afterwards, China also pressured countries Kadeer visited: India refused her a visa, and Beijing lodged protests over her trips to Japan and Australia.
Kadeer and the WUC denied masterminding the riots, saying the protest grew out of the Shaoguan incident, heavy-handed policing and years of repression rather than direction from abroad; Kadeer also claimed there had been agents provocateurs in the crowd. Uyghur diaspora communities protested outside Chinese embassies and consulates in several countries; on 19 July more than 5,000 Uyghurs rallied in Almaty, Kazakhstan.
International reactions: UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged all sides to exercise restraint. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said she was alarmed that so many people had been killed and injured in less than a day of rioting, and called for detainees to be treated humanely. The Organisation of the Islamic Conference criticised China for “disproportionate use of force”. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan described the events as “like genocide”, drawing an angry response from Chinese state media. The European Union expressed concern and urged restraint; the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation backed Beijing, calling the Xinjiang situation purely China’s internal affair.
Arrests, trials and the information blackout
The scale of arrests is also disputed. Officials said 1,434 people had been arrested by 7 July; the BBC put the total number arrested in connection with the riots at over 1,500; the Financial Times, citing an insider, reported that some 4,000 arrests had been made by mid-July and that prisons were overflowing. In early August the Ürümqi government announced that 83 people had been formally arrested, and later said arrest warrants had been issued for 196 suspects. By November 2009, more than 400 people faced criminal charges, according to Amnesty International.
Trials: On 12 October, an Ürümqi court handed down the first sentences: six men were sentenced to death and one to life imprisonment, all of them Uyghurs, on charges including murder, arson and robbery. Human Rights Watch criticised the trials for being completed within a single day, without prior public notice, and with restrictions on defendants’ choice of lawyers, saying they failed minimum international fair-trial standards; Xinhua responded that the proceedings were conducted in both Chinese and Uyghur and that evidence had been carefully verified. In November 2009, nine people were executed — according to earlier government statements, eight Uyghurs and one Han. By February 2010 at least 26 people had been sentenced to death, including at least one Han and one Uyghur woman.
Disappearances and individual cases: Most of the 43 enforced-disappearance cases documented by Human Rights Watch involved Uyghur men and teenage boys, many in their twenties, taken away during the sweeps; their families’ enquiries went unanswered. Days after the riots, the Uyghur economist Ilham Tohti was detained over his criticism of the Xinjiang authorities; the Uyghur journalist Gheyret Niyaz was later sentenced to 15 years in prison for speaking to foreign media. In December 2009, Cambodia forcibly returned 20 Uyghur asylum seekers to China; according to Amnesty International, five were later sentenced to life imprisonment and eight to prison terms of 16 to 20 years.
Information control: After the riots, internet access, text messaging and international calls were cut across Xinjiang; foreign journalists could get online only at a media centre in the Hoi Tak Hotel. Restoration was slow: text messaging resumed only on 17 January 2010, with daily limits; websites were unblocked in batches; and full internet access was not restored until 14 May 2010 — a blackout of about ten months. Xinjiang also adopted legislation banning the use of the internet to incite ethnic separatism, and in August 2009 the national legislature passed a law setting standards for the deployment of armed police during riots and other “social safety incidents”.
Impact and aftermath
Two months later, Ürümqi was shaken again. From mid-August 2009, a string of syringe attacks was reported — officials said as many as 476 people reported being stabbed with needles. On 3 September, thousands of Han residents protested over security and the slow pace of prosecutions; officials said five people died and 14 were injured during the protests, and the next day Ürümqi party secretary Li Zhi and the city’s police chief were removed. In April 2010, regional party secretary Wang Lequan, who had governed Xinjiang for many years, was replaced by Zhang Chunxian. Compensation for each “innocent death” was raised to ¥420,000, and by the first anniversary of the riots more than 40,000 surveillance cameras had been installed around Ürümqi.
In policy terms, the first Central Xinjiang Work Forum in May 2010 set a course of “pairing assistance” and development-led stability: eastern provinces were to provide large transfer payments — reported at some US$15 billion — and a special economic zone was announced for Kashgar. In its 2010 report “‘Justice, Justice’: The July 2009 Protests in Xinjiang, China”, Amnesty International called for an independent investigation into the riots and questioned both the official casualty figures and the fairness of the trials.
The July 2009 riots were a turning point in how Xinjiang is governed: the security and surveillance apparatus was expanded relentlessly afterwards, and trust between communities remained broken for years. The events also left a question that has never been answered — how many people, in those few days, were killed, and how many simply disappeared.
Sources
- Wikipedia, “July 2009 Ürümqi riots” and “Shaoguan incident” (English and Chinese editions): chronology, the evolution of the official figures, and the competing accounts
- Xinhua News Agency rolling reports, July 2009: updates to the death and injury tolls, the ethnic breakdown of the dead (as cited via Wikipedia and other outlets)
- Amnesty International, “‘Justice, Justice’: The July 2009 Protests in Xinjiang, China” (2010), and its statement of July 2012: challenges to the official casualty figures, eyewitness testimony, and the sentences given to Uyghurs returned from Cambodia
- Human Rights Watch, “‘We Are Afraid to Even Look for Them’: Enforced Disappearances in the Wake of Xinjiang’s Protests” (October 2009): the 43 documented disappearance cases; and its October 2009 statement on the riot trials
- Reuters reporting on the Shaoguan incident, 2009: the origin of the rumour and the findings of the official investigation
- The Times, The Daily Telegraph and the Financial Times, July 2009 and after: on-the-ground observations of the victims’ ethnicity and estimates of the number arrested
- Cover image: Wikimedia Commons (see file page for license)