Life getting back to normal in Xinjiang
A drop in reported crime and a limited resumption of internet and mobile text-messaging services are two signs that life in Xinjiang is returning to normal, three weeks after almost 200 people died in ethnic clashes.
Police in the regional capital, Urumqi, had reported an average of 20.5 criminal cases a day, including robberies, thefts, pickpocketing and fraud, from July 13 to Friday, down from more than 60 before the rioting, Xinhua said. They had received an average of 2,726 general reports - not just crime - a day, about 200 fewer than before the outbreak of violence on July 5.
Xinhua also reported that around-the-clock traffic control, imposed in sensitive downtown areas since the unrest, had been loosened in the most badly damaged areas from midnight to 8am since July 19.
Businesses in the Big Bazaar, one of the most restricted areas, seemed to have resumed normal operations.
Thousands of police in full riot gear were deployed on almost every corner of Urumqi after thousands of Han Chinese clashed with Uygurs in the city, leaving at least 197 dead and nearly 2,000 injured.
The Xinhua report also said that rumours had spread through the city over the past few weeks. Some said many elderly people, women and children had been kidnapped to be traded for detained riot suspects. Others said many corpses had been found in apartments and some Han women had been sexually assaulted before being killed.
But the Information Office of the Xinjiang government said yesterday that police had not found evidence to support the rumours. Only one rape case and two murders had been reported in the capital during the 12-day period ending on Friday.
Communications would be resumed step by step, a directive issued by Xinjiang officials said. Net services in the region were blacked out within hours of the unrest breaking out, followed by a disruption in mobile-phone calls and text messages.
Communication officials told Xinhua that online banking services, online college and university enrolment, and text messages of weather forecasts had been partially restored.
Beifeng, a user of Fanfou, a mainland version of Twitter that was shut after the riots, said authorities had opened access to a few websites while others were still blocked, along with international phone calls and text-messaging services.
'This kind of one-sided provision of information is far from a real resumption of communications, either in terms of internet services or text-messaging services,' he said.
