Censors allow reports on state media, but go to work on internet
Government media acted promptly to release information on the Urumqi riots on Sunday night, while unofficial channels of information were strictly censored, a sign that Beijing had learned its lessons from last year's violence in Tibet.
Xinhua first reported events in Urumqi on Sunday night, saying an unnamed number of people had gathered in the city. Since then, the official agency has provided regular updates that have been quoted by overseas media.
More reports were released in English than Chinese, and they gave details on casualties and descriptions of the tense situation in the city. Residents were quoted describing the 'nightmare experience' and condemning the violence.
China Central Television showed footage of the chaotic scenes in the city, including rioters overturning buses, smashing car windows, beating people on the streets, and setting fire to shops and buildings.
On its 7pm network news, the riot was the third news item, behind the reports on President Hu Jintao in Italy and an urban development project in Jilin . Emotional residents, including many Uygurs, were interviewed showing their injuries and ransacked shops.
The provincial government held a press conference yesterday, and reporters from mainly mainland and Hong Kong media were taken to report on the aftermath. The State Council Information Office invited all foreign media based in Beijing for a tour of Xinjiang yesterday.
In contrast with such openness, the authorities strictly controlled unofficial channels of information by closing down a swathe of websites. Posts on internet forums that contained descriptions and pictures of the riot were quickly deleted. A search for keywords such as Xinjiang or Urumqi caused Google to time out while results were heavily filtered on top mainland search engine Baidu.
Hou Hanpin, a spokesman for Xinjiang's Government Information Office, said the internet was shut down to stop 'terrorists' spreading 'evil information' and manipulating the riots.
International calls to Xinjiang were also barred.
Many users of Fanfou - the mainland's version of micro-blogging site Twitter - complained of posts referencing the unrest being deleted. Twitter was blocked yesterday, just as it was in the days surrounding the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen crackdown last month.
Barry Sautman, an associate professor from Hong Kong University of Science and Technology specialising in the mainland's ethnic politics, said the new approach to the media was a sign the government had learned its lesson from Tibet. In March last year, authorities barred all foreign media from reporting on the riots there.
'In their handling of the Tibet incident, the result was that foreign journalists basically only had one source of information, which was the Tibetan exiles,' Dr Sautman said. 'The government realised that if foreign journalists went to Urumqi, and saw ... that some of the people involved supported Xinjiang independence, they could shift the blame to Uygur splittist organisations abroad.'
Additional reporting by Kristine Kwok
