DATE=9/15/2000 TYPE=BACKGROUND REPORT TITLE=CHINA-YINING RIOTS NUMBER=5-47006 BYLINE=LETA HONG FINCHER DATELINE=YINING, XINJIANG PROVINCE CONTENT= VOICED AT: INTRO: China is recovering from a deadly explosion this month in the capital of its far western province, Xinjiang - where about the half the population is Uighur Muslim and there are deep ethnic divisions. While the government says the blast was an accident, and has ruled out terrorism, Xinjiang is a place where the tension and potential for violence is palpable. Beijing Correspondent Leta Hong Fincher recently visited one trouble spot in Xinjiang, and brings us a report from the city of Yining, the scene of ethnic riots just three years ago. TEXT: /// TEENAGER ACT IN CHINESE, THEN FADE /// This Muslim Kazak teenager, a high school student in Yining, tells his story slowly at first, and only on condition of anonymity. He was 14 years old in 1997, when Xinjiang's border city near Kazakhstan exploded into riots between its Muslim Uighurs and Chinese militia. /// TEENAGER ACT TWO IN CHINESE, THEN FADE /// He says they were in class the day it all began. Their teacher told them that the Uighurs had started rioting, so it was too dangerous to go outside. He says for three days, the students were kept in school, waiting for the unrest to subside. /// TEENAGER ACT THREE IN CHINESE, THEN FADE /// We were so scared, we didn't dare sleep at night, he says. No one knows exactly what happened in Yining three years ago, but the city remains an open wound. Xinjiang officials warned reporters on a rare half-day visit to this troubled city not to venture out alone. /// BEGIN OPT /// /// CITY SOUNDS EST, THEN FADE /// Near the city's central square, young Uighur men exchange cash over a card game. A Uighur boy who looks no more than 15 years old quickly sweeps a pile of pornographic video-CDs off a table in the street when he sees a Westerner approach. /// END OPT /// None of the Uighurs in town will talk about the riot - possibly the greatest threat to Chinese Communist rule over its ethnic Muslims in the last decade. /// ALBASBAI ACT IN CHINESE, THEN FADE /// The governor of the local prefecture, Albasbai Raham, says the trouble started on February 5th, 1997, with a small group of Muslim separatists bent on spreading chaos. He says they wanted to break up the unity of the nation, and began anti-Chinese riots that lasted for two days. He says security forces quickly re- established control, and fewer than 10 people were killed. But human rights groups tell a different story. Arlette Laduguie is an Asia researcher for Amnesty International in London. She says the trouble in Xinjiang can be traced back about 10 years to the break-up of the Soviet Union and the establishment of independent Central Asian republics on the border with Xinjiang. She says Chinese authorities feared that its ethnic Uighurs would be inspired to create their own independent state, and therefore started a campaign to suppress Uighur culture and religion. /// LADUGUIE ACT /// What started on that date in February 1997 was not a riot, but a demonstration by a group of several hundred mainly young Uighurs, who marched through the streets chanting slogans and asking for freedom of religion. It's only later on that the demonstration degenerated into rioting and the circumstances in which this happened, the responsibility of the security forces for example is not clear, still now. /// END ACT/// /// KAZAK TEENAGER FOUR IN CHINESE, THEN FADE /// The high school student from Yining says his teacher, who is Han Chinese, told the class that what she called counter-revolutionary Uighurs were captured by police, horded into an open place nearby, and frozen to death. Because the city has been sealed off from outsiders for so long, it is impossible to verify what happened to the demonstrators. But Ms. Laduguie of Amnesty says between 300 and 500 protesters were arrested within hours of starting their march, which she says was initially peaceful. Based on interviews with many Uighur sources, she says police indeed appear to have tried to freeze the demonstrators arrested that day. /// LADUGUIE ACT TWO /// All accounts say that at some point, they were hosed with very cold water by soldiers or policemen, for reasons that are not explained. One has to bear in mind that this was in February in the middle of the winter, when it was freezing cold in that region certainly. /// END ACT /// Ms. Laduguie says it's not clear if anyone died from hypothermia or frostbite, but some of the detainees had to have their frozen feet, fingers or hands amputated. She says by February 6th, a large number of anti-riot troops had been mobilized in the city, and clashes between Uighurs and security forces lasted for more than a week. During the two weeks after the violence subsided, as many as five-thousand people were arrested, including relatives and friends of anyone who supported the initial demonstrators. Ms. Laduguie says Uighur sources estimate 70 or 80 people died during the unrest. /// BEGIN OPT /// /// LADUGUIE ACT THREE /// There were reports of people dying after being taken in police custody as a result of severe torture and because armed police and the army were patrolling streets constantly, no one knew exactly who was in custody, in jail, and who was just perhaps hiding somewhere or disappeared. And during that period of time, apparently the bodies of some people badly beaten up were found in the street. /// END ACT /// END OPT /// Mr. Albasbai, the local governor, dismisses these unofficial reports. /// ALBASBAI TWO - LAUGHS, ACT IN CHINESE, FADE /// What you just said is nothing but hearsay, says the governor. He says police never took people away and froze them. He says the government handled what he calls the February 5th incident according to Chinese law, and if the same thing happened today, he would handle it in exactly the same way. /// UIGHUR MUSIC FROM YINING STREETS, THEN FADE /// Since the 1997 riots, the Chinese government crackdown on Uighurs appears to have continued. Amnesty International says China executed 190 people in the region between January 1997 and April 1999 alone- - the vast majority of whom were Uighurs charged with terrorist or anti-government crimes. But although some militant Uighurs have agitated for the creation of an independent state, most of them just want to practice their religion without interference from the government. /// KAZAK TEENAGER FIVE ACT IN CHINESE, THEN FADE /// The Muslim Kazak student in Yining says that ever since the riots, students have been forbidden from going to mosques. His teacher says praying will interfere with their studies.(signed) NEB/HK/LHF/JO 15-Sep-2000 02:51 AM EDT (15-Sep-2000 0651 UTC) NNNN Source: Voice of America .