BEIJING (AP) — China is putting a western city where deadly ethnic violence broke out in 2009 under full surveillance, including ensuring “seamless” coverage of sensitive areas of the city with tens of thousands of cameras, state media reported Tuesday.
Security has been tight in Urumqi since tensions between the area’s largely Muslim Uighurs and members of the country’s Han majority flared into open violence in 2009. Uighurs have long resented what they see as an incursion by Han migrants into their ancestral homeland, the Xinjiang region.
The government says 197 people were killed in that outbreak of violence, the deadliest in Xinjiang in years. China has sentenced dozens of people for their involvement in the riots, most of them Uighurs. Beijing blamed overseas Uighur groups of plotting the violence, but exile groups denied it.
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