Religious clashes shatter China's Muslims
MENGCUN COUNTY, China: The body of Wang Chunping bore the marks of the terrible last few minutes of his life, before the 33-year-old Muslim farmer fell victim to an explosion of religious strife in this small corner of rural China.
Two small holes are traces of the lethal bullets, and when his killers tied a wire around his neck to drag his body along the ground, they left a thin violet mark. Across the front of his torso is a 25-centimetre (10-inch) knife cut.
"They pulled out his guts through that hole," said one of Wang's grieving relatives as they prepared the body for a traditional Islamic funeral.
Mengcun is a county of about 160,000 people in Hebei province, only three and a half hours by train from Beijing, where Han Chinese and members of the Muslim Hui community have lived in harmony for decades and where inter-marriage has been common.
Last week people in the small farm villages scattered throughout the wintry brown-and-grey landscape were hit by a tragedy that suggests religious tension lingers just below the surface and can suddenly and violently break out into the open.
On Tuesday, as many as 2,000 Muslims from Mengcun county set out in cars and tractors on a 60-kilometre ride to Yangxin county in neighbouring Shandong province to support their Islamic brethren in a three-month confrontation with non-Muslims.
Members of Shandong's paramilitary People's Armed Police knew they were coming and had set up three roadblocks on the route.
They let the Muslims through the first roadblock but at the second, they opened fire, killing six and wounding more than 40, witnesses say.
Locals claimed not all of those shot died from their gun wounds.
"They took my father into a police car and beat him over the face with a metal bar," said a teenage boy in Niujin village, breaking into tears.
The authorities have repeatedly denied any incident took place, and an AFP reporter was detained in Mengcun on Saturday for interviewing locals. His notebooks and film were confiscated, and he was driven under guard to Beijing.
Tuesday's shooting incident was the violent culmination of tensions in Yangxin that have been building up since early fall.
In September, a Han Chinese shop owner in Yangxin's Heliu village, in what appears to be a deliberate taunt, started advertising the sale of "Islamic pork."
As Muslims protested, and as officials allowed tensions to boil over, both the shopowner and another Han Chinese were killed, according to a Yangxin resident.
Shandong authorities arrested three Muslims and have now cordoned off the Yangxin area, said the resident, a Muslim, who secretly managed to go to Mengcun to mourn with his fellow believers.
Thousands of people, mostly from Mengcun county, gathered in Dongchaohe village on Saturday, when Wang Chunping's coffin was carried through narrow alleys to a burial ground outside the hamlet.
The crowds were disciplined, kept in order by a charismatic 33-year-old cleric, who, equipped with a loudspeaker, performed the ceremony.
As communities around Mengcun county buried their dead this week, official security tightened.
Uniformed police maintained a low profile, staying inside their cars at a distance from large crowds, while plain-clothes officers mingled with the mourners, some taking photos.
Ethnic tension is one of the Chinese government's most formidable challenges, and although the minorities make up just eight per cent of the population, they inhabit 60 per cent of the mainland, especially the west.
The Huis, descendants of Arab and Persian traders who settled down from the 7th century onwards, are represented in most parts of China, but are among the most assimilated and are virtually indistinguishable from the Hans.
Scenes in Mengcun county this week could suggest the emergence of a more assertive kind of Islam.
"Never forget the heroes of our people," said a white banner in Dongchaohe village.
Some of the thousands who paid their last respects to the dead saw them as religious martyrs and had vague, undefined hopes that international Muslim solidarity could somehow help them put things right.
"We want the world, and especially Muslims abroad, to know what happened," said one mourner.
Locals said what happens next entirely depends on how the officials respond to their demands that those found responsible for Tuesday's killings be punished.
"I am confident the authorities will handle this matter in a proper way," said a local cleric. "All we want is to be good Muslims and patriotic citizens at the same time."
Others -- including a young student of Arabic and the Koran who hopes to one day go on pilgrimage to Mecca -- were not too sure.
"I can't say I'm too confident the authorities will deal with this incident properly," he said. "If the authorities don't listen, there could be more clashes." (AFP)
MENGCUN COUNTY, China: The body of Wang Chunping bore the marks of the terrible last few minutes of his life, before the 33-year-old Muslim farmer fell victim to an explosion of religious strife in this small corner of rural China.
Two small holes are traces of the lethal bullets, and when his killers tied a wire around his neck to drag his body along the ground, they left a thin violet mark. Across the front of his torso is a 25-centimetre (10-inch) knife cut.
"They pulled out his guts through that hole," said one of Wang's grieving relatives as they prepared the body for a traditional Islamic funeral.
Mengcun is a county of about 160,000 people in Hebei province, only three and a half hours by train from Beijing, where Han Chinese and members of the Muslim Hui community have lived in harmony for decades and where inter-marriage has been common.
Last week people in the small farm villages scattered throughout the wintry brown-and-grey landscape were hit by a tragedy that suggests religious tension lingers just below the surface and can suddenly and violently break out into the open.
On Tuesday, as many as 2,000 Muslims from Mengcun county set out in cars and tractors on a 60-kilometre ride to Yangxin county in neighbouring Shandong province to support their Islamic brethren in a three-month confrontation with non-Muslims.
Members of Shandong's paramilitary People's Armed Police knew they were coming and had set up three roadblocks on the route.
They let the Muslims through the first roadblock but at the second, they opened fire, killing six and wounding more than 40, witnesses say.
Locals claimed not all of those shot died from their gun wounds.
"They took my father into a police car and beat him over the face with a metal bar," said a teenage boy in Niujin village, breaking into tears.
The authorities have repeatedly denied any incident took place, and an AFP reporter was detained in Mengcun on Saturday for interviewing locals. His notebooks and film were confiscated, and he was driven under guard to Beijing.
Tuesday's shooting incident was the violent culmination of tensions in Yangxin that have been building up since early fall.
In September, a Han Chinese shop owner in Yangxin's Heliu village, in what appears to be a deliberate taunt, started advertising the sale of "Islamic pork."
As Muslims protested, and as officials allowed tensions to boil over, both the shopowner and another Han Chinese were killed, according to a Yangxin resident.
Shandong authorities arrested three Muslims and have now cordoned off the Yangxin area, said the resident, a Muslim, who secretly managed to go to Mengcun to mourn with his fellow believers.
Thousands of people, mostly from Mengcun county, gathered in Dongchaohe village on Saturday, when Wang Chunping's coffin was carried through narrow alleys to a burial ground outside the hamlet.
The crowds were disciplined, kept in order by a charismatic 33-year-old cleric, who, equipped with a loudspeaker, performed the ceremony.
As communities around Mengcun county buried their dead this week, official security tightened.
Uniformed police maintained a low profile, staying inside their cars at a distance from large crowds, while plain-clothes officers mingled with the mourners, some taking photos.
Ethnic tension is one of the Chinese government's most formidable challenges, and although the minorities make up just eight per cent of the population, they inhabit 60 per cent of the mainland, especially the west.
The Huis, descendants of Arab and Persian traders who settled down from the 7th century onwards, are represented in most parts of China, but are among the most assimilated and are virtually indistinguishable from the Hans.
Scenes in Mengcun county this week could suggest the emergence of a more assertive kind of Islam.
"Never forget the heroes of our people," said a white banner in Dongchaohe village.
Some of the thousands who paid their last respects to the dead saw them as religious martyrs and had vague, undefined hopes that international Muslim solidarity could somehow help them put things right.
"We want the world, and especially Muslims abroad, to know what happened," said one mourner.
Locals said what happens next entirely depends on how the officials respond to their demands that those found responsible for Tuesday's killings be punished.
"I am confident the authorities will handle this matter in a proper way," said a local cleric. "All we want is to be good Muslims and patriotic citizens at the same time."
Others -- including a young student of Arabic and the Koran who hopes to one day go on pilgrimage to Mecca -- were not too sure.
"I can't say I'm too confident the authorities will deal with this incident properly," he said. "If the authorities don't listen, there could be more clashes." (AFP)
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