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Five Muslims Killed As Chinese Police Open Fire
BEIJING (AFP) - Five members of China's Muslim Hui community have been shot and killed and more than 40 injured by police in one of the worst instances of ethnic violence in recent years, a Hong Kong-based rights group said on Thursday.
The incident took place in eastern Shandong province on Wednesday, when more than 300 Hui people clashed with members of the paramilitary People's Armed Police and regular police forces, the Information Center for Human Right and Democracy said in a statement.
The clash took place in Shandong's Yangxin County, which has been the scene of several confrontations between Hui people and police in the past month, the group said.
A Yangxin police official denied the report, saying no clashes had taken place, and that no one had been injured or killed.
The reported clash was the culmination of a three-month-long confrontation between Muslims and non-Muslims in the county, which had started on September 20th when a pork vendor in the county's Heliu village advertised the sale of "Muslim pork."
The eating of pork is forbidden in Islam and angered members of the local Hui community who attacked the meat vendor and demonstrated outside the county government office, the center said.
In response, the county government and the police in October publicly stated that the Hui people, through their protests, had "seriously violated the law" and arrested three members of the community.
When they heard of the incidents, Hui people from other parts of China traveled to the county to protest, and in the course of November, Hui demonstrators clashed with police three times, the center said.
Tensions boiled over Saturday night, when a pig's head was placed in front of a mosque in Yangxin.
On Wednesday, 300 Hui people arrived from the predominantly Hui-inhabited Mengcun County in neighboring Hebei province, only to be met by more than 100 paramilitary and police officers, according to the center.
After a scuffle, in which non-Muslim bystanders also participated, the officers sought to disperse the demonstrators by firing their guns into the air, but to no avail.
The officers subsequently lowered their guns and fired directly at the Hui demonstrators, killing five and injuring more than 40, the center said.
An official at Mengcun County declined to either confirm or deny the report.
China's 8.6-million Hui minority is scattered throughout many parts of the mainland, from Xinjiang region and Yunnan province in the west to Shandong in the east.
According to tradition, they are the descendants of Arab and Persian traders who settled in China as early as the seventh century A.D.
In the following centuries, they have become almost entirely assimilated with China's majority Han population, and are now only distinguishable by their religion.
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