China Blocks Internet Services after Riots in the Uighur Province

A different province to repress, same censoring methods.

That seems to be the recurring theme when it comes to China and the regime's handling of its internal problems: repress hard, censor harder.

IDG News Service reports that Beijing has blocked Twitter throughout China and Internet access in the ethnic province of Uighur, where riots have left at least 140 dead and 800 injured in that Western region of China.

Protesters, mostly women, confront riot police in
the Uighur Province town of Urumqi (EPA photo)

The government actions added to long-standing efforts to control online discussion of sensitive topics, especially at times of crisis.

"They cut off the Internet to shut down communications," said Wu'er Kaixi, an ethnic Uighur who fled China after helping lead pro-democracy protests there twenty years ago. The Uighurs are a minority concentrated in Xinjiang province that China has struggled to assimilate.

Beijing did not want Internet users to upload pictures and videos like they did after deadly riots last year in Tibet, Wu'er said.

China locked down communications much faster this time, he said.

The riots were apparently triggered by dozens of women demanding the release of their sons and husbands. Soon they were joined by thousands of demonstrators. The ensuing clashes with armed police left as many as 140 protesters dead.

The Beijing central government was afraid the province would observe the anniversary last month of the 1989 protests that also ended up in bloody repression by police.