In the worst show of ethnic violence in decades, Han Chinese clashed with members of the Uighur Muslim minority on Tuesday, leaving 156 dead and more than 1,000 injured on the streets of the provincial capitol of Urumqi. The latest in a series of attacks and retaliations, today’s riots were driven by mobs of angry Han Chinese seeking revenge on the Uighur community for a racially-motivated rampage on Sunday that resulted in the deaths of at least 3 Han civilians.

On Tuesday, Beijing deployed paramilitary troops to the Xinjiang province to hold back thousands of Han Chinese protesters armed with makeshift weapons, including meat cleavers, steel poles and shovels, as they attempted to infiltrate the city’s Uighur enclave. Earlier in the day, Uighur protesters took to the streets to demand the release of family members they say were wrongfully arrested by Han Chinese police forces during Sunday’s riot. Han Chinese and Uighur rioters hurled bricks at each other as paramilitary forces showered the angry mobs with tear gas and ordered that protesters return home.

The most recent outburst of racial violence was motivated by the Uighur minority’s mounting frustration with Communist leadership. Sunday’s riots came as a result of a government crackdown on a small group of Uighur protesters calling for an investigation into a brawl between Uighur and Han laborers. The fight allegedly took place in a Uighur dormitory at a factory more than a thousand miles away after a resentful factory worker accused six Uighur men of raping a Han Chinese woman, sparking a violent confrontation in the city of Shaoguan. In Urumqi, rumors that Uighur men were harassing Han Chinese in retaliation worsened already strained relations between the two ethnic groups.

Like the Tibetan minority, the Uighurs claim that Beijing has institutionalized racial discrimination in the northwest Xinjiang Province in an attempt to subjugate ethnic and religious minorities. Also reminiscent of Tibet’s struggle, Beijing is blaming the riots on Rebiya Kadeer, a Uighur rights advocate and leader-in-exile. Although the Uighurs make up the majority of Xinjiang’s population, Han Chinese account for 70 percent of the population in the capitol city–a result of Beijing’s support for Han Chinese immigration to the desert province. Uighurs have long been persecuted by Chinese officials, as illustrated by the pleas of 17 Uighur Guantanamo detainees who were released to Palau last month.

In what has become standard operating procedure for the Chinese government, Beijing blocked access to social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook immediately after the riots broke out to prevent protesters from organizing online. The Communist Party has also blocked mobile phone service in the region and has been active in censoring news coming out of Xinjiang.

photo credit: shapeshift’s Flickr photostream (creative commons)