[Al Arabiya Latest] Police on Tuesday fired tear gas to disperse thousands of Han Chinese protesters armed with makeshift weapons and vowing revenge as chaos gripped this flashpoint city riven by ethnic tensions amid calls from a United Nations' human rights official for calm.Chinese authorities said they had arrested 1,434 suspects, accusing them of murder, assault, looting and burning during attacks by Muslim Uighurs against the Han, China's dominant ethnic group who are seen in Xinjiang as oppressors.
Tensions spiked dramatically following weekend clashes that claimed at least 156 lives.
But despite the security clampdown involving police with submachine guns, shotguns and batons, mobs of Han Chinese marched through Urumqi -- many wielding bricks, chains and poles and bent on reprisals against Uighurs. "The Uighurs came to our area to smash things, now we are going to their area to beat them," one protester, who was carrying a metal pipe, told AFP.
Dong Sun, a 19-year-old leader of one mob, expressed similar fury. "There are more of us," he said in reference to the number of Han Chinese versus Uighurs. "It is time we looked after ourselves instead of waiting for the government."
Police repeatedly fired volleys of tear gas, but many of the demonstrators refused to yield ground despite their eyes streaming and their throats welling with pain, an AFP reporter witnessed.
