Petrol stations in China's troubled western region of Xinjiang have displayed notices in recent days calling on Muslim women to remove their veils if they wish to be served, residents said on Tuesday.

The notices were mostly evident in the predominantly Uyghur-populated Hotan and Kashgar prefectures in southern Xinjiang, according to residents interviewed by RFA's Uyghur Service.

"They are targeting women who wear veils or headscarves, whether they are young or old, on the grounds that it is supposed to have some connection to terrorism," a resident of Hotan, who declined to be named, told RFA's Mandarin service.

"[The petrol stations] just blindly ban them," he said. "It's not just the petrol stations, but also the hospitals and other public places," he said, adding that the policy was a recent phenomenon in Xinjiang, which is periodically hit by ethnic violence.

"When I was a kid it wasn't like this," he said.

At least two gas stations contacted in Xinjiang's capital Urumqi said they did not put up such notices.

A Uyghur woman in Kashgar's Poskam county said that dressing curbs for Muslim women were not new in her area, saying notices to the effect have been introduced even in hospitals and libraries.

“Yes, they have such notices in the gas station which would restrict covered-up ladies from getting gas," she said. "They also face prohibitions in hospitals. It is extremely hard for the ladies with hijab [veil]."

The woman said she would sell her newly bought car rather than obey the notices put up at the gas stations.

Government offices

In Hotan city, sources said local authorities adopted procedures this month prohibiting women with veils from entering government offices, post offices, and banks, among other government and commercial buildings.     

Last month, community officials in Beshtugmen and Igerchi villages outside Xinjiang's Aksu city enforced punitive measures against the relatives of Muslim women who cover their faces by not authorizing their marriage applications and disallowing them to perform pilgrimage to Mecca.

But the reinforced directives appear now to have spread to everyday businesses, and across a wider geographical area than before.

One sign in Chinese and Uyghur script, a photo of which was posted to the Uyghur Online website, read: "Please would ladies remove their veils, to avoid obstructing a modern and civilized society,"

A second photo showed a similar sign, printed out and stuck above the door of a business, while a third read: "Veiled women are forbidden to enter the family compound of the land and resources bureau."

Rights groups have hit out at local restrictions in Xinjiang  targeting women in veils and discouraging men from wearing beards, saying they hinder not only religious practice but also Uyghur traditions.

A number of listeners made calls to RFA's hotlines in recent days, reporting similar signage in petrol stations in Xinjiang, which is home to nine million mostly Muslim, Turkic-speaking Uyghurs and is the scene of recurring ethnic violence.

'Anti-terrorism'

Sichuan-based rights activist Pu Fei, who is himself a Uyghur, said such restrictions were frequently justified by the authorities in the name of "anti-terrorism."

"Basically, this is nothing but racial discrimination," Pu said. "The reasons given are combating terrorism, maintaining stability, and so on. But none of them stand up."

"We hope that the authorities will soon stop this ridiculous measure, or else it will create further ethnic tensions in the region," he said.

Many Uyghurs say headscarves are a marker of Uyghur rather than Muslim identity. Chinese authorities, however, discourage the wearing of headscarves, veils, and other Islamic dress in the region.

Top regional officials have rejected claims of curbs on traditional Islamic dress in the region, with Kuresh Kanjir, a Uyghur delegate to the ruling Chinese Communist Party’s 19th Party Congress telling a Hong Kong newspaper late last year that there is “absolutely no ban.”

In a report this year, the U.S.-based Uyghur Human Rights project decried an “open discrimination” against Uyghurs, especially women leading religious lives, raising concerns about public signs barring entry and reports of government assistance withheld from Uyghurs dressed in “Islamic” fashion.

Headscarves

Most of the restrictions are aimed at women who wear veils and men who have beards, but campaigns against headscarves have also been reported in different parts of Xinjiang.

Earlier this month, students in Xinjiang’s Atush city took to the streets in a rare protest over the right of Uyghur girls to wear headscarves to school.

Local residents had said some 70 students wearing headscarves and doppa, traditional Uyghur caps for men, had taken part in the demonstration outside the Kezhou No. 1 High School’s gates after the school tried to enforce a ban on the head coverings.

School officials rescinded the ban after the protest, online reports said.

Reported by Yang Fan for RFA's Mandarin Service and Gulchehra Keyum for RFA's Uyghur Service. Translated by Luisetta Mudie and Mamatjan Juma. Written in English by Luisetta Mudie.

Chinese authorities in the troubled northwestern region of Xinjiang are forcing Muslim Uyghur students returning there for the summer vacation to attend "political study classes" ahead of a sensitive anniversary of ethnic violence and the holy month of Ramadan.

"After the students get back to their hometowns, those with cell phones and computers must hand them in to the police for searching," Dilxat Raxit, Sweden-based spokesman for the exile World Uyghur Congress (WUC) group said on Thursday.

"If they don't hand them over and are reported or caught by the authorities, then they will have to bear the consequences," Raxit said, without specifying what the consequences would be.

He said local officials had already deployed buses to transport Uyghur students studying elsewhere in China back home under the watchful eye of the authorities.

The anniversary of deadly ethnic violence that rocked the regional capital of Urumqi on July 5, 2009 falls just ahead of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan this year, Raxit said.

China imposes strict controls on Muslims via religious affairs offices at every level of government, and children under 18 are forbidden to take part in religious activities, including fasting during Ramadan.

"They are extracting guarantees from parents, promising that their children won't fast on Ramadan," Raxit said.

"They have also made groups of 10 households responsible for spying on each other, so that if a single child from one family fasts for Ramadan, or takes part in religious activities, then all 10 families will be fined."

"It's called a 10-household guarantee system," he said.

An official who answered the phone at a religious affairs bureau in Hotan's Yutian county confirmed some of Raxit's information.

"[Fasting] is not allowed," the official said. "The students and the teachers have to report to their schools every Friday, even during the vacation."

"It's like regular lessons," he said, adding that the students would also be eating there.

Raxit said students wishing to leave their home villages during the vacation would need to obtain special permission from the authorities.

Tarim students

Last month, authorities in Xinjiang's Aksu prefecture detained 12 students at Tarim University, holding nine of them for two days and releasing three of them on bail at the end of May.

The Uyghur Online website (Uyghurbiz.net) said the students were taken away from Tarim University by police from nearby Aral (in Chinese, Ala'er) city in early May, adding that one of them, identified as Ibrahim, was detained after being accused of "having overseas contacts."

The detentions came just days after an outbreak of violence in Siriqbuya (in Chinese, Selibuya) township in Kashgar prefecture's Maralbeshi (Bachu) county left 21 dead, with 19 Uyghur suspects detained by police.

Chinese authorities blamed the violence on Uyghur "terrorists," but rights groups and experts familiar with the region say Beijing exaggerates the terrorism threat to take the heat off domestic policies that cause unrest or to justify the authorities' use of force against the Uyghur minority.

Last month, dozens of high school students in China's  troubled western Xinjiang region took to the streets in a rare protest over the right of Uyghur girls to wear traditional head-coverings in school.

Nearly 100 students from the Kizilsu (in Chinese, Kezhou) No. 1 High School in Xinjiang's Atosh (in Chinese, Atushi) city marched out of the gates and onto the streets in anger on Wednesday after the school tried to enforce a ban on headscarves.

Uyghurs say they have long suffered ethnic discrimination, oppressive religious controls, and continued poverty and joblessness, blaming the problems partly on the influx of Han Chinese into the region.

Reported by Qiao Long for RFA's Mandarin Service and by Hai Nan for the Cantonese Service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie.

Police in the remote western province of Qinghai targeted Hui Muslim children with tranquilizer darts during an eviction and demolition operation that left nine people hospitalized, local residents said on Wednesday.

A resident of Xiangdong village, near Qunke township, said that the nine people were taken to a local medical facility after being hit by tranquilizer darts during the operation to evict families and demolish their homes which began last Friday and continued into Tuesday.

"They came here and targeted our kids with tranquilizer darts," the resident, who gave only his surname Ma, said in an interview on Wednesday.

He said eight children had been hit by the darts, which were fired by "riot police from Hualong county."

"They are all in the hospital ... two or three were quite badly hurt," Ma said. "They were injured when they fainted and fell down, and some of them had problems with their vision; they couldn't see properly for the entire evening."

He said one adult had also been taken to hospital after being hit by a dart.

A local resident surnamed Zhao confirmed Ma's account.

"The riot police were attacking people," he said. "They even used tranquilizer darts, and the people who got hit by them couldn't stand up, and they were detained after they fainted."

"Our houses were demolished ... and when the kids got home from school, their homes were gone and they didn't know where their relatives were, and they just sat down in a daze there on the pile of rubble and wailed," Zhao said.

"They had placards saying they were homeless; it was really heartbreaking," he said.

Mass eviction

Residents told RFA on Friday that around 700 people had been forcibly evicted from their homes by demolition gangs and police.

"The riot police charged us, and grabbed my mother, my sister, my brother and my wife and dragged them away, then then they flattened our home with a mechanical digger," one resident said in an interview at the time.

An officer who answered the phone at the Hualong county police department public order team on Wednesday denied that tranquilizer darts had been fired.

"No such thing happened," the officer said. "The children were taken to hospital with heat exhaustion because it's very hot here."

"Then people started up some malicious rumors, which have been making the rounds."

The officer also denied that forcible evictions had taken place in the village, and that eight people had been detained during a standoff between police and local residents.

The township Communist Party secretary, who gave only his surname Li, denied that the evictions were forced, however.

"These were legal demolitions and clearances," Li said in an interview on Friday. "You shouldn't listen to them. They did [get compensation]."

"There were only a handful of villagers who were uncooperative ... the clearances were ordered by the courts, and they were all illegal structures."

He also denied that tranquilizer darts had been fired. "That never happened," he said.

Ethnic tensions

Clashes between rural communities and police are becoming more and more widespread as local residents increasingly challenge lucrative property deals involving collectively owned land by local officials.

In June 2012, authorities in the northwestern Chinese region of Ningxia handed jail terms of up to six years to 14 ethnic minority Hui Muslims for "inciting violence" and "obstructing public duty," following clashes over the destruction of a mosque at the end of 2011.

Police in Tongxin county near Ningxia's Wuzhong city detained around 40 Muslim Hui people following riots sparked by the forced demolition of a local mosque by the authorities. Four were later released, and 36 stood trial on April 24.

The Hui are culturally more similar to mainstream Han Chinese than Xinjiang's Turkic-speaking Uyghur people, but retain some Islamic customs like avoiding pork and circumcising male children.

Ethnic tensions have nonetheless flared in recent years, notably in riots following a 2004 car accident involving a Han Chinese and a Hui Muslim in the central province of Henan.

And in 1993, a cartoon ridiculing Muslims led to police storming a mosque taken over by Hui in northwestern China.

China's atheist ruling Party maintains a tight grip on religious activities, in spite of promising freedom of religion via the Constitution, allowing only officially recognized religious institutions to operate.

Reported by Fung Yat-yiu for RFA's Cantonese service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie.

Chinese authorities are blatantly grabbing farmland in a northern ethnic Uyghur village in China's volatile Xinjiang region after the farmers refused to accept monetary compensation less than one-tenth the market value of the properties, village residents say.

Most of the farmland which was seized and flattened contained crops which were ready for harvesting, according to residents of Baykol village, situated in Qaradong township in Ghulja city within the Ili prefecture.

The residents accused the village chief of corruption, saying he ordered the seizure of the land for projects initiated by Han Chinese, whose influx into Xinjiang they say has dampened business and other opportunities for the minority Uyghurs.     

Farmer Turghun Turson said he was in Xinjiang's capital Urumqi when his weeping father telephoned him on May 18 to inform him that their 8-mu (1.3-acre) wheat farm had been flattened and seized overnight.

"So, I headed to Ghulja immediately," he told RFA's Uyghur Service. "We were told that our land was inside a national development zone."

Turghun Turson said the seizure came after failed talks with the government over compensation.

"There was no deal and now no one wants to take the responsibility of paying compensation," he said.

Based on a new city development plan, 39,000 yuan (U.S. $6,350) was offered as compensation for each mu, but village officials were selling the farms to Chinese companies for as high as 450,000 yuan (U.S. $73,400) per mu, some farmers claimed.

It is not immediately clear how many farmers in Baykol village were affected by the land takeover for construction projects such as for roads and real estate. More than 50 families were affected by just one project to put up a residential building near Ghulja city last year, sources said.

'Final' notice

RFA map showing Ghulja city.

Authorities in Hungary expelled a visiting senior official of the World Uyghur Congress (WUC) and took other actions that caused the abrupt cancellation of the group's youth wing meeting in the capital Budapest this week, according to WUC officials who believe the European nation was acting under pressure from China.

Umit Hamit Agahi, the WUC Vice-President, was detained and interrogated by the Hungarian police for nearly 12 hours on Thursday before he was expelled to Germany, the headquarters of the WUC, which champions the rights of the minority ethnic Uyghurs in China's Xinjiang region.

Police also sealed off the venue of the meeting organized by the World Federation of Hungarians and the Budapest Attila Hotel where the Uyghur delegation was staying, citing a bomb scare, the WUC officials said.

The actions forced the cancellations of the meeting, which was scheduled for three days from Friday, and a pre-meeting press conference to be attended by foreign envoys and members of Hungary's parliament.

“I strongly believe the dark hand of China is behind this," Umit Hamit Agahi told RFA's Uyghur Service on his return to Germany.

Terrorism

He said that during his interrogations, he realized that he was being held on suspicion of terrorism and that police had told him he was "a threat to the security of Hungary" without providing any evidence.

“This is something unexpected for me and for my organization. We were holding the meeting legally and with the support of the World Federation of Hungarians, which was registered in Hungary," said Umit Hamit Agahi, who is in charge of WUC's European affairs.

"I have been living in Germany for the past 19 years, I am a German citizen, and have been working with human rights organizations in the EU [European Union] over the past 10 years. I have gone to Hungary eight times for the past 10 years. I have close links with rights organizations in Hungary. I am no stranger to Hungary."

He said Chinese state security organs may have provided the Hungarian police with "false" information about himself and "triggered alarm" in Hungary.

"Only China calls the WUC a terrorist organization," he said.

China has blamed much of the violence in the restive Xinjiang region on Uyghur "terrorists," but rights groups say Beijing exaggerates the terrorism threat to take the heat off domestic policies that cause unrest or to justify the authorities' use of force against the Uyghur minority.

Uyghurs say they have long suffered ethnic discrimination, oppressive religious controls, and continued poverty and joblessness, blaming the problems partly on the influx of Han Chinese into the region.

Explanation

Dilxat Raxit, the WUC spokesman, said the Hungarian government owed an explanation for the explusion of Umit Hamit Agahi and for clamping down on the WUC meeting.

"We call upon the Hungarian government to elaborate on the reasons why our activities were stopped."

Dolkun Isa, the WUC Chairman of the Executive Committee, said the Munich-based group had been in contact with German and Hungarian envoys in their efforts to gain the release of Umit Hamit Agahi.

"If he was detained because of fears of the Chinese government, then it is very unfortunate news not only for the Uyghurs but also other suppressed nationalities around the world," he said.

Dolkun Isa charged that China was using its economic might to obstruct the activities of overseas Uyghur organizations.

Pressure

He said Beijing was pressuring countries in the Middle East and Central and South Asia to control Uyghur activities there and deport home Uyghur political aslyum seekers.

Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Malaysia, Pakistan, Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, and Laos have been listed as among countries which have bowed to demands by Beijing to repatriate the Uyghur minority fleeing persecution in their homeland in China's northwestern Xinjiang region, according to Uyghur exile groups.

"If China has made Hungary to submit [to its demands], that is very unfortunate and dangerous not only for the Uyghur human rights situation but also for the world's human rights development," Dolkun Isa said.

"We urge all justice-seeking countries and organizations to pay attention to this incident and express their concerns over this."

Reported by Shohret Hoshur for RFA's Uyghur Service. Translated by Mamatjan Juma. Written in English by Parameswaran Ponnudurai.

Authorities in two Uyghur villages in China’s restive Xinjiang region are punishing relatives of Muslim women who cover their faces by not authorizing their marriage applications and disallowing them to perform pilgrimage to Mecca, according to local officials.

Community officials in Beshtugmen and Igerchi villages outside Aksu city have been enforcing the measures after residents in Beshtugmen opposed fines against women in the village who wore headscarves in June last year, villagers said.

Since then, community officials had eased restrictions on women wearing headscarves, but women who cover their faces with traditional veils still face curbs enforced by Beshtugmen’s United Front office, the local branch of a ruling Chinese Communist Party organ tasked with guiding local religious and ethnic policy.

Many Uyghurs say headscarves are a marker of Uyghur rather than Muslim identity. Chinese authorities, however, discourage the wearing of headscarves, veils, and other Islamic dress in the region, which is home to some 9 million mostly Muslim, Turkic-speaking Uyghurs.  

“We do not approve the applications for marriage certificates or pilgrimages to Mecca if the applicant has relatives who cover their face,”  the head of the United Front office in Beshtugmen village, who gave his first name as Eziz, told RFA’s Uyghur Service.

He said “three generations” of the relatives of women who cover their faces are screened for possible punishment.

The United Work office community officials first identify women wearing face veils at the local bazaar.

“Our job is to uncover the faces of veiled women,” said Eziz, who refused to give his surname.

He said the curbs on the relatives are part of the United Front’s policy of encouraging local residents to support the Chinese Communist Party’s policies on ethnicity and religion.

“We work on changing their stubborn attitudes to make them follow our government and not their religion,” he said.

“We mainly counsel and explain the development of our region and compare it to what it was like before the [Chinese Communist] Party’s rule. We propagandize our Communist Party’s warm policy and shed light on the farmers’ thoughts.”

“It is not easy, because these people are brainwashed with religion,” he said.

A top official of the United Front office in neighboring Igerchi village said similar restrictions were in place there for women who wore the veils.

"We explain to them our policy, and if they do not listen then we crack down on them according to law,” he said, refusing to give his name.

“We do not approve their relatives’ applications for pilgrimage to Mecca, and we do not give them marriage certificates,” he said.

Fines for veils

Both officials refused to specify whether women could be fined for wearing veils over their faces, but local residents in Beshtugmen said some women had faced steep fines.

Rights groups have hit out at local restrictions in Xinjiang curbing Muslim women dressing  and discouraging men from sporting beards, saying they  hindered not only religious practices but also Uyghur traditions.

One Beshtugmen farmer, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the women’s husbands also faced detention.

“If a woman who wears a veil over her face is discovered by the community watch group from the United Front office, she faces a 1,000 to 5,000 yuan [U.S. $160 to $800] fine, and her husband will be detained for 10 to 15 days,” he told RFA.

Eziz said that community officials do not arrest women who wear veils over their faces.

“We can’t arrest them, because there is no law or regulation for us to do that.”

Eased since last year

Women in Beshtugmen who wear the veils avoid going to the local bazaar for fear of being caught, sources said.

But they said that restrictions on traditional dress in Beshtugmen had eased since June of last year, when community officials gathered women in the village who wore headscarves and told them to stop the practice, fining them 400 yuan (U.S. $65) when they refused.

“Last year in June, they forcibly gathered all of the women in Beshtugmen village who whore a hijab,” one local woman farmer speaking on condition of anonymity said, referring to headscarves.

“These women included government workers’ wives, village cadres, and imams’ wives. But these women all together strongly opposed taking off their hijabs, so they were fined 400 yuan and then allowed to go.”

Other sources also said the women had been fined for wearing headscarves, not veils over their faces at that time.

When community officials gathered women wearing headscarves again in July, local residents refused to cooperate, and since then the community officials had stopped pressuring women not to wear headscarves, the woman farmer said.

“This time, all of the farmers, government workers and imams all together opposed the community workers and said that if their women are going to be told to take off the hijabs, no one will cooperate.”

“Since then, they have stopped bothering women who wear the hijab as much,” she said.

'Open discrimination'

Top regional officials have rejected claims of curbs on traditional Islamic dress in the region, with Kuresh Kanjir, a Uyghur delegate to the Chinese Communist Party’s 19th Party Congress telling a Hong Kong newspaper late last year that there is “absolutely no ban.”

In a report this year, the U.S.-based Uyghur Human Rights project decried an “open discrimination” against Uyghurs, especially women leading religious lives, raising concerns about public signs barring entry to and reports of government assistance withheld from Uyghurs dressed in “Islamic” fashion.

Most of the restrictions are aimed at women who wear veils and men who have beards, but campaigns against headscarves have also been reported in different parts of Xinjiang.

“Chinese authorities have launched numerous campaigns on women wearing headscarves and men wearing beards, in an attempt to dilute Uyghurs’ adherence to their Muslim beliefs,” the UHRP said in a report last year.

In a report this year, it said officials in the region had also targeted students and teachers with campaigns against Islamic dress.

One Uyghur teacher in Aksu city told RFA this month said that in May last year she had been forced to remove her headscarf—which she had been wearing while her head was bald due to a skin condition—after being threatened with losing her job.

“They forced me to take off my hijab. I showed them my bald head and begged them to leave me alone,” she said.

“But they didn’t listen and threatened that I would be fired from my teaching job if I continued to wear a hijab.”

Earlier this month, students in Xinjiang’s Atush city took to the streets in a rare protest over the right of Uyghur girls to wear headscarves to school.

Local residents had said some 70 students wearing headscarves and doppa, traditional Uyghur caps for men, had taken part in the demonstration outside the Kezhou No. 1 High School’s gates after the school tried to enforce a ban on the head coverings.

School officials rescinded the ban after the protest, online reports said.

Reported and translated by Rukiye Turdush for RFA’s Uyghur Service. Written in English by Rachel Vandenbrink.

Plans by two Central Asian states to build hydropower projects with Russian help on the upper reaches of major regional rivers are causing concern in downstream states, which fear diminished water flows and Moscow’s growing influence in this former part of the Soviet Union, experts say.

One dam, the Kambarata-1, will be built in Kyrgyzstan on the Naryn river, which rises in the Tianshan mountains bordering China's restive northwestern region of Xinjiang and flows down to join Syr Darya, the longest river in Central Asia, which then crosses into Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. 

The second dam, the Rogun, is under construction in Tajikistan on the Vahksh river, which flows down to join the Amu, which flows across the border of Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.

Uzbekistan has voiced particular alarm over the projects, saying that its access to water needed for agriculture could soon be reduced, a U.S. scholar of the region told RFA’s Uyghur Service.

“Uzbekistan is heavily dependent upon its cotton production as a state-controlled industry,” said Sean Roberts, director of the International Development Studies Program at George Washington University.

“That industry relies on irrigation from rivers that run downstream from Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan worries that its access to irrigation waters can be controlled by forces beyond its control,” Roberts said.

A second reason for Uzbekistan’s concern may be that the proposed dams in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan would generate “substantial” electricity that could be sold to Afghanistan, thus undercutting Uzbekistan’s own energy exports to its southern neighbor, Roberts said.

“In this context, [the Uzbek capital] Tashkent stands to lose on multiple fronts if these dams are successful,” Roberts said.

Concern over Russia's role

Today’s Central Asian states form a region of high passes and mountains, deserts, and treeless, grassy steppes, much of whose land is too dry and rugged for farming, and the countries’ shared use of water resources has become a cause of growing friction.

Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan’s larger neighbor to the north, also depends on unimpeded water flows from its upstream neighbors, said Sharipjan Nadirov, a professor of geography and economy at Kazakhstan National University.

“The cotton fields and farms of Kazakhstan also rely on the river water of the Amu and Syr,” Nadirov said, adding that the two rivers are also a major source of drinking water for downstream areas.

Meanwhile, heavy Russian investment in the projects—pledged at U.S. $1.7 billion for Kambarata-1 alone—has aroused fears of a new Russian claim to dominance in the region.

“Given the importance of hydro resources in the competition for leadership in the Central Asian region, Russia appears to want to establish control over this strategic resource,” said Alisher Khamidov, a Central Asia expert at Newcastle University in the U.K.

“Uzbekistan has long been wary of Russia’s geopolitical role in Central Asia,” Khamidov said.

'Ready to cooperate'

Speaking to reporters following talks last year in Kyrgyzstan, Russian president Vladimir Putin said that plans for the projects date back to when today’s independent Central Asian states were all Soviet republics.

“No one had any concerns then, bearing in mind that the projects were to be realized in a single state,” Putin said, according to an UzDaily report on Sept. 20.

"The construction of the Kambarata-1 hydropower dam will meet the interests of all Central Asian countries," Kyrgyz president Almazbek Atambayev said following the talks, the online Interfax news outlet reported the same day.

"It will help irrigation in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, but we are aware of the concerns of these countries and are ready to cooperate," he said.

The Central Asian states must now establish better cooperation in water use, “but to date they have proven unable to do so,” George Washington University’s Sean Roberts said.

“They must begin to realize that water will be perhaps the most critical resource for them in the future, and they must explore sustainable ways to share in its use and conservation.”

Reported and translated by Nabijan Tursun for RFA’s Uyghur Service. Written in English by Richard Finney.

Deadly clashes between Han Chinese and Uyghurs broke out over the weekend in western China’s restive Xinjiang region, according to local residents and officials, who said authorities were strictly controlling information about the incident.

A local resident speaking on condition of anonymity said Saturday’s clash at the local bazaar in the town of Kargilik (in Chinese, Yecheng) in Xinjiang’s Kashgar prefecture left five people dead—three of them Uyghurs and two Han Chinese—and others wounded.

Local officials contacted by RFA could not confirm the number of those killed or injured, but said a violent incident had occurred at the bazaar and enhanced security measures had been put in place in response.

The clash came a month after Xinjiang’s worst violence in four years left 23 dead in Kashgar’s Maralbeshi (Bachu) county, and follows a February 2012 knife attack in Kargilik that killed at least a dozen people.

Local residents said the clash had broken out before noon on Saturday but could not give details about how the casualties were caused.

The owner of a restaurant in the bazaar said had he witnessed two people wounded in the incident being taken to the hospital.

“I saw two of the injured taken to the country hospital, and later heard one of them died,” he told RFA’s Uyghur Service, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Staff at the county hospital contacted by RFA said they had been told by officials not to disclose any information about those treated in the aftermath of the  incident.

An employee at Yecheng Xianwei Hotel located near the bazaar said he heard six people had died and that the situation in the area had returned to normal by Sunday.

Security measures

Officials said security measures had been stepped up in the aftermath of a violent incident in the bazaar.

Memetjan Rehim, deputy chief of the nearby police station in Yetimluqum police station said authorities had stepped up checks across Kargilik county immediately after the clashes.

“The incident occurred around 11:00 a.m. We were alerted and started conducting security checks from noon in the entire county,” he said.

A police officer from the Chasamichit police station said police officers there had not been informed “about the details of the incident” but had stepped up checks in the area.

“We have received orders for security checks and surveillance in the county bazaar,” said the police officer, who refused to give his name.

The deputy chief of Kargilik’s Wenhua Lu police station said authorities had not authorized police to talk about the incident.

"The higher authorities have did not yet decided whether to make information about this incident public, so I cannot answer your questions,” he said on Sunday.

House searches conducted

Community watch groups in the county were informed about a violent incident and ordered on Saturday to conduct house-to-house searches in their areas to look for “unknown persons,” Amine Ghopur, a community official in Kargilik township, told RFA.

She said that on Saturday afternoon she received a short report from the county government regarding a violent incident in Kargilik and ordering the searches.

"The report did not mention the details of what happened in the course of the incident. It simply said that some 'bad elements' with intentions to incite violence had caused an incident," she said.

“The report ordered us to conduct house searches looking for ‘unknown persons.’”

“Last night [Saturday night] I conducted house searches until midnight along with eight of my assistants,” she said.

Xinjiang has long been gripped by ethnic tensions between the region’s mostly Muslim, Turkic-speaking Uyghur community and the rapidly growing Han Chinese population, with Uyghurs saying  they are subjected to political control and persecution for opposing Chinese rule in the region.

Clashes between Han Chinese and Uyghurs in the Xinjiang capital Urumqi in July 5, 2009, which left officially nearly 200 dead and prompted a harsh crackdown, were the worst ethnic violence China had seen in decades.

Rights groups and experts say violence in the region is frequently blamed on separatists or extremists, with Beijing exaggerating the threat of terrorism in order to take the heat off domestic policies that cause unrest or to justify the authorities' use of force against the Uyghur minority.

Reported and translated by Shohret Hoshur for RFA’s Uyghur Service. Written in English by Rachel Vandenbrink.

Two village officials in western China’s restive Xinjiang region were stabbed to death by a suspected fugitive from earlier clashes while conducting house searches in their village, according to local officials and residents.

The alleged fugitive, farmer Alim Ebey, 32, was beaten to death after killing the two men, and his wife died in police custody following the May 9 incident in Uchar township in Kashgar prefecture’s Yengisar (in Chinese, Yingjisha) county, the sources said.

According to local religious leaders in the township, police had been searching for Alim Ebey over a possible connection to April clashes in nearby Maralbeshi (Bachu) county which left 21 people dead in the Xinjiang’s worst violence in four years.  

The religious leaders said they had been told by local authorities that Alim Ebey stabbed the two officials—Village No. 7 Party Secretary Memtimin Tohsun, 52, and village chief Enver Obulqasim, 48—after they and other members of a community watch group searched his mother-in-law’s home where he had been staying.

Seeing that Alim Ebey was a stranger who had been living there, members of the community watch group asked him to go with them to the police station for registration, but after walking with them for a distance, he stabbed the two men in the throat, they said.

In one account, a township official speaking on condition of anonymity said the conflict had been prompted when officials ordered Alim Ebey’s wife and mother-in-law-to remove veils covering their faces.

An undated photo of Nurimangul Hashim. Photo courtesy of an RFA listener.

Updated at 3:30 p.m. ET on 2013-05-23

Dozens of high-school students in China's  troubled western Xinjiang region took to the streets in a rare protest over the right of Uyghur girls to wear traditional head-coverings in school, local residents said on Thursday.

Nearly 100 students from the Kizilsu (in Chinese, Kezhou) No. 1 High School in Xinjiang's Atush (in Chinese, Atushi) city marched out of the gates and onto the streets in anger on Wednesday after the school tried to enforce a ban on headscarves, they said.

"It was at 8:30 a.m. or 9:00 a.m. that they came out," a Uyghur restaurant owner in the same neighborhood as the school said.

"It was [because the school banned headscarves]," he added, when asked to confirm online reports.

He said had seen around 70 students take part in the demonstration, but no police had been visible at the scene.

Photos of the protest posted online showed a large group of young people wearing headscarves and traditional Uyghur embroidered caps gathered outside school gates.

Ban reversed

"Sophomore high-school students from Kezhou High had a successful demonstration today over the issue of headscarves for girls," a tweet on the popular Baidu microblogging service said.

A second tweet said the school authorities had reacted by handing out a new, replacement headscarf to all female students.

"[They] said they would respect our customs," the tweet said.

An official who answered the phone at the school declined to comment.

"I don't know anything about this," the official said, before hanging up the phone.

A second Uyghur restaurant owner in the neighborhood said he had heard about the protest but did not see it himself.

"Most of the girls in that school wear a headscarf, while some of them do not," he said, adding that many students from Kezhou High School ate at his restaurant.

Fears of repercussion

Dilxat Raxit, Sweden-based spokesman for the World Uyghur Congress (WUC), welcomed the school's response to the protest, but warned that repercussions could follow for those who took part.

"I think that the students' courage is laudable, but I am worried that the authorities will retaliate after the event," Dilxat Raxit said. "This sort of thing has happened in the past."

He called on the Chinese authorities to behave with unconditional respect towards the customs and cultural values of Muslim Uyghurs, a Turkic-speaking ethnic group that chafes under Beijing's rule.

"The Chinese government continually suppresses and provokes Uyghurs with these attacks on their mode of dress and their religious beliefs," Dilxat Raxit said.

"This has made the students extremely angry."

Hotan protest

Earlier this month, students at a high school near Hotan, in the south of the region, walked out of class in protest at the lack of Uyghur-language signage on school premises.

They returned to class after the school authorities promised to install some.

Raxit said the southern part of Xinjiang was still under tight security following last month's violence that left 21 people dead in Maralbeshi (in Chinese, Bachu) county in Kashgar prefecture.

Police have stepped up spot-checks and raids in the wake of the violence, which Beijing has blamed on "terrorists," but which the WUC has said was triggered by such raids in the first place.

Tarim University students

Meanwhile in northwestern Xinjang's Aksu prefecture, authorities at Tarim University are preparing to try three of its students in secret after detaining around 12 of them in early May, the Uyghur Online website (Uyghurbiz.net) reported this week.

The website named the three men as Alimjan, Dilshat, and Ablimit, adding that at least two of those detained but not charged had since been released.

Repeated calls to the offices of Tarim University went unanswered during office hours this week.

However, a teacher at the school said he wasn't free to talk about the students' situation.

"All I can say is that they probably got involved in something, but right now we have no freedom of speech," he said.

A student at the college commented: "Basically, we don't talk about [sensitive topics]," he said. "It's not that we aren't allowed; it's that everyone avoids sensitive topics."

He said the university sometimes surveys the mood of students by issuing questionnaires or calling them in "for a chat."

Tarim University was built in 1958 by the army-backed Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, also known as the "bingtuan."

The People's Liberation Army production companies, or bingtuan, are units of command that enable Beijing to maintain key areas and exploit rich resources in the largely Muslim northwestern region of Xinjiang, according to exile groups.

Uyghurs say they have long suffered ethnic discrimination, oppressive religious controls, and continued poverty and joblessness, blaming the problems partly on the influx of Han Chinese into the region.

Reported by Qiao Long for RFA's Mandarin Service and Gulchehre Keyum for the Uyghur Service. Translated by Luisetta Mudie and Mamatjan Juma. Written in English by Luisetta Mudie.