Port Vila, Vanuatu (PressExposure) July 14, 2010 -- All police leave was cancelled in Urumqi, in China's Xinjiang region, where security was tight ahead of the first anniversary of deadly ethnic riots. Armed police were deployed in the city and thousands of "riot-proof" CCTV cameras set up in public places.

Approximately more than a thousand were wounded and 200 people were killed, in the violence that exploded on 5 July 2009, between Han Chinese and Uighur Muslims. It was the region's worst ethnic violence in decades, as thousands of Han people armed with weapons, flooded the streets. In the previous two days 1000 members of the Uighur minority had rioted.

It was the most violent break out of public violence in China, since Beijing's Tiananmen Square, in 1989, when the People's Liberation Army soldiers killed several hundred people during the crackdown on demonstrators.

The violence ceased only after a large numbers of troops were deployed in the isolated western region and several of the cities areas had been set on fire.

The government suspended the region's communication links to the rest of the world, after the riots, including text messaging, international telephone calls and the internet.

Major General Qi Baowen, chief of the local paramilitary police said "We have confidence and we totally have the ability to maintain stability in Xinjiang".

One restaurant owner told the AFP news agency that police had gathered all the large kitchen knives from his restaurant and advised him to stay indoors.

Surveillance cameras were monitored around the clock. They had been set up in protective casings in shops, schools and stations.

China blamed last year's violence on the local ethnic Uighur population, claiming most of the recorded dead were Han Chinese.

Amnesty International challenges the official Chinese version of events, saying police used unnecessary force against Uighurs, followed by mass arrests and torture.

While Han Chinese make up more than 75% of Irumqui’s population, more than a million Uighurs reside in Xinjiang, which borders Central Asia. Plenty are unhappy about the huge influx of Han Chinese settlers, which they say has more and more marginalized their culture and interests.

"It is hard for you to understand what it is like to be a Uighur," said a 25-year-old Uighur man named Musa. "Uighur people can't get jobs."

For more information about , visit website http://www.tropicpost.com/anniversary-of-ethnic-riots-china/.

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