Beijing: Expressing fears that social
stability in the region was in peril, China today hiked by 90
per cent the funding for public security in the Muslim
dominated Xinjiang province rocked by widespread ethnic unrest
which led 200 people dead last year.
A budget proposal placed before Xinjiang legislature
yesterday provided for 2.89 billion yuan (USD 423 million) to
be spent on public security, up from 1.54 billion yuan in
2009, the China Daily reported.
"The July 5 riots in Urumqi.... had an enormous impact on
the Xinjiang people. It has severely damaged social stability
in the region", the province's chairman Nur Bekri was quoted
by the paper.
Bekri said, the priority for Xinjiang security forces in
2010 would be to crack down on the terrorists, separatists and
religious extremists, whom Beijing had blamed for the riots.
The hike in the security spending comes as tensions
continue to simmer in the vast, remote mountainous region
which borders Tibet, Jammu and Kashmir in India, Pakistan,
Afghanistan and Central Asian Republics.
There are roughly eight million Turkic-speaking Uighurs
in China who form the majority in Xinjiang, but are wary of
the Chinese settling millions of Hans in the area.
PTI
First Published: Wednesday, January 13, 2010, 15:17