China arrests 1,434 after deadly Xinjiang riots

• Play Video Video:China riots leave 140 dead Reuters

URUMQI, China – Police have arrested 1,434 suspects in connection with the worst ethnic violence in decades in China's western Xinjiang region, which killed at least 156 people, state media reported Tuesday.

Thearrests come amid a security clampdown on the region, with hundreds ofparamilitary police with shields, rifles and clubs taking control ofthe streets of the capital, Urumqi, where the riots took place on Sunday.

Theviolence does not bode well for China's efforts to mollifylong-simmering ethnic tensions between the minority Uighur people andthe ethnic Han Chinese in Xinjiang — a sprawling region three times the size of Texas that shares borders with Pakistan, Afghanistan and other Central Asian countries.

Mobile phone service and the social networking site Twitter have been blocked, and Internet links also were cut or slowed down.

A nonviolent protest by 200 people was broken up in a second city, Kashgar, and the official Xinhua News Agency said police had evidence that demonstrators were trying to organize more unrest in Kashgar, Yili and Aksu.

Itsaid police had raided several groups plotting unrest in Dawan townshipin Urumqi, as well as at a former race course that is home to atransient population.

The unrest in Urumqibegan Sunday after 1,000 to 3,000 protesters gathered at the People'sSquare and protested the June 25 deaths of Uighur factory workerskilled in a riot in southern China. Xinhua said two died; other sources put the figure higher.

Many Uighurs (pronounced WEE-gers) haven't been wooed by the rapid economic development. Some want independence, while others feel they're being marginalized in their homeland. The Han — China's ethnic majority — have been flooding into Xinjiang as the region becomes more developed.

Thegovernment often says the Uighurs should be grateful for the roads,railways, schools, hospitals and oil fields it has been building inXinjiang, a region known for scorching deserts and snowy mountainranges.

A similar situation exists in Tibet, where a violent protest last year left many Tibetan communities living under clamped-down security ever since.

"TheHan Chinese say we all belong to the same country. We're all part ofone big family," said Memet, a restaurant worker who like other Uighursdeclined to give his full name because he feared the police. "But theHan always treat us separately."

A Han Chinese shopkeeper,who only gave his surname Wang because the ethnic issue is sosensitive, disagreed. "Those who cause such trouble are criminals," hesaid. "They're never happy with what they have."

Sunday'sviolence was notable because it happened in Urumqi, which has beenrelatively peaceful and hasn't been a hotbed of religious or politicalagitation. In other restive Xinjiang cities, red propaganda banners arefilled with slogans encouraging ethnic harmony. But most of the bannersin Urumqi touted anti-drug and fire prevention campaigns.

Thepopulation of 2.3 million is also overwhelmingly Han Chinese in thecity, a mixture of drab concrete apartment blocks and gleaming newoffice towers.