GENEVA/LONDON - UNITED Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon, asked about rioting in China in which at least 140 people are reported killed, urged governments on Monday to respect their people's right to protest.
THE HAGUE - DEMONSTRATORS hurled rocks on Monday at the Chinese embassy in The Hague and about 60 people were detained in a protest that followed deadly unrest in China's Xinjiang region, police said.
Rocks and cobble stones were hurled at the embassy building and several windows were broken.
'All the differences of opinion, whether domestic or international, must be resolved peacefully through dialogue,' Mr Ban told a news conference in Geneva.
'Governments concerned also must exercise extreme care and take necessary measures to protect the life and safety of civilian populations, and their citizens and also protect the properties and the freedoms of speech, assembly and information,' he said.
'This is the basic principle of democracy. That's what I am urging again to all the countries of the world.'
Separately, a spokesman from British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's office said the government was concerned about reports of violence and called for problems in the region, home to ethnic Muslim Uighurs, to be resolved through dialogue.
'Of course we are concerned about the reports of violence and the scale of the loss of life and I think we would urge restraint on all sides and, where possible, for problems to be resolved through dialogue,' he said.
The violence in the regional capital Urumqi on Sunday involved thousands of people, and triggered a security crackdown across Xinjiang where tensions have long simmered amid Uighur claims of repressive Chinese rule.
China's official Xinhua news agency, citing local government officials, said several hundred people had been arrested for involvement in the unrest, which authorities blamed on Uighurs.
Exiled Uighur groups accused Chinese security forces, saying they had over-reacted to peaceful protests and opened fire. -- REUTERS, AFP
