URUMQI (China) - CLEARING the debris of her shattered hair salon, an ethnic Han businesswoman says she has no idea why Uighur residents of China's restive Xinjiang region attacked her - and has no desire to understand.
BUT for some Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking Central Asian people, the unrest was an inevitable outpouring against their repression.
'There has been violence like this before and it will happen again if things do not change,' said a beefy Uighur shop owner named Anwar who proudly offered to show an AFP reporter spots where he said Han were bludgeoned or hacked to death with machetes.
Her response to Sunday's savage violence in this city - and the equally strident view of some Uighurs who called it a justified comeuppance for the hated Han - illustrates the deep ethnic misperceptions dividing the region.
'They were like crazed animals,' the salon owner, who refused to give her name, said as she and an employee carried broken chairs from the tiny shop.
Outside, a bloodied cement block lay on the sidewalk next to a large puddle of dried blood - testament to the deadly nature of the attacks.
'Only evil people would do something like this. There is no excuse,' the woman said.
China said at least 156 people were killed and more than 1,000 injured when Muslim Uighurs rioted in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, in some of the deadliest ethnic unrest in China for decades.
Uighur and Han Chinese residents expressed shock at the savagery of the attacks, in which people from both sides said Uighurs targetted Han-owned businesses and hunted down Han motorists and pedestrians in mob attacks. But that's just about where their agreement ends.
'The Uighurs are so terrible to have done this,' a local civil service employee who gave only her surname, Zhang, said as a column of about 200 riot police marched by on a tense street.
Like many Han Chinese, she expressed puzzlement at the complaints by many of Xinjiang's roughly eight million Uighurs. These include charges of political, cultural and religious persecution, and complaints of Han moving into Xinjiang and dominating economic and political life.
'China is bringing economic development. That is good for everyone,' she protested. -- AFP
