UPDATE #1: Via Jodi in the comments section Global Voices now has a posting up that provides some background information in regards to the racial violence in southern China a week ago that allegedly led to this week’s protest.  The posting has a YouTube video that shows the Han Chinese mob in Shaoguan just descended on some guy and bashed him likely to death:

ESWN has a number of reports and additional video from the protests in Urumqi as well.  Basically what happened is breaking down on ethnic lines with the Chinese saying they responded to the Uyghurs attacking Han Chinese and destroying property and the Uyghurs saying things only turned violent on their part after the police brutally cracked down on them.  What really happened is hard to say, but I do think it is right to say that there is no reason that dozens of people had to be killed to disperse a riot.

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Original Posting: This is quite a high death toll the state run media in China is admitting to, which makes me wonder if the real death toll is in fact even higher?:

At least 140 people were dead and more than 800 others injured after weekend violence in China’s far west Xinjiang region, the officials said Monday, according to state-run media.

The death toll was expected to climb, according to a regional government spokesman, as reported by China’s official Xinhua news agency.

Ethnic Uyghur residents in Urumqi, capital of Xinjiang, took to the streets Sunday afternoon in a rare public protest that prompted a police lock-down of the city.

By Monday, police had arrested several hundred participants, the Xinjiang Public Security Department said, according to Xinhua. Police were searching for about 90 other key figures.

“Traffic control was partially lifted Monday morning in parts of Urumqi … but tension still exists in the city,” Xinhua said. “Debris has been cleared from the roads and normal traffic has resumed. Workers are still pulling away damaged vehicles from the worst-affected roads in the city.”

Most businesses in the area where the violence took place remained closed on Monday, Xinhua said.

State-run media reported that protesters attacked passersby, burned public buses and blocked traffic on Sunday. The report did not say how many people took part in the protest or what their grievances were.

But a witness in Urumqi told CNN that, soon after the protest started at about 5 p.m., hundreds of protesters “grew into easily over 1,000 — men, women and children, all ethnic Uyghurs — screaming and chanting.”

Police arrived quickly and tried to control the swelling crowd by erecting barriers in the street, but “people pushed them over,” the witness said. “They were throwing rocks at passing cars and buses.” As the violence escalated, hundreds of riot police arrived, the witness said.

“They used tear gas and fire hoses to disperse the crowd. I saw fire trucks, ambulances, armed personnel carriers and what looked like tanks. I heard random gunshots.”  [CNN]

The protest allegedly started in response to racial violence in southern China against Uyghur immigrants where two of the Uyghurs were killed by Han Chinese.  To put these deaths in perspective the 140 killed is already equal to the the number killed during Korea’s Gwangju Incident where 144 people were killed. The deaths from this protest is expected to rise even more.

So far these killings are not getting much media attention, but possibly as more information becomes available maybe more networks will cover it instead of endless Michael Jackson, Sarah Palin, and Steve McNair coverage.  MSNBC has a nice picture gallery of the protests though.

Here is a thought, what do you think the media coverage would be if 140 Tibetans were shot and killed like this?