China puts Urumqi under 'full surveillance'

Xinjiang city which saw ethnic violence in 2009 now watched by tens of thousands of cameras, says state media

A Uighur woman and child walk past a charred car in Urumqi after ethnic violence exploded in the city in July 2009. Photograph: Eugene Hoshiko/AP

China is putting Urumqi, where deadly ethnic violence broke out in 2009, under full surveillance, with tens of thousands of cameras positioned across sensitive areas of the city, state media reported today.

Security has been tight in the western city since tensions between the area's largely Muslim Uighurs and members of China's Han majority flared into open violence in 2009. Uighurs have long resented what they see as an incursion by Han migrants into their ancestral homeland, the Xinjiang region.

The government says 197 people were killed during the violence, the deadliest in Xinjiang in years. Dozens of people have been imprisoned for their involvement in the riots, most of them Uighurs. Beijing blamed overseas Uighur groups of plotting the violence, but exile groups denied it.

Just before the one-year anniversary of the violence last year, officials said about 40,000 high-definition surveillance cameras with riot-proof protective shells had been installed throughout the region. Nearly 17,000 were installed in Urumqi last year, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported today. It was not clear if that figure was in addition to the one reported last year.

The surveillance coverage will continue to grow this year, according to the mayor of Urumqi, Jerla Isamudinhe, who spoke to the city's legislature over the weekend, Xinhua reported.

Surveillance is "seamless" – meaning there are no blind spots – in sensitive areas of Urumqi, the report quoted Wang Yannian, head of the city's information technology office, as saying.

It is not unusual to see thousands of surveillance cameras in China's cites, and authorities have been known to install them around mosques in Xinjiang and in temples in Tibet, which saw its own of ethnic violence in early 2008.

Beijing is wary of anything that looks like separatism and has branded as "terrorists" those who oppose China's authority over Xinjiang, a strategically vital region with oil and gas deposits.

Last autumn, the UK-based consultancy IMS Research said more than 10m surveillance cameras would be installed in China in 2010. Beijing has more than 400,000, the China Daily newspaper reported last April.

Civil rights activists have objected to the widespread use of surveillance cameras, pointing out that China has very little in the way of privacy protections.

Today's report said 3,400 buses, 4,400 streets, 270 schools and 100 shopping centres in Xinjiang.

The increase in surveillance is part of a pattern of tightening Beijing's control over the region. After the 2009 violence, the region's internet and international telephone links were blocked for more than six months. Officials last year also reported hiring an extra 5,000 police officers in Xinjiang.

Uighur exile groups have asked for an independent investigation of the violence and the crackdown.

Chinese authorities have long been accused of alienating the largely Muslim Uighurs with tight restrictions on cultural and religious expression and nonviolent dissent.

China's leaders say all ethnic groups are treated equally and point to the billions of dollars in investment that has modernised the region.