Order restored under tight security in Urumqi

• Source: Global Times
• [07:56 July 09 2009]
• Comments

President missing G8

President Hu Jintao skipped the three-day G8 Summit in Italy, cutting short his trip and returning to Beijing yesterday due to the situation in Xinjiang, the Foreign Ministry said.

State Councillor Dai Bingguo will attend the G8 summit in Hu’s place, the ministry said.

Victor Gao, director of the government-run China National Association of International Studies, called Hu’s early return “very unusual.”

“Because of the unprecedented scale and the severity of the situation in Xinjiang, (the president took an) unprecedented measure of leaving the G8 meeting before it started and coming back to China to exercise his leadership role in calming down the situation in Xinjiang,” Gao told Qatar-based broadcaster Al Jazeera.

The government of Afghanistan said it backed the territorial integrity of China, according to a statement by Afghanistan’s Foreign Ministry.

“Afghanistan … supports the Chinese government’s efforts in the war against terrorists and separatists,” the statement said.

A dozen Uygurs in Japan rallied outside the Chinese embassy in Tokyo yesterday to protest what they described as a “bloody crackdown against the ethnic minority,” AFP reported.

About 100 protesters marched yesterday to the Chinese embassy in Washington, according to the AP.

Kang Juan, Guo Qiang and An Baijie contributed to this story