World Bulletin / News Desk

Riot police on Tuesday clashed Uighur protesters, fired tear gas to disperse them in the capital of East Turkistan two days after chinese forces killed 156 dead and wounded more than 1,000.

Chinese police have arrested 1,434 Uighurs over East Turkistan protests, the official Xinhua news agency said on Tuesday, as part of a crackdown.

Uighurs protesting against the arrest of relatives called for freedom of relatives. Many were women, wailing and waving the identity cards of husbands, brothers or sons they say were arbitrarily seized in a sweeping arrests to Sunday's protests in the city of Urumqi.

"My husband was taken away yesterday by police. They didn't say why. They just took him away," a woman who identified herself as Maliya told Reuters.

The crowd began to march towards the East Turkistan regional government installed by China, saying the government was too weak. "Now it's time to go to the government," one protester surnamed Zhang said.

Some protesters vowed protests and denounced the arrests after the protest in Saimachang, a neighbourhood on the outskirts of Urumqi with small shops and brick-and-mud homes along dusty alleys.

Abdul Ali, a Uighur man in his 20s, said "They've been arresting us for no reason, and it's time for us to fight back."

Ali said three of his brothers and a sister had been among 1,434 taken into police custody. State television showed victims in hospital and burnt cars and shops. Of the 156 killed, 27 were women.

"Attack Uighurs"

Thousands of Han Chinese, many of them armed, surged through the capital of East Turkistan on Tuesday looking for Uighur targets.

On one major thoroughfare, Renmin Road, a Reuters reporter estimated the crowd, a largely directionless mob, at 2,000.

People from China's Han ethnic group, many clutching meat cleavers, metal pipes and wooden clubs, smashed shops owned by Uighurs, a Turkic Islamic people who share linguistic and cultural bonds with Central Asia.

Some Han Chinese people shouted "attack Uighurs" as both sides hurled rocks at each other.

"They attacked us. Now it's our turn to attack them," a man in the crowd told Reuters. He refused to give his name.

Anti-riot police armed with clubs and shields pushed protesters away from a Uighur neighbourhood but Han protesters briefly broke through police lines.

Beijing has poured cash into exploiting East Turkistan's rich oil and gas deposits and consolidating its hold on a strategically vital frontierland that borders Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia, but Uighurs say migrant Han are the main beneficiaries.

"Calls for probe"

Urumqi Communist Party boss Li Zhi defended the crackdown. "If they engage only in minor crimes and looting, they will be released after undergoing education," he said.

However, a protester, a Uighur businessman who gave his name as Kabya, said the arrests in his neighbourhood had been indiscriminate.

"We do business here," he said. "But they came through here and arrested anybody they did not think looked right."

Earlier on Tuesday, Xinjiang's Communist Party boss Wang Lequan also said that although Sunday's unrest had been quelled, "this struggle is far from over".

State-run media quoted Wang as calling for officials to launch "a struggle against separatism".

But Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) "called upon China to carry out prompt, effective and transparent investigation of the this greave incident and bring those responsible to quick justice." Human Rights Watch's Asia advocacy director Sophie Richardson also called for an independent investigation.

Internet connections were still largely cut off in East Turkistan on Tuesday, but officials opened up some lines to allow foreign reporters to send stories and images.

"Kashgar protest"

Some newspapers also carried graphic pictures of the violence, including corpses, at least one of which showed a woman whose throat had been slashed.

Police dispersed around 200 people at the Id Kah mosque in Kashgar in East Turkistan on Monday evening, Xinhua said.

The report did not say if police used force but said checkpoints had been set up at crossroads between Kashgar airport and downtown.

"East Turkistan's Dalai Lama"

Chinese officials have already blamed the killings on pro-freedom groups abroad which it says want to create an independent homeland for Uighurs.

"These accusations are completely false," World Uyghur Congress led by exiled Uighur businesswoman and activist Rebiya Kadeer said through an interpreter in Washington.

"I did not organize any protests or call on the people to demonstrate."

Kadeer told reporters she called her brother when she learned of the violence in Urumqi to warn her 40 relatives in the region to stay away from the demonstrations.

"A call I made to my brother does not mean I organized the whole event," she said.

The businesswoman, a 62-year-old mother of 11 children, has been in exile in the United States since 2005, after years in jail in China.

Kadeer said five of her children and nine grandchildren reside in East Turkistan, including two sons. All relatives face strict surveillance, she said, and she called her brother to spare them more harassment from authorities.

Kadeer, who was once a celebrated entrepreneur who was named to a consultative body to China's parliament before running afoul of Beijing, said the protests in Urumqi started peacefully in response to the deaths last month of two Uighur factory workers in southern China.

"They were not violent as the Chinese government has accused. They were not rioters or separatists," she said.

Asked why she was being blamed for the strife, she likened her situation to that of the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama. Protests swept Tibet in early 2008.

"Whatever happens in Tibet, the Chinese authorities are quick to point the finger at the Dalai Lama, His Holiness, as the source and instigator of the problems there, and so it is with me as well," said Kadeer.

The White House said it was concerned about the deaths but it would be premature to speculate on the circumstances.