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Beijing: Authorities confirmed that a protest broke out in a troubled Muslim region in western China last month, with one official on Wednesday linking the incident to recent anti-government riots in Tibet. No injuries were reported.
Rallies were first reported by the US-government funded Radio Free Asia, which said several hundred Uighurs were taken into custody after demonstrating in Hotan and a neighbouring county in the Xinjiang region on March 23.
It said demonstrators were demanding that authorities not ban headscarves in the predominantly Muslim region, and that they stop torturing Uighurs and release all political prisoners.
Fu Chao, an official with the Hotan Regional Administrative Office, confirmed that a protest had taken place, but said it was triggered by people who wanted to establish an Islamic nation and separate Xinjiang from China, not the head scarf ban.
He said the government discourages Uighur women from wearing scarves while they work because it is inconvenient, but that the practice was otherwise accepted.
"The rioters were mainly Uighurs," he said, promising to provide more information about the incident later. It had "nothing to do with the ban on head scarves, but about responding to the riots in Tibet."
The protest came as the government poured police and troops into Tibet and other areas to contain unrest in the wake of violent anti-government riots in Lhasa in mid-March.
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