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Beijing (AFP) July 11, 2010 Chinese authorities are demolishing an area in the northwestern city of Urumqi, home to migrants they blame for disrupting social order, state media said Sunday, a year after deadly ethnic riots. The Heijiashan area of the city in Xinjiang province, which was formerly home to 200,000 people, will be replaced by a new residential development, the official Xinhua news agency said, describing the area as a "hotbed of poverty and crime". Heijiashan was one of the flashpoints for the violence that erupted on July 5, 2009 in Urumqi between mainly Muslim Uighurs and the majority Han Chinese, leaving nearly 200 dead and 1,700 injured. "Due to the poor management of the area, the migrants were easily incited by rioters," the head of the demolition operation was quoted as saying. "(The) floating population here often disrupted social order," he said. Pan Zhiping, head of the Xinjiang Academy of Social Sciences' Central Asia Research Institute, has recommended emulating a model established by Singapore that ensures "each community has residents from different ethnic groups". "The transformation of shanty towns is a top priority for safeguarding social stability," he said, according to Xinhua. Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking people, allege decades of Chinese oppression and unwanted Han immigration, and while standards of living have improved, Uighurs complain most of the gains go to the Han Chinese. Heijiashan attracts large numbers of migrant workers from areas outside Urumqi with large Uighur populations such as Kashgar, Hotan, and Yili, according to previous state media reports. More than 900 families were told to leave the area between September and November as part of a crackdown aimed at "screening out and striking hard" against "itinerant society", earlier reports said. The government has offered new houses or compensation to residents whose homes are being demolished but some are contesting the offers which they see as inadequate, Xinhua said. Residents whose homes were "unlicensed due to historical reasons" would receive compensation for 70 percent of the cost of their homes, the report said.
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