China says it will execute riot killers

A senior official has warned that China will execute anyone found to be behind the 156 riot killings in the north west city of Urumqi.

Sky News quoted Li Zhi, the Communist Party boss of Urumqi, as saying that the government would seek the death penalty over bloody protests in the capital of Xinjiang.

He told reporters that Urumqi was stable after several days of ethnic violence and that security forces had control of the streets.
 
Zhi said many people accused of murder had already been detained and that most of them were students.

The violence has already caused President Hu Jintao to cut short a visit to Italy to attend the Group of Eight summit.

About 20 million, representing 47 ethnic groups, live in China’s vast Xinjiang region. The largest group is the 8.3 million ethnic Uighurs - an Islamic central Asian people.

But the number of Han Chinese in the region has risen from six percent in 1949 to more than 40 percent now.

Critics say it is part of a policy of Han Chinese migration to dilute any nationalist tendencies.
 
More than 1,000 people have been wounded in the region and 1,434 arrested during the unrest.