Separatists 'used Web to promote plot'

Separatist groups "intentionally manipulated hatred" among young Uygurs over a dispute in Guangdong province to plot the deadly Urumqi riots, a Xinjiang government official said yesterday.

Rebiya Kadeer, the leader of the separatist World Uyghur Congress (WUC) group, is believed to have used the June 26 Guangdong factory brawl between ethnic Uygur and Han workers to "create chaos" in China, officials said.

The factory brawl left two people dead and 118 others injured, while the latest riots in Urumqi killed at least 156 people and injured more than 1,000 others. Hou Hanmin, director of the information office of Xinjiang, said the WUC had named June 26 as a "memorial day" to incite Uygurs and planned to use the incident as an opportunity to seek support from the international community for its separatist causes.