Geneva, July 7 (DPA) The United Nations top human rights official said Tuesday she was alarmed by the ongoing ethnic violence in China’s north-west and called on community leaders to act with restraint.
Government officials said the clashes have left at least 156 people dead and over 1,080 injured, in unrest which began late Sunday.
“This is an extraordinarily high number of people to be killed and injured in less than a day of rioting,” UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said, calling the deaths a “major tragedy”.
She called on civic leaders of the Uighur and Han ethnic groups as well as “the Chinese authorities at all levels, to exercise great restraint so as not to spark further violence and loss of life”.
“It is vital that the authorities only resort to lethal force when it is strictly unavoidable in order to protect life,” said Pillay, calling for an investigation into the causes of the unrest and its escalation.
