China restores text messages after riots

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The government of China's restive frontier region of Xinjiang has restored text messaging services, more than six months after bloody riots in its ethnically divided capital, Urumqi.

Text messages, as well as internet access and international phone calls, were cut after 197 people died in riots by Uighurs, a Muslim, Turkic-speaking people native to the region, on July 5, followed by Han Chinese revenge attacks two days later.

Messaging services were restored in the early hours of Sunday morning, residents said, and was announced by China's Xinhua news agency on Sunday evening.

"Hello, uncle. In Xinjiang we can send text messages now. I hope you are well," read a message sent by one Urumqi resident, Sun Yu, to his relative in Beijing.

internet access to a limited number of government-run websites was restored a few weeks ago.

The cut in communications has frustrated residents who were unable to get news, shop, send emails or apply for jobs online.

Lack of reliable information contributed to a mass panic in September, when reports of syringe attacks sent tens of thousands of Han Chinese, the majority in China, on to the streets to demand the resignation of regional party secretary Wang Lequan for not guaranteeing their security.

The communications cut was designed to prevent mobs from organising, and possibly also to prevent gory photos of the July dead from inflaming ethnic tensions in the tense city.

The Xinjiang government plans to spend nearly 2.89 billion yuan (NZ$592 million) this year, up 88 percent from last year's budgeted 1.54 billion yuan, state media said last week, citing a report from the annual legislative meeting.

The China Daily cited Eligen Imibakhi, chairman of the legislature's standing committee, as saying controls on communications were necessary to prevent terrorism, separatism and extremism, which Beijing has branded the three evils.

- Reuters