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URUMQI: She tapped me on the shoulder and said: 'You are a reporter? Interview me. I have things to tell the world.'
As I reached for my notebook, tears were already streaming down the face of toilet cleaner Zhu Xinqin, 60.
'Forty years in Xinjiang and I have never seen this. My neighbours are Uighurs and they treat me like their mother,' said the white-haired Han Chinese woman, who came to this far western region of China with her soldier husband decades ago.
'My heart hurts. It pains me. I saw what happened. First, the Uighurs attacked the Han Chinese. Then, the Han Chinese attacked the Uighurs,' she said.
The toilet she cleans is situated strategically at the South Gate, the scene of violent clashes on both Sunday and Tuesday.
'Please stop, please stop fighting,' pleaded Madam Zhu. 'Let's live a peaceful life. Peace did not come easily, let's not waste it like this.'
But the fighting continued in Urumqi yesterday, with a brutality I had not witnessed first-hand until now.
When I was visiting the Uighur quarters yesterday morning to look at the damage caused by Tuesday's riots, a roar erupted from the adjacent Liberation South Road.
I ran out and saw a dozen Han Chinese men armed with makeshift weapons breaking through a police barricade and charging at a group of Muslim Uighurs.
An Uighur woman screamed, but she and the Uighur men managed to flee, averting what might have been a bloody clash right next to a mosque.
'You saw how easily those men got through? The Han Chinese and the police are in cahoots. They belong to the same family,' 26-year-old lyricist Aikbar Mamuti told me.
The paramilitary, which was supposed to stop the two ethnic groups from attacking each other, did little. They did not pursue the men either.
I thought that menacing scene was awful enough, but worse was to follow.
In the afternoon, groups of Han Chinese vigilantes standing along the streets were clearly baying for blood. On sighting a possible Uighur, some of the men would rush towards the person, shouting for revenge.
If they discovered that the person was not an Uighur, they let him go. One time, they took out their frustration on foreign journalists, threatening to beat up those who were filming or taking photographs.
At about 3pm, the vigilantes found what they were looking for - a hapless Uighur.
They chased him, caught him, pushed him down by the side of the road and began punching and kicking him. At least one of the attackers used a stick to clobber him.
There were security forces barely 80m away, but they made no effort to intervene or stop the attack until the Uighur was blood-stained and lying motionless.
When the paramilitary officers formed a ring around the victim, who was still breathing, the attackers refused to move away. Instead, they berated the officers for going to the Uighur's rescue.
'They killed so many of ours!' shouted one woman.
A teenage boy, ignoring the men in uniform, walked up and threw an empty water bottle at the floored Uighur.
The crowd cheered the youngster as if he were a football star who had just scored a goal. The teenager walked away.
The officers did nothing.
Mr Aikbar, the young lyricist I had met earlier in the day, told me: 'The Han Chinese and the Uighurs used to live peacefully together. But it is very difficult to find reconciliation now. The heart has been broken.'
After what I saw yesterday, I knew exactly what he meant.
And the better times that Madam Zhu recounted to me with tears in her eyes might well remain only memories of the good old days. - ST 9 Jul 09