Security marks Silk Road torch relay

The Olympic torch was paraded on Wednesday through China's sensitive former Silk Road city of Kashgar, home to ethnic-minority Muslim Uighurs, under the scrutiny of soldiers and choreographed cheering crowds.

China banned all but carefully chosen members of the public, such as Islamic leaders in headdresses and children in traditional attire, from the relay route and ordered everyone else to stay at home and watch on television.

"We weren't allowed to go and see it," said a Uighur woman in the backstreets in the old part of the oasis city. "But even if we were, I think people would have stayed away anyway."

China has accused Uighur separatists in oil-rich Xinjiang of plotting attacks with al Qaeda's support to help achieve their goal of an independent country they call East Turkestan.

The torch relay was meant to be a symbol of national unity and pride for China, but it was dogged by anti-government protests on its international leg after the clampdown on rioting in Tibet. At home, authorities are at pains to ensure its smooth journey, especially in troubled areas such as Xinjiang.

As in Tibet, many Uighurs resent the migration of Han Chinese to the region and controls on their culture and religion.

Shops were shut in Kashgar as small groups waved Chinese and Olympic flags under a bright, clear sky. Between the groups, the streets were deserted as a group of about 40 security guards in blue T-shirts and black gloves accompanied the torch.

At the start, Uighur children, some holding large flags, chanted "Go China, Go Olympics, Go Sichuan and Go Kashgar" in the square outside the giant Idkhar Mosque, closed to the public. The Sichuan mention referred to last month's devastating earthquake.

At the finish at People's Square, under a huge statue of Mao Zedong, the father of Communist China, Uighurs half-heartedly waved flags in marked contrast to relays elsewhere in China where joyous crowds have thronged the streets.

Everyone on the streets wore a sticker with a number and the Olympic flame in an apparent security measure, as soldiers lined the route at every 30 metres (yards).

"Kasghar will be even more harmonious after the torch relay," the city's deputy Communist Party boss, Akbar Wufuer, told a select crowd of government officials and children at the event's end, making no mention of the tight security.

FOILED PLOTS

China says it has cracked at least two Xinjiang-based militant plots this year, one involving an attempt to bring down an airliner flying to Beijing and the other to kidnap foreigners and carry out suicide attacks at the Olympics.

Propaganda posters in Chinese and English and flags to welcome the torch were strung along the relay route, though there was little evidence of the Uighur language being used and hardly any signs or flags in Kasghar's backstreets.

"Welcome the Olympics, preserve stability," read one large, stern-sounding banner hung over a school entrance, in a reminder of the region's ethnic woes.

Even the city's sewers appeared to have been included in a thorough security sweep, with tape stuck across manhole covers as seals to make it easier to spot any underground infiltration.

Foreign reporters were banned from talking to anyone watching the torch along its route, despite China pledging complete media freedom when it applied to host the Olympics.

On Saturday, the flame is due to be relayed through Lhasa, the Tibetan capital where anti-China protests broke out in March.

Foreign rights groups say China has carried out a crackdown in Xinjiang ahead of the Beijing Games, which open on August 8.

"Over the past three months a blanket ban on all religious activities and gatherings outside of state-controlled mosques was imposed," said Nicholas Bequelin of Human Rights Watch.

"Informers are everywhere, as evidenced by tourists interrogated by the police about the most mundane activity such has having had a conversation with a Uighur fruit vendor."