China warns spectators off Xinjiang torch relay

By Ben Blanchard

URUMQI, China (Reuters) - Authorities in China's troubled far-western region of Xinjiang are telling people who want to watch the Olympic torch as it passes through the area to stay at home and tune into the television instead.

In other parts of China spectators have thronged streets to get a glimpse of the torch relay, but in Xinjiang they have been banned from climbing trees or collecting on bridges under which the flame will pass, state media said on Monday.

The steps are a measure of the sensitivity which surrounds Xinjiang, an oil-rich border region which is home to the Muslim Uighur people. Beijing blames some Uighurs for a series of attacks in the name of agitating for an independent state.

"Considering that too many people will cause a lack of safety, we are recommending that everyone watches on the television from home," the official Xinjiang Daily quoted the Communist Party boss of the region's sports administration, Li Guangming, as saying.

"The government expects tens of thousands of people will shout encouragement on the streets who have come in groups with their work units," Li said.

The torch, whose progress around the world had been dogged by anti-Chinese protests, is to be paraded through Xinjiang's regional capital Urumqi on Tuesday before heading to the mainly Uighur city of Kashgar, not far from the Pakistan and Afghanistan frontier.

A three-day tour of Tibet was supposed to precede this leg but the schedule was altered after a three-day suspension for the Sichuan earthquake. A curtailed trip to the Himalayan region will now follow the torch's passage through Xinjiang, organisers said.

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