The1989 Ürümqi unrest, also known as the19 May riots in Ürümqi (Chinese:乌鲁木齐五·一九骚乱) took place in the city ofÜrümqi in May 1989, which began withMuslim protesters marched and finally escalated into violent attack^[1] against a XinjiangChinese Communist Party (CCP) office tower atPeople's Square on 19 May 1989. The protesters participating included Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other Turkic People.

The immediate cause was a book calledSexual Customs (性风俗) published in March 1989 which purported to describe the sexual life of Muslims and contained a number of controversial passages comparing Islamic architecture to various sexual features. This caused protests fromHui people inGansu,Ningxia andXinjiang. The protesters, mainlyUyghur and Hui, initially conducted an orderly march in the previous days and demanded that the government should destroySexual Customs and punish the two authors of the book (who used the pseudonyms "Ke Le" and "Sang Ya"), who were compared toSalman Rushdie in a reference tothe controversy aroundThe Satanic Verses.^[2][3] However, the protest ended up rioting, where nearly 2,000 rioters overthrew cars, smashed windows and some attacked staff at CCP office. The government dispatched 1000 policemen and 1200 armed police soldiers to disperse the crowd and arrested 173.^[4]

The protests were not limited to Ürümqi. Muslims all across China organized protests in 1989. 3000 Muslims from allten Muslim ethnicities marched in Beijing on 12 May. In April 20,000 Muslims demonstrated inLanzhou and up to 100,000 demonstrators came out inXining. Smaller scale demonstrations took place in, Shanghai, Inner Mongolia, Wuhan, and Yunnan.^[5][3] In response, the Chinese government banned the book, publicly burnt 95,000 copies of it in Lanzhou, and sentenced the authors to terms in jail.^[6]

• July 2009 Ürümqi riots

• 1980s in China
• History of Ürümqi
• 1989 riots
• Protests in China
• Riots and civil disorder in China
• 1989 in China
• 20th century in Xinjiang
• Xinjiang conflict

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