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AFP
Feb 06, 2010

BEIJING — Authorities in China's Xinjiang region Saturday restored access to 27 Internet sites that had been blocked following last July's ethnic unrest in the province, state media reported.

The restored websites included official government services as well as commercial sites such as Taobao and Alibaba, and airlines and online games, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

Partial access was also restored to the public discussion forums of official media such as the People's Daily newspaper and Xinhua itself, Xinhua said.

Authorities in the Xinjiang autonomous region wanted to re-establish communication links "progressively," following the recent reinstatement of long-distance phone calls and mobile phone text messaging to phones within the country, Xinhua said.

Such services were cut following the July outbreak of clashes between ethnic Han Chinese and mainly Muslim Uighurs, in which almost 200 people died and 1,600 were wounded. The authorities accused Uighur organisers of using the Internet and mobile phones to orchestrate the unrest.

Twenty-six people were sentenced to death for their part in the rioting, which lasted several days after breaking out in Urumqi, Xinjiang's capital. Some have already been executed.