Payzawat

Local government officials confirmed for the first time this month that an organized uprising against Chinese rule took place as late as the early 1980s.

Moslem peasants in Payzawat, 100 kilometres east of Kashgar, raided a military armoury and attacked Han Chinese with the stolen weapons. Units of the People's Liberation Army crushed the rebellion, with many deaths, local people from the Moslem Uighur ethnic group said.

Kashgar's vice-mayor Mohamed Emin, a Uighur but a non-Moslem Communist Party member, said a group "bent on destroying ethnic unity" had been responsible.

Payzawat - called Jiashi County by Peking - is closed to foreigners although overseas tour groups now regularly visit Kashgar. Local sources said the rebellion followed riots in Kashgar in 1981 that exploded when a Chinese shopkeeper shot dead a Uighur peasant who had parked a donkey-cart load of manure outside his premises.