News Sites and Sina Weibo Censor Reports of Violence in Korla, Xinjiang

On March 8, 2013, the state-sponsored Global Times published an English language report entitled "Foreign Infiltration Still Deserves Measure of Chinese Caution" stating:

During Thursday's knife attack in Korla, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, four were killed and several were injured. . . . For generations, Xinjiang's borders have halted turbulences originating from outside. The Chinese people need to know what peace in Xinjiang means to China as a whole." 

That same day, the state-sponsored Caijing Magazine published a report on its web site entitled "Four Dead and Eight Wounded In Attacks in Korla, Xinjiang, During the Two Sessions" (两会期间新疆库尔勒发生袭击事件致4死8伤). An excerpt:

Today, Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region spokesperson Hou Handun, who happened to be in Beijing for the opening of the National People's Congress, confirmed that the previous day attacks had occurred that left four dead and six people wounded.
正在北京出席人大会议的新疆维吾尔自治区政府发言人侯汉敏今天证实，在前一天发生的袭击事件中，有4人死亡，8人受伤。

By 4:00 pm the report had been deleted from Caijing's web site. These screenshots show that it had also been deleted from the Phoenix and Tencent web sites (the Google preview shows Phoenix is redirecting users to their home page, while QQ is redirecting users to a "404 page not found" message).

Original URLs:

• http://politics.caijing.com.cn/2013-03-08/112573695.html
• http://news.qq.com/a/20130308/001246.htm
• http://news.ifeng.com/mainland/detail_2013_03/08/22892339_0.shtml

These screenshots show that another article on the incident entitled "Another Incident of Uighurs Stabbing Han Occurs During the Two Sessions, Women's and Children's Throats Cut, Children Murdered" (两会期间新疆再次发生维族刀手砍杀汉人 割女子喉、殺小孩) and posted on the state-sponsored Feiyan Military Affairs web site, was also deleted.

These screenshots show that Sina Weibo was deleting posts that mentioned the story.

This screenshot, taken on March 8, shows that Sina Weibo was censoring searches for "Uighurs stab Han Chinese." (维族砍汉人)

These screenshots, also taken on March 8, show that Baidu was banning users from setting up PostBar (贴吧) forums under the heading "Uighur" (维吾尔族 维族).