People from Han and different ethnic minorities have co-existed peacefully in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region for centuries, despite sporadic ethnic conflict, according to He Xingliang, a Chinese specialist on Xinjiang's history and culture.

The July 5 riot, which claimed at least 184 lives and left more than 1,000 injured, was organized and carried out by people overseas and was a major violent and terrorist action, said He in an interview with Guangming Daily, a Beijing-based newspaper serving academic elites.

He called it the most serious violence in Xinjiang since the founding of the New China because "the mobs had targeted ordinary people," according to the report published in the Guangming Daily Tuesday.

He sits on the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and is a research fellow and director of the Department of Religious Culture under the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

Xinjiang had been under China's central government since the Western Han Dynasty (207 B.C.-25 A.D.), and in 1884, the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) made it a province, with the Uygurs as its dominant ethnic group, He said.

Since 1949, when the People's Republic of China was founded, Xinjiang had witnessed unity and cooperation among people of all ethnic groups who had enjoyed equal rights and common prosperity and development, said He.

"As a CPPCC National Committee member, I completely agree with the central authorities' analysis and judgement of the situation in Xinjiang as well as its decisions and arrangements for securing stability," said He.

The paper reported that people of different ethnic groups had donated more than 5 million yuan (730,000 U.S. dollars) to help the families of the dead and the injured.

(Xinhua News Agency July 14, 2009)