By BURHAN OZBILICI
ANKARA, Turkey — A man doused himself with gasoline and set himself alight during a protest Friday by ethnic Uighurs outside the Chinese Embassy in Turkey.
Other demonstrators jumped on the man and quickly extinguished the flames with a blanket, according to an Associated Press photographer who was at the scene. He was also sprayed with a fire extinguisher.
The man, identified by the local Uighur association as 35-year-old Mehmet Dursun Uygurturkoglu, was rushed to a hospital where he was being treated for second-degree burns to his head, neck and arms. A doctor at Ankara’s Numune hospital said his injuries were not life-threatening.
The man was among several hundred Uighur demonstrators protesting human rights violations in China just before the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in Beijing.
The group was chanting anti-China slogans when Uygurturkoglu, his T-shirt doused with gasoline and his back on fire, rushed to the forefront, shouting: “Long live Turkistan!”
The Uighurs, a Turkic Muslim minority that has had tense relations with the Chinese, live mainly in the rugged and mineral-rich western region of Xinjiang, China.
Many Uighurs favor independence or greater autonomy for Xinjiang province, which takes up one-sixth of China’s land mass and borders eight Central Asian countries. Uighurs are related to Turks, and Turkey is home to a Uighur community.
