URUMQI, China, July 7, 2009 (AFP) — Clearing the debris of her shattered hair salon, an ethnic Han businesswoman says she has no idea why Uighur residents of China’s restive Xinjiang region attacked her – and has no desire to understand.

Her response to Sunday’s savage violence in this city – and the equally strident view of some Uighurs who called it a justified comeuppance for the hated Han – illustrates the deep ethnic misperceptions dividing the region.

“They were like crazed animals,’’ the salon owner, who refused to give her name, said as she and an employee carried broken chairs from the tiny shop.

Outside, a bloodied cement block lay on the sidewalk next to a large puddle of dried blood – testament to the deadly nature of the attacks.

“Only evil people would do something like this. There is no excuse,’’ the woman said.

China said at least 156 people were killed and more than 1,000 injured when Muslim Uighurs rioted in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, in some of the deadliest ethnic unrest in China for decades.

Uighur and Han Chinese residents expressed shock at the savagery of the attacks, in which people from both sides said Uighurs targetted Han-owned businesses and hunted down Han motorists and pedestrians in mob attacks.

But that’s just about where their agreement ends.

“The Uighurs are so terrible to have done this,’’ a local civil service employee who gave only her surname, Zhang, said as a column of about 200 riot police marched by on a tense street.

Like many Han Chinese, she expressed puzzlement at the complaints by many of Xinjiang’s roughly eight million Uighurs.

These include charges of political, cultural and religious persecution, and complaints of Han moving into Xinjiang and dominating economic and political life.

“China is bringing economic development. That is good for everyone,’’ she protested.

But for some Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking Central Asian people, the unrest was an inevitable outpouring against their repression.

“There has been violence like this before and it will happen again if things do not change,’’ said a beefy Uighur shop owner named Anwar who proudly offered to show an AFP reporter spots where he said Han were bludgeoned or hacked to death with machetes.

“This is supposed to be the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region,’’ he said, using the region’s official name but snorting at the implication of self-government by Uighurs.

“The Han control everything. The Uighurs are always mistreated by the Han.’’

Other Uighurs feel similarly about the injustices they say they suffer under the Han, but are not so flippant about the violence.

“We just want peace. There are good Han and there are bad Han, just like all people,’’ said a Uighur woman named Yusufina, whose son and husband were detained by police after the riots.

Yusufina, dressed in a black-flowing Uighur gown and a brown headdress, said as tears rolled down her cheeks that she had long-time Han friends.

“We don’t hate the Han, we just want our family members back,’’ she said.

Many Uighurs said the violence started after police arrested Uighur students protesting in the city over a recent factory brawl in southern China that left Uighurs dead.

Meanwhile, Han Chinese residents uniformly repeated government assertions the unrest was organized from abroad by Uighur “separatists.’’

Several Han residents of riot-hit areas expressed thoughts of leaving Xinjiang.

“Maybe, I don’t know, we will have to think about it. But how can I move now?’’ said one Han shop owner as he and his weeping wife moved cases of Coke – the plastic bottles warped by heat – out of their fire-gutted store.

But another Han rejected the idea of retreat.

“China is a unified country. We won’t just run away like that. This is our country,’’ said Zhang, the municipal employee.