Following the July 2009 Ürümqi riots, the government focused on local economic development in an attempt to ameliorate ethnic tensions in the greater Xinjiang region. Kashgar was made into a Special Economic Zone in 2010, the first such zone in China's far west. In 2011, a spate of violence over two days killed dozens of people. By May 2012, two-thirds of the old city had been demolished, fulfilling "political as well as economic goals." Critics have called the destruction of the old city part of a campaign of cultural genocide. In July 2014, the Imam of the Id Kah Mosque, Juma Tayir, was assassinated in Kashgar.