About 200 more riot police arrived and cut off the group, with some of the security forces kneeling down and pointing their automatic rifles at the marchers. Foreign reporters were led to a side alley, out of view of the protesters, who were forced to squat on the sidewalk along a row of shuttered shops.

Hours later, calls to Ahtam's cell phone went unanswered and it was unknown what happened to her.

Police quickly closed off parts of major thoroughfare for much of the afternoon after the protest. In the past two days, the capital had been moving closer to its normal state, but Ahtam's simple protest about the public toilet showed how volatile the situation is and how quickly it can regress.

Women led another protest Tuesday — one day after they said police rounded up 300 men in their neighborhood, a hot spot during the July 5 rioting. Foreign journalists visited the area during an official government media tour that was supposed to highlight the damage done during the violence.

But the trip backfired when the Uighur women emerged from a market nearby and began crying and complaining about missing husbands and sons. They screamed in the faces of the hundreds of riot police who were mobilized to shut down their spontaneous protest.

Later in the week, the women were less willing to talk, but some met with foreign reporters in side streets and complained.

"We haven't had any news about our husbands. We haven't been allowed to call," said one woman, who only gave part of her name, Guli.

Most of the arrested suspects were Uighur men, and police and witnesses have said they used rocks, sticks and knives to brutally and randomly kill their victims. Officials have said many of the targets were women.

In other parts of Xinjiang, the city of Kashgar, near the Pakistan border, was declared off-limits to reporters in all but name. Foreign reporters were not allowed to leave their hotels, except to go to the airport. An Associated Press photographer was detained repeatedly and escorted to the airport. The effect was to make it impossible for reporters to work.