Word: communist
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Despite an official ideology that recognized them as equal citizens of the communist state, Uighurs have always had an uncomfortable relationship with the authorities in Beijing. In 1933, amid the turbulence of China's civil wars, Uighur leaders in the ancient Silk Road city of Kashgar declared a short-lived independent Republic of East Turkestan. But Xinjiang was wholly subsumed into the new state forged by China's victorious Communists after 1949, with Beijing steadily tightening its grip on the oil rich territory. Its official designation as an "autonomous region" belies rigid controls from the central government over Xinjiang...
...dozens of Uighurs at guerrilla camps in Afghanistan after the U.S. invasion of 2001 highlighted the fact that some have, in recent years, been lured by a more fundamentalist form of Islam. Many analysts believe this development has been a reaction to the strict controls imposed by the communist authorities who have restricted religious freedoms: The numbers of Uighurs permitted to make the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca has been limited; Uighur government employees are forbidden from fasting during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan; the political authorities appoint the Imams at every mosque, and often dictate the sermons preached during...
...Curbs on religious freedom have been accompanied by cultural restrictions. The Uighur language, written in Arabic script, has been steadily phased out of higher education, having been once deemed by Xinjiang's Communist leader to be unsuitable for China's "scientific development." Uighurs in Xinjiang are often denied the right to travel outside of China, or even within it. Those who do manage to move to China's major cities eke out a desperate living as migrant workers, often viewed with distrust and suspicion by the larger Chinese population. The immediate cause of Sunday's protest in Urumqi appears...
Three days after ethnic clashes left 156 dead in the city of Urumqi, the Chinese government is still struggling to bring calm and order to the Xinjiang capital. On July 8, Communist Party leader Li Zhi announced that the government would seek the death penalty for anyone found responsible for the killings as President Hu Jintao flew home from Italy, cutting short his visit to the G-8 summit. While the city hasn't seen a return to fighting on the scale it witnessed on July 5, scattered outbursts are stoking fears that violence could erupt again, and tensions...
...State-run media and sound trucks were rebroadcasting a speech by Xinjiang's Communist Party Secretary, Wang Lequan, encouraging residents to focus their anger on "outside forces" rather than on Uighurs. "Comrades, this sort of action is totally unnecessary," he said of the Han street mobs. "Our government forces are enough to defeat the evildoers...