Word: uighurs
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...city's Uighur neighborhoods, makeshift barriers of timber and broken beer bottles have been swept away, a sign that the influx of some 20,000 personnel has eased fears of Han vigilante mobs that formed July 7. "They had clubs and knives and there was nothing we could do," says a man named Yusef as he stood beside a barricade of trash bins still protecting an alley filled with ramshackle Uighur homes. "Now it's a little bit better. The government has come and they're enforcing the law. The People's Armed Police are here, and they're keeping...
...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...
...Widespread Uighur alienation has prompted some to resort to violence. Following the 9/11 attacks in the U.S., Beijing convinced Washington to list the little-known East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) as a terrorist organization. Some Uighurs were captured by coalition forces in Afghanistan and sent to Guantánamo, but many have subsequently been released. The specter of Uighur terrorism loomed over Xinjiang after a series of attacks and bombings hit the province during the build-up to last year's Beijing Olympics. The extent of the ETIM's tactical capabilities and its connections to other more prominent terrorist outfits...
...China's approach to the region is captured in a recent plan to bulldoze much of Kashgar's historic Old City - an atmospheric, millennia-old warren of mosques and elaborate mud-brick houses - and replace it with a tourist-oriented theme park version, resettling its Uighur population (who were not consulted) in "modern" housing miles away from the city...
...state-secrets law China invoked is notoriously murky. Lawyers and human-rights groups have long said the government uses it capriciously in order to silence its perceived "enemies." In 1999, for example, Beijing used the same law to arrest Uighur activist Rebiya Kadeer, now living in exile in the U.S. The crime for which she spent more than five years in prison: clipping a newspaper article in China and sending it to her husband...