Word: xinjiang
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...Nearly a millennium later, that language still lingers, spoken by ethnic Uighurs, a Turkic Muslim minority who make up the majority population in the Chinese frontier region of Xinjiang. Kashgar, a city of 3.4 million surrounded by mountains and desert, is at Xinjiang's westernmost tip, closer to Baghdad than to Beijing. And while its history is rich - most agree at least 2,000 years old - many Uighurs in Kashgar see their culture and heritage as under attack by the Chinese government. In the latest move, authorities have started to demolish Kashgar's old town - an atmospheric, mud-brick maze...
...decision to raze Old Kashgar was made before anti-Chinese riots in Xinjiang's capital of Urumqi broke out earlier this month. That violence, in which at least 197 people died, was largely perpetrated by Uighurs against local Han Chinese, according to Beijing. Uighur-rights groups say that the Uighur death toll after a police crackdown and Chinese counterattacks has gone unreported and that the riots were an outgrowth of long-standing frustrations with Beijing's policies, which, they say, discriminate against Uighurs, depriving them of jobs in their own land while curbing the teaching of the Uighurs' language...
...Uighurs are a Turkic speaking, largely Islamic minority group concentrated in China's northwestern Xinjiang region. On July 5 several hundred Uighurs went on a rampage in Xinjiang's capital of Urumqi. The violence left 197 people dead, most of them members of China's majority Han ethnic group. The Chinese government has placed the blame on Reibya Kadeer, an outspoken Uighur businesswoman and human rights activist who spent nearly six years in a Chinese jail and now lives in exile in the U.S. (See pictures of the race riots in China's far west...
July has been a trying month for China's President, Hu Jintao. First he was forced to scurry home from Italy to deal with race riots in western Xinjiang province that left some 190 dead. His departure just ahead of the opening of the G-8 summit at which China was slated to play a key role must have been embarrassing. So unprecedented was the decision that it prompted some Sinologists to wonder whether a shaky political position at home was the real reason Hu decided to cancel. (Read "In China...
...Chinese government seems determined to exert even tighter control over the lives of Uighurs. Yet this strategy has left them feeling trapped and desperate. If China doesn't rethink its policies, regions such as Xinjiang and Tibet might prove inhospitable for all--Uighur, Tibetan and Han Chinese alike...