The harsh, brutal, and bloody crackdown by the Chinese authorities on the Uighur Muslim people in East Turkistan, also known as Xinjiang, cannot be tolerated any longer.
According to sketchy reports from the remote and nearly isolated Muslim region, government-backed mobs attacked Uighur Muslim civilians indiscriminately, killing many men, women, and children.
Some reports spoke of a real pogrom, including acts of lynching as the number of victims continued to rise, prompting the Chinese authorities to try to block twitters and slow down mobile phone and internet services, apparently in an effort to prevent the dissemination of news of the violence to the rest of the world.
The latest unrest broke out in the city of Urumqi on July 5, a few days after two Uighurs had been killed by Han Chinese workers in Shaoguan, Guangdong Province.
However, by July 6, the official state-controlled media reported that 156 people were killed and over 800 injured.
Almost half of Xinjiang's 20 million people are Uighur (pronounced Wee-ger) Muslims, while the other half is made up of Han settlers. The Han are China's majority ethnic group.
The Uighur Muslims routinely protest systematic persecution and discrimination as well as Chinese efforts to obliterate the religious and cultural identity of the Muslim ethnic community. Normally, the Chinese authorities respond to these protests with bloody repression as is obvious from the latest events.
In 1962, during the Mao Tze Tong era, tens of thousands of Uighur and Kazak Muslims were forced to flee northern Xinjiang into the former Soviet Union to escape political purges of the Cultural Revolution and China's Great Famine.
In more recent years, Chinese police forces often brutally raided mosques and homes in the region to arrest suspected members of two pro-independence movements, the East Turkistan Independence Movement and the East Turkistan Islamic Movement.
The repression, combined with often harsh restrictions on freedom of religion and speech, created a volatile atmosphere among Muslims and transformed the entire region into a powder Keg.
Moreover, police brutality coupled with long-suppressed grievances stemming from Chinese efforts to assimilate the Uighur Muslims, pushed many locals, especially among young generations, to support and identify with the pro-independence movements. (extracted from IslamOnline)
According to sketchy reports from the remote and nearly isolated Muslim region, government-backed mobs attacked Uighur Muslim civilians indiscriminately, killing many men, women, and children.
Some reports spoke of a real pogrom, including acts of lynching as the number of victims continued to rise, prompting the Chinese authorities to try to block twitters and slow down mobile phone and internet services, apparently in an effort to prevent the dissemination of news of the violence to the rest of the world.
The latest unrest broke out in the city of Urumqi on July 5, a few days after two Uighurs had been killed by Han Chinese workers in Shaoguan, Guangdong Province.
However, by July 6, the official state-controlled media reported that 156 people were killed and over 800 injured.
Almost half of Xinjiang's 20 million people are Uighur (pronounced Wee-ger) Muslims, while the other half is made up of Han settlers. The Han are China's majority ethnic group.
The Uighur Muslims routinely protest systematic persecution and discrimination as well as Chinese efforts to obliterate the religious and cultural identity of the Muslim ethnic community. Normally, the Chinese authorities respond to these protests with bloody repression as is obvious from the latest events.
In 1962, during the Mao Tze Tong era, tens of thousands of Uighur and Kazak Muslims were forced to flee northern Xinjiang into the former Soviet Union to escape political purges of the Cultural Revolution and China's Great Famine.
In more recent years, Chinese police forces often brutally raided mosques and homes in the region to arrest suspected members of two pro-independence movements, the East Turkistan Independence Movement and the East Turkistan Islamic Movement.
The repression, combined with often harsh restrictions on freedom of religion and speech, created a volatile atmosphere among Muslims and transformed the entire region into a powder Keg.
Moreover, police brutality coupled with long-suppressed grievances stemming from Chinese efforts to assimilate the Uighur Muslims, pushed many locals, especially among young generations, to support and identify with the pro-independence movements. (extracted from IslamOnline)
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