The region has 20 million people, 8 million of them Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking, largely Muslim ethnic group. Han Chinese are not the original residents and they are mostly migrants from the mainland.  Mao Zedong in 1949 ordered the People’s Liberation Army into Xinjiang (which means New Frontier) and Tibet. This year marks the 60th anniversary of what the Chinese state media refers to as the ‘peaceful liberation’.

Historically, the Silk Road caravan passed through the region transporting Chinese silk to West Asia and beyond to Europe. It became a formal part of China under the last imperial dynasty in the 19th century. Uighurs ran brief-lived East Turkestan Republics in the 1930s and 1940s.

Separate Uighur movement is not a new one. It has been there for long years and every time it raised its head like when the Communists came to power in Beijing, it was crushed. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the rise of militant Islam in Central Asia in the 1990s spurred a violent separatism, with bombings and assassinations. China claims the separatist groups are terrorists with links to al-Qaida.

About the July 5 riots, The Daily Times, Lahore says (July 8, 2009):

‘The disturbances in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, China’s western province, have claimed the lives of 140 people. According to the Chinese government, a majority of them are Han Chinese. Though physically large, the province contains a population of 20 million, divided fifty-fifty between the local Muslims of Uighur ethnicity and the migrant Han Chinese, some of whom have lived there a long time. According to Beijing, the rioting, aimed against the Han Chinese population, has been instigated by a separatist Uighur movement mostly active in exile.

The Uighurs came under the influence of Islamic radicals during the Afghan jihad of the 1980s and the rebels were immediately put under control by Beijing. But the neighbouring countries received these rebels as they fled arrest in Xinjiang: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Afghanistan, from where some are reported to have trickled into Pakistan too. There were reports that some Pakistan-based jihadi organisations fighting the Soviet forces in Afghanistan had made their trespasses into Central Asia too: to Dagestan in Russia and Xinjiang in China.

China has obtained good cooperation from Kazakhstan and Pakistan in containing the Uighur rebel groups. Its investment in Afghanistan — more than India’s — is also a part of this containment policy. It is not very happy about an émigré Uighur “congress” in Germany which keeps voicing protest against the suppression of the “Uighur nation” in China. The rebel Uighur leader in exile, Rebiya Kadeer, is a former prominent Xinjiang businesswoman, and now heads a US-based Uighur rights group.

In so far as Pakistan is fighting for control of parts of its territory, its cooperation with China can only be limited. Reports of the Uighur rebel presence in Waziristan persist, but Beijing is aware of the difficulties faced by Islamabad in the areas occupied by a mixture of home-grown and international terrorists’.

Jonathan Watts writes in The Guardian (July 6, 2009):

XINJIANG’S bloody Sunday explosion of violence in Urumqi has underscored the struggle of ethnic minorities to find a place in a modernising China and a homogenising world.

Rebiya_Kadeer_built_business_empire_worth___24m_746372336.jpgAs in Lhasa last year, a peaceful protest suddenly became a murderous race riot. Then, it was indigenous Tibetans beating Han and Hui settlers to death, destroying their shops and cars. This time, it appears to be mainly Uighurs. Then, as now, Beijing blamed exile leaders for orchestrating the unrest. First the Dalai Lama, now Rebiya Kadeer, of the World Uighur Congress.

The counter-accusations are also similar. Uighur exiles accuse the security forces of provoking violence by killing protesters and fostering resentment with tight restrictions on religious, cultural and political autonomy. In both cases the outside world’s views have been obscured, partly because of Chinese restrictions on the media and partly because of the sheer distance of the two areas from the industrialized world. Buddhist Tibetans and Muslim Uighurs share a similar predicament.

They were never completely remote. Major Francis Younghusband’s murderous invasion of Tibet is one of the darkest episodes of British imperialism. Mao Zedong went further in 1949 by ordering the People’s Liberation Army into Xinjiang (which means New Frontier) and Tibet. This year the authorities are celebrating the 60th anniversary of what the state media often refers to as the “peaceful liberation”. For exile groups, it was simply an invasion.

Until 60 years ago Beijing ruled the country’s fringes with a distant hand, largely because access was difficult and the economic benefits questionable. That has changed dramatically with the rise of Chinese power and globalising technology. Roads, railways and airports put Lhasa and Urumqi within easy reach of Beijing. The country needs Tibet’s water and Xinjiang’s oil and gas.

Beijing has strengthened its grip with a programme of rapid economic development, tight controls on religious belief, a big military presence and an influx of Han and Hui migrants. These ethnic groups are now the majority in the capitals of Tibet and Xinjiang and appear to gain most of the economic benefits. Two of the sparks for the latest unrest were the demolition of the old Uighur capital in Kashgar and the killing of two Uighur migrants by a mob of Han in Shaoguan, on the other side of China.

On how unrest flared up, Jane Macartney writes in The Times (July 8, 2009):

The spark that set off the tinderbox relationship between Han Chinese and ethnic Uighur Muslims in China’s far west was lit by violence at a toy factory 2,000 miles away. That those clashes, which left two workers dead and several injured, could have sparked the deadliest riot the country has seen in decades underscores the antipathy between the two ethnic groups.

But it also highlights how China’s knee-jerk control of the media to ensure that only the minimum of bad news reaches its public can breed mistrust, rumour and overreaction.

Late last month a rumour at the Xuri Toy Factory in the southern town of Shaoguan in China’s industrial heartland that Uighur workers had raped two young Han Chinese employees triggered a backlash. Han workers attacked their Uighur colleagues. Two Uighur men died and dozens of Han and Uighur were injured.

Within days officials announced that the ‘rape’ was a rumour put about by a disgruntled former employee – who was now in police custody. A total of 13 people,
all Han, were arrested. For Chinese officials, who made public the detention of the rumour-monger, the incident seemed to be over. Uighurs had access to the facts.

But the damage was done. Word reached Uighurs in their homeland in the westernmost Xinjiang region. Rumour was rife. Local people heard that hundreds of their fellow Uighur had died. Others murmured that Uighur children had been chopped up. Anything seemed credible after all resentment between the groups has bubbled in Xinjiang for decades.

China’s people have grown accustomed over the decades to treating official reports with some suspicion. What has been left out? What details glossed over? Even if the state media report was correct, it was clearly enough to arouse unhappiness festering just below the surface. Uighurs resent an influx of Han following job opportunities offered by development of oil and gas fields in Xinjiang. Many feel that these riches should belong to them and not the incomers. Many resent the limits placed on their religious practice: for example, the ban on anyone under 18 attending mosques.

The tales from the south were enough to transform Uighur grumbles into full-blown violence. Thousands of Chinese troops poured into the restive city of Urumqi early today in a massive show of force, as President Hu Jintao cut short a visit to Italy for the G8 summit to deal with the outbreak of ethnic violence.

Along one road ringing the capital of the western region of Xianjiang where 156 people died in riots on Sunday, The Times counted more than 30 paramilitary trucks, each followed by about two dozen men, many in black body armour, and most carrying riot shields, batons and fire arms.The convoys included several white armoured personnel carriers accompanied by tear gas vans, all with paramilitaries standing ready to open fire. They were preceded by land cruisers, their sirens wailing as they moved almost at a walking pace through the town.

On the sides of the trucks were banners reading: "See the people as our father and mother."  In the centre of the city around People’s Square, army helicopters circled overhead as hundreds more paramilitary troops marched in brigades of 20 to 30 chanting: "Defend the Motherland, defend the people."

A Han Chinese man surnamed Run said, as he watched the troops rolling by: "We support this. The Government has to take action to protect the people. But they should have got here sooner. It took them three days to do this. Why so long?"

Hu’s decision to return home came after another day of strife in Urumqi on Tuesday, as thousands of Han Chinese roamed the streets looking for vengeance after Sunday’s riots, which left 156 dead and more than 800 injured.

He left Italy early today "due to the situation in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region" Xinhua, China’s state news agency, reported.