Islamic Tension in Western China

There doesn't seem to much discussion on this issue on ATS, so I thought I'd open a topic on it.

The region known as Xinjiang is part of Western China where there are heavy tensions among some of the Uigher people. Many of them are Islamic and would like to be independent of China. Others feel that China's government is suppressing their culture or otherwise treating them unfairly. It's interesting to me that there seems to be relatively little attention paid to this issue in comparison with Tibet, another area that has been having cultural/political tensions with the Chinese central government for some time. Xinjang is located to the north of Tibet.

The East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) is a group that has been declared a terrorist organization by the US, China, and the UN, among others. They recently threatened to disrupt the Olympics.





[edit on 9-8-2008 by silent thunder]

there are some threads on this on this forum,they just attacked and killed 16 soldiers in kashar,xinjiang province.and released a video on which they vowed to attack olympic venues.that's why the security measures in beijing are very strict nowl.