If you think the recent violence in Xinjiang is a local, domestic issue, think again. First, Turkey is strengthening its ethnic and geopolitical ties with its Central Asian Turkic brothers by calling the recent violence genocide and royally pissing off the Chinese by granting exiled Uyghur leader Rebiya Kadeer a visa to visit Turkey.Moreover, Uyghurs in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan are keeping a low profile. They are afraid that if their protests are too loud, the Kazakh and Kyrgyz governments will crack down on them in order to win favor from the Chinese government.
In what may be the most terrifying development, Al Qaeda in Algeria has announced that it will target Chinese workers in North Africa.
There is no question that independence for Xinjiang is out of the question. What the Uyghurs and Chinese central government need to do is sit down like adults and work out a compromise in which China continues to have territorial sovereignty over the region; the Uyghurs are given a lot more autonomy; and Han migration is greatly curtailed, if not reversed.
Photo courtesy Jeffrey Hays
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