Xinjiang will always keep up the intensity of its crackdown on
ethnic separatist forces and deal them devastating blows without
showing any mercy. — Wang Lequan, Chinese Communist Party
Xinjiang Secretary, quoted by China News Agency, January 14,
2003 China is guilty of fierce repression of religious
expression, and intolerance of any expression of discontent. –
Rebiya Kadeer, Uighur rights activist, writing for the
Washington Post. The 2008 Olympics held in Beijing helped bring
into the limelight the plight of ethnic minorities in China,
subject to ‘gross human rights violations’, according to Amnesty
International. This said, however, there was a clear duality in
the international perception and approach to the two issues of
ethnic persecution in China: the Tibetans and the Muslim Uighurs
of the Xinjiang region in the North-West. While the Tibet issue
received international attention, building up pressure on the
Chinese government, the ethnic unrest in Xinjiang remained
eclipsed and went quite unnoticed, ev