The Uighurs live in western China north of Tibet, in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region.
They are an indigenous central Asian people who are distant relatives of the Turks, with a predominantly Muslim culture.
Our Western legacy of land expropriation and slaughter of native peoples by European settlers (like the Zionists in Israel) and imperial armies may give us little to cluck about, but in today’s world the rights and interests of native peoples have rightly won greater recognition (except for the American Indians and the Palestinians)
The Uighurs are all set to join the ranks of history’s great, overrun losers.
China is exporting it Han people to this region, inducing forced abortions, conducting massacres, and placing barriers to trade and contact with other central Asian neighbors.
The Uighurs ask “Is it our fault that the Chinese have occupied our land?
“That we live under such horrible conditions?.”
(The New York Times April 23, 2009)