Struggle of the Uighur people is quite real

If you are thinking that my blogging, yet again, about the Uighurs can mean only one thing: their situation hasn't improved and something serious happened recently, yes, that is, indeed, the unfortunate story.

In the deadliest ethnic violence in China since 2009, 21 people were killed in confrontations Tuesday between police and Uighur residents of Kashgar, the country’s westernmost city.
Among the dead were 15 police and neighborhood security officers and six people that the state media described as “mobsters.’’
Kashgar, which lies close to China's borders with Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, has been a frequent site of violence between the dominant ethnic Han Chinese and the Uighurs, a Muslim minority.

Terrible!  We can only act polite from afar:

The US has urged China to conduct a transparent investigation after clashes in the restive Xinjiang region left 21 people dead.
US State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell also urged that "due process protections" be given to all Chinese citizens, including ethnic Uighurs.

Even worse is that we really don't know what is going on in Xinjiang:

Beijing's media blockade has been successful. Instead of allowing some access to Western reporters, Beijing a few years ago resumed an old strategy and restricted their ability to enter Xinjiang, and almost entirely banned them from entering the mountainous, 460,000-square-mile Tibetan Autonomous Region.

That means that there is no independent verification of the "official" version of incidents in Xinjiang:

[In Xinjiang, Hou Hanmin, a Xinjiang propaganda bureau spokeswoman] is sticking to the message. Tuesday's violence is "certainly a terrorist attack," she told reporters, comparing the incident to the Boston Marathon bombings. And until Western reporters can investigate, her version of the events will remain the last one standing.

While the US is now urging China to protect its Uighur minority, it was also the US that made it so easy for the Chinese to refer to anything in Xinjiang as terrorism.   In a post four years ago, in July 2009, I quoted James Fallows, who wrote:

it is a lasting error and embarrassment that after 9/11 the U.S. won Chinese government support by agreeing that Uighur separatists -- formally, the East Turkestan Liberation Organization -- should be seen as part of the world terrorist threat. After all, they are Muslims.

Screwy!  The guy who ushered in the Global War on Terror, meanwhile, gets to open his Presidential Library!

In that first post from four years ago, I wrote about the Kafkaesque Guantanamo scenario in which the 22 Uighurs found themselves in.  Where are they now?

The U.S. refused to grant them asylum. Nearly a dozen now live in Albania, Bermuda, El Salvador and Switzerland. Three remain in custody at the U.S. Navy prison in Cuba.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/03/17/3291352/in-chinas-shadow-guantanamos-former.html#storylink=cpy

From a part of the world with a long and rich history.  A part of the old stories of the Silk Road.  In reviewing a book on the Sufi shrines in Xinjiang, Ian Johson writes in the NYRB :

Looking at these bright, numinous images, we begin to sense something inexpressible but more profound than any of the region’s difficult politics—a glimpse at the intangible traditions and beliefs that have given shape to Xinjiang’s Muslims over many centuries.

I suppose no god can be of help!