China's Far West provinces (inc. Tibet)

[davidbfpo]

An Australian TV documentary, it is rare for such first-hand visual reporting in such a sensitive region:http://www.abc.net.au/foreign/content/2014/s4097689.htm

There's also a transcript for the twenty-nine minute film. At the start is some footage of attacks, including that in Beijing. The surveillance, apparently by local officials, is 24/7 and overt. Roads into the capital city have airport-style security checks for car travellers and armed police every present.

[davidbfpo]

A ggod question that explains this OD article:

Is the state actively engaged in decreasing participation in nonviolent resistance and delegitimizing Uyghur grievances by highlighting escalating violence?

Link:https://www.opendemocracy.net/civilr...yghur-struggle

Somehow I don't think it is the Chinese state's mindset to enable dissent.

[davidbfpo]

An article in the official China Daily, that caveat aside, it is remarkable for the numbers given and examples of counter-radicalisation cited. Maybe even WHAM:http://m.chinadaily.com.cn/en/2014-1...t_19208548.htm

It opens with:

The city of Turpan and nearby areas in the eastern Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region have become a test case in the people's war against religious fanaticism. The tourism city suffered a setback in 2013 after an extremist gangs' attack on a police station.

[davidbfpo]

Not sure how this will play out:

The capital of China's most Muslim region has banned residents from wearing the burqa in "an effort to curb growing extremism". Women in Urumqi, a city of 3.1 million people in the far western region of Xinjiang, will no longer be allowed to wear the garment, state media announced this week.

"Burqas are not traditional dress for Uighur women, and wearing them in public places is banned in countries such as Belgium and France," Xinhua, China's official news agency, wrote in a brief article about the ban.

Link:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...-Xinjiang.html

[davidbfpo]

A fascinating briefing by the Soufan Group on the possibility that Uighurs with experience fighting with ISIS could appear in Xinjiang Province:http://soufangroup.com/tsg-intelbrie...islamic-state/

[davidbfpo]

A book review from The Spectator last month of newly published 'China’s Forgotten People':http://www.spectator.co.uk/books/959...dly-backfired/

In China’s Forgotten People, the Edinburgh-based writer Nick Holdstock sets out to ‘reveal truth from facts’ in Xinjiang, to appropriate one of the Communist Party’s pet phrases. Holdstock’s central contention is that there is little proof of either organised Islamic terrorism or widespread separatist agitation in Xinjiang, where he used to live. Instead, the spiralling violence witnessed over the past few years is itself a reaction to repressive government policies put in place to control ‘terrorism’ — a self-fulfilling prophecy that is, tragically, now inciting the real thing.

(Later) This meticulously researched book is anything but a crude exercise in China-bashing.

[AdamG]

BAICHENG, China — Armed with only knives, the assailants struck at the coal mine in the dead of night, first killing the security guards and then setting upon the miners as they slept in their dormitory beds. Before the Sept. 18 rampage was over, more than 50 people were dead, at least five of them police officers, and dozens more had been wounded, according to victims’ relatives and residents.
Most of the victims were Han Chinese who had been lured to this desolate corner of the far west Xinjiang region by the prospect of steady work and decent pay.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/19/wo...acre.html?_r=1