(The Diplomat) While the international media has extensively analyzed the demonstrations and street clashes in Turkey, Brazil and Egypt over the last several weeks, there has been very little coverage of the street violence happening in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (aka East Turkistan). The Xinjiang violence has not been as impressive in terms of numbers of protestors and certainly offers less photographic and video documentation to make its story compelling than these other, sexier street battles of this summer of discontent, but what is happening in China’s northwest may be no less significant to future geopolitics.
On the surface, the latest outbreaks of violence in Xinjiang do not appear remarkable. The first incident on June 27 involved “sixteen knife-wielding religious extremists” attacking a police station and a construction site near the northern city of Turpan. A second incident occurred on June 29 near the southern city of Hotan, and allegedly involved more than 100 motorcyclists – also armed with knives – storming a police station. […]
Co-authored by by Sean Roberts and Kilic Bugra Kanat.
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