While speaking to this writer from New Delhi, AIMMM President Dr Zafarul-Islam Khan, argued that the persecution of Uighur Muslims and the continued attempts to change the area’s demography by planting Han Chinese in the region, were the real reasons behind the unrest. Ethnic clashes between the minority Uighur people and the ethnic Han Chinese, had broken out in Urumqi (capital of Xinjiang) on Sunday. According to the state-run Xinhua news agency, the unrest claimed the lives of at least 156 people. Media reports also reveal that over 800 people were injured in the clashes, also a few hundred shops and vehicles were vandalised by over thousand protesters. Local authorities arrested over 1,400 Uighur Muslims in follow-up actions.

Even though the Chinese government has constructed numerous roads, railways, schools and hospitals in the province, many Uighurs continue to demand independence from Beijing. Moreover, the Uighurs also feel increasingly marginalised in their homeland because of the accelerated migration of Han Chinese to Xinjiang. “Beijing must realise that its way to prosperity and world status power does not go not through state terrorism as seen earlier in its similarly brutal form in the 1989 crackdown in Tiananmen Square,” said Dr Khan of AIMMM, adding that China must stop the migration into Eastern Turkestan and allow its people to enjoy civil and human rights that other Chinese enjoy.

“Xinjiang, like Tibet, is one of the most politically sensitive regions in China. Nearly half of the region's 20 million people are Uighur. Many complain that Han Chinese discriminate against them and benefit from Chinese government policies in Xinjiang, at their expense. They also say the government tries to suppress their religion,” reported the Voice of America. On July 6, the Xinhua news agency tried to report on the issue a little differently by saying that “tourism in northwest China's Xinjiang has come to a standstill after riots in the regional capital Urumqi”. Quoting the regional tourism bureau spokesman, Ma Rui, the agency also claimed that the riot had a very bad influence on tourism, and that the bureau had advised travel agencies not to go to sensitive areas.