The autonomous region of Xinjiang (“new frontier”), also known as Eastern Turkestan, was once crossed by the “Silk Road”. It became an integral part of China only in the last century. This is the land of Uyghurs, a Muslim and Turkish minority that, for a very long time, has been asking for greater independence from the central government in Beijing. Protests against the regime and ethnic clashes have frequently recurred in the region for many years.
Sadly we happened to visit the region during one of these riots. Now two completely different ethnic groups coexist and they are different by somatic features, religion, cuisine, traditions and a lot more. Even the language is different and so are road signs, billboards or shop banners etc, everything is displayed in 2 characters: Chinese and Arabic. Last bu not least the 2 populations also follow 2 two different time zones. The Uyghurs use Kyrgyzstan’s time, the Chinese the Beijing one. It’s a two-hour difference, so depending on who you ask, you get a very different answer!
Just like in Tibet, China has attempted to solve the Xinjiang issue by favoring an “ethnic submersion” policy, that is, by making more and more Han Chinese emigrate to the region in order to reduce the Uyghurs to a minority. The study of the Uyghur language was disincentivized up to the point that, according to some people, it could probably disappear in the next 50 years. In 2004, the central government launched the “Go West” campaign to attract foreign investors in the region and turn it into a tourist destination. Of course, only the Han Chinese have benefited from this economic progress. Lastly, the third action pursued by the government was to declare the Uyghur separatist as international terrorist, by associating it with the Al-Qaeda.
