A photograph from the social media website Weibo shows a security officer working at the scene of an attack on May 22 at a market in Urumqi, Xinjian Uygur Autonomous Region, China. Thirty-one people were killed when a group of attackers drove vehicles into a crowded market, running over shoppers as they threw explosives. (Photo Weibo.com)
The recent pattern of violence “suggests an escalation both in attacks and the conflict in a societal sense between the Uighur and the Han, which in some ways is unprecedented in scale,” said Dr Michael Clarke.
While Xinjiang is home to the Uighur minority, a Turkic-speaking, mostly Muslim people, most residents of Urumqi are Han Chinese, members of China’s majority ethnic group, who have flooded into Xinjiang in recent decades, stirring long-held tensions.
Dr Michael Clarke from the Griffith Asia Institute is quoted in the following article in the USA Today. Click here to read the full article
