Chinese policemen take aim during a counter-terrorism exercise in Urumchi, Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, April 28, 2007.(Xinhua Photo)Anger Turns To Uprising Along The Silk Road -- Times Online
It was just one month before the Olympic Games when Chinese guards led three men away to execution, somewhere amid the apple orchards, at the end of an open-air trial watched by 7,000 local Muslims.
The crowd looked on in silence as judges handed out death sentences and life prison terms to 17 other men accused of organising an armed Islamic party. Those condemned now await their turn before the firing squad.
The spectacle, outside the oasis town of Kashgar, was the climax of a campaign intended to crush resistance and ensure “stability” in a vast western region known to Victorian explorers as Chinese Turkestan. Instead, it seems to have set off the worst violence for a decade, igniting an armed struggle against Chinese rule that has smouldered along the ancient Silk Road for 60 years.
Since those macabre incidents, militants have killed at least 20 security personnel in three attacks, importing the tactics of a guerrilla jihad to the oil and gas-rich autonomous region of Xinjiang.
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My Comment: After the Olympics, I expect the Chinese crackdown to intensify.
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