The BBC’s John Simpson traveled to Urumqi and Kashgar to find two cities crawling with armed police in riot gear on every corner, three months after violent riots killed almost 200 people:
The authorities are very nervous about the presence of foreign journalists.
Access to ordinary people was limited by authorities
Everywhere we went in Urumqi my television team and I were followed, sometimes by three unmarked police cars at a time.
And when we flew on to Kashgar, where many of the more militant Uighurs involved in the riots came from, the police detained us at the airport.
We were allowed to stay in Kashgar until the next morning, but everywhere we went a contingent of police followed us and prevented our filming or interviewing anyone.
