From Reuters:
China’s restless far western region of Xinjiang will have to wage a long-term struggle to contain separatist forces and maintain stability there, the region’s top leader was quoted as saying by state media.
Xinjiang’s capital Urumqi was hit by bloody ethnic rioting last year between majority Han Chinese and minority Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking Muslim people who call the region home, in which at least 197 people died.
Energy-rich Xinjiang, strategically located in central Asia, has been struck in recent years by bombings, attacks and riots blamed by Beijing on Uighur separatists demanding an independent “East Turkistan.”
