ABSTRACT
Violent clashes erupted on July 5, 2009, in Urumqi, the administrative capital of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, between Uyghur demonstrators, who were reacting to reports of the deaths of Uyghurs working in the Guangdong city of Shaoguan, and the police. The shocking but not entirely unexpected ethnic violence in Urumqi is a clear indication that the policies of the Chinese government in the region have failed. Before the July 2009 violence, the incident that had attracted the greatest international media attention in Xinjiang had been the attack in August 2008 on a group of police who were jogging close to their police post in Kashgar, the important Uyghur city in the south-west of Xinjiang. Religious activities, which have become much freer in the rest of China, including among the Chinese-speaking Hui Muslim community, were severely restricted in Xinjiang; children under the age of 18 and Communist Party and government officials were forbidden even to enter a mosque for prayers.
