In March 2008, reports of unrest involving Uyghurs in Xinjiang began to surface at a moment when international attention was fixed elsewhere, including on the Beijing Olympics and the wider political turbulence then building inside China. The incidents did not immediately command sustained global attention. In hindsight, that failure mattered. The warning signs were visible, but the response was weak, fragmented, and short-lived.The unrest came in the aftermath of the March 2008 Tibetan protests and underscored that tensions inside China extended beyond Tibet. In Xinjiang, grievances among many Uyghurs had been building for years: restrictions on religious practice, pressure on language and culture, discriminatory policing, and resentment over economic and demographic policies in the region. Contemporary reporting on the 2008 incidents was limited and often difficult to verify independently, but the broader pattern of state repression and deepening control in Xinjiang became much clearer in the........

© Eurasia Review