International News

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=106318388&ps=cprs

Yesterday China Police arrested 1,434 suspects in connection with the worst ethnic violence in decades in China's western Xinjiang region, which killed at least 156 people. The tensions between the minority Uighur people and the ethnic Han Chinese in Xinjiang is what caused this ethinc violence. "The Han Chinese say we all belong to the same country. We're all part of one big family," said Memet, a restaurant worker who like other Uighurs declined to give his full name because he feared the police. "But the Han always treat us separately." Chinese officials have singled out the leader of the U.S.-based Uyghur American Association — Rebiya Kadeer, a former prominent Xinjiang businesswoman now living in Washington — for inciting the violence. The government has accused Kadeer of having a hand in many of Xinjiang's problems since her release from prison into U.S. exile in 2005. The Foreign Ministry has publicly accused the 62-year-old of having links to the East Turkistan Islamic Movement, a group the U.S. put on its terrorist blacklist.

This article was interesting but somewhat difficult to read and keep up with expecially because of the foreign names. What suprised me the most about reading this article was that at the very end it talked about how the Chinese officials accused a 62-year-old woman of having a hand in many Xinjian's problems. I was not expecting that.