What is happening to the Uyghurs in Xinjiang?
FIVE YEARS ago, few people in the West had heard of Uyghurs. Since then they have become a focus of international criticism of China, which is accused of committing grave human-rights abuses against the Uyghurs and other ethnic groups in the countrys far west. Chinas actions in Xinjiang, where the majority of Uyghurs live, have prompted international sanctions, legal complaints and calls to boycott the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. The Economist Today Hand-picked stories, in your inbox A daily email with the best of our journalism Sign up  The Uyghurs are a predominantly Muslim ethnic group native to Xinjiang, where around 11.6m of them live. Culturally and linguistically, they are more similar to Central Asians than to Chinas ethnic-Han majority. Uyghur is a Turkic language written in an Arabic script that has little in common with Chinese. Some Uyghurs reject the Chinese name Xinjiang, meaning new territory and reflecting imperial-era conquest, for their native region. They prefer to call it East Turkestan. In the first half of the 20th century two parts of the region, around the cities of Kashgar and Yining, declared independence from China. These attempts to break away failed, but they have not been forgotten by rulers in Beijing. Not all Uyghurs want independence, but the Chinese government views them with suspicionall the more so since ethnic violence broke out in 2009 in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, leaving a reported 197 Han and Uyghur people dead. In 2014 two violent attacks in Urumqi, the regional capital, killed 34 people, fuelling the Communist Partys fears about terrorism in the region.