1.The Chinese government justifies its clampdown on the Uighurs and Muslim minorities by saying it’s trying to eradicate extremism and separatist groups
2. “This region is critical to China’s future development and the Belt and Road initiative,” Dru C. Gladney, a professor of anthropology at Pomona College in Claremont, California, who studies the region, told me. “All those roads go through Xinjiang.”
3. The Chinese government blamed the protests on violent separatist groups, a tactic it would continue to use against the Uighurs and other religious and ethnic minorities across China.
