Objectively, it may be relevant to note that the rich history of the Silk Road includes numerous cultural genocides, the largest of which was contemporary with the coming of Islam.
We have yet to even comprehend the vast trove of materials recovered from the region indicative of those past cultures, which includes a trove of languages, scripts and religious affiliations.
An amazing international digitization project hosted by the British Library at has full document search capabilities. http://idp.bl.uk/ ... scholars are desperately needed to sort and interpret the material, which crosses the Chinese, Indian, Central Asian and Tibetan worlds in addition to endemic kingdoms. https://i.pinimg.com/originals/59/73/5d/59735daf093ccb7787c7...
A fact little known amongst modern Chinese is that one of China's most celebrated poets, Li Bai, actually hailed from Central Asia (Kyrgyzstan). He relocated to Sichuan. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Bai Other popularly remnant modern Chinese cultural links to this region from China include the coming of Buddhism and the fictionalized account Journey to the West, the romanticized export of silk technology, former military significance of 'blood (sweating) horses' and no doubt various contributions to medical, astronomic and scientific knowledge.
The Uighurs, like hundreds of ethnic and cultural minorities globally, and dozens within China, are facing a difficult integration with the modern world surrounded by far more significant economic and cultural spheres. It's also objective to say that a minor Uighur-affiliated violent separatist group has been operating with a distinct anti-government position since at least the early 1990s, and prior to that the region was a victim of the Great Game: http://pratyeka.org/books/kazak-exodus/
China historically allowed members of registered minority groups to be free of the one child policy, which otherwise affected all Chinese. The linked article asserts it is still being applied in Xinjiang and specifically against the Uighurs which is different to the rest of the country at present, but not historically. It would be good to see what the primary sources are on this.
There are potentially reasonable grounds for an international relations argument that nominally recent anti-Uighur measures might be, at least in part, traced to immediately contemporary post-911 "anti-terror" rhetoric by the US providing global laisser-faire on rights suspensions and heavy-handed tactics.
Conclusion: There is more to the story than a timely and simplistic villification, none of which excuses the actions being taken, but all of which add context.
