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What would summer be without an ol' fashioned Uighur repression campaign? "China announced a two-month 'strike hard' security campaign on Tuesday in the troubled western region of Xinjiang, with 24-hour police patrols of crowded areas, identity checks, street searches, increased criminal investigations and accelerated trials. The latest mobilization of the region’s security apparatus follows a five-week spate of violence that has resulted in at least three dozen deaths. A statement on Xinjiang’s Web site said that the latest campaign was aimed at 'destroying a number of violent terrorist groups and ensuring the region’s stability.'" [New York Times] more ›

According to reports from Xinhua, a group of "terrorists" attacked a police station in the city of Hotan in Xinjiang province on Monday and killed four people, including a paramilitary officer, a security guard, along with a woman and a teenage girl. Police soon retaliated and a gunfight erupted, killing between 14 to 20 people (China Daily puts the total shot at 14, Sina says 14 dead, while the Global Times says the casualty total was "unidentified"). more ›

It's unfortunate that this sort of news has seemingly become routine this year: "A Tibetan writer and magazine editor, Tashi Rabten, has been sentenced to four years in prison for what Chinese authorities call separatist activities in a Tibetan region of western China, according to a report by the International Campaign for Tibet, an advocacy group based outside of China. Tashi Rabten was the editor of Eastern Snow Mountain, a banned literary magazine. He had been held since April 2010 in detention in an unknown location. He was among a group of young Tibetans at Northwest Nationalities University in Lanzhou, the capital of Gansu Province, who had written about a widespread Tibetan uprising in 2008. Three other Tibetans who worked with Tashi Rabten on the magazine received prison sentences of three to four years in December 2010." [New York Times] more ›

Shanghai Daily reports that a morning raid on a border patrol police division in Kashi, Xinjiang Province today left 16 armed policemen dead and another 16 injured. Two men smashed two trucks into the police station at around 8am, got out of their vehicles, stabbed several policemen and then ended the attack by throwing grenades at the police. They have since been arrested. [AFP] [Al-Jazeera] [Bloomberg] more ›

We told you about the chaos happening simultaneously in Dharamsala, India and Lhasa, Tibet, and it looks like we're only at the start of something big, very big. Here are snippets of a conversation with a friend who is resident in Lhasa, but has since left the city to live in the countryside till some semblance of stability returns:

"It's like war out there – there are soldiers everywhere" more ›

From Al-Jazeera English:

The Beijing Olympics are still 5 months away but they're attracting attention for all the wrong reasons. more ›

If you thought all Uighurs/Xinjiangers were fighting for the independence of East Turkestan, this video might be of interest to you. The Opposite End of China brings to our attention an excellent PBS documentary China from the Inside which features some very interesting footage such as a rare interview with Ismayil Tiliwadi, Governor of Xinjiang and new Uighur members of the CCP taking the communist oath. For some of them, the experience is akin to... more ›