When Chinese president Xi Jinping visited Xinjiang in April 2014, it was against a background of intense anti-government violence in the remote, western province. Xi’s private speeches emerged in an astonishing cache of 400 pages of internal records obtained by the New York Times. It is one of the most significant leaks from inside China’s ruling party in decades. Shamefully, despite mounting evidence in recent years of the brutal campaign being waged by Beijing in Xinjiang, the rest of the world has shown itself incapable of speaking up on the crisis, largely for fear of Chinese economic retaliation. The longer that silence continues, the worse it will get for the people of Xinjiang.

Source: The Irish Times November 19, 2019 00:00 UTC