Awake early, so was reading this

“The War on the Uyghurs: China's Internal Campaign against a Muslim Minority
Sean R. Roberts” https://buff.ly/2QALy2K 

Unlike so many instant experts on the question, and yes you know exactly who they are, Roberts "...conducted ethnographic fieldwork among the Uyghur people of Central Asia and China during the 1990s"

Of course, this doesn't make his work automatically 'right' but as he makes clear he has the 'sniff on the ground' and fancy that actually speaks the language

2 key points he makes, the repression of the Uyghurs did not start of thin air a few years back, rather part of a longer-term process of Chinese imperialism on eastern frontiers; second, the most recent round of repression directly lined to US's declaration of the GWAT in 2001

He's also highly criteria of 'terrorism' experts and uses terrorism in inverted commas throughout the book which in itself is interesting, and as he notes there's no legally accepted definition of the term

And charts how China's labelling of Uyghurs as terrorists was uncritically accepted by 'terrorism' experts, and then repeated by US, and other authorities

So, he argues the current situation is in no small measure based upon the crude labelling of Muslims' struggles for self-determination as 'terrorism'; wonder if we can think of other nations who've used GWAT to justify attacks on enemies of the state ?

None of which excuses or justifies China's actions

Finally, what I found interesting is his fairly neutral approach toward the USSR and its support for Uyghur identity and self-determination in 1920/30s, up until 1940s.

*GWOT, and a whole host of other typos here
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