Restive Xinjiang: China's next trouble spot after Tibet?

By Lindsay Beck

KHOTAN, China (Reuters) - The two young women trying on headscarves at a dusty market stall have heard of the recent unrest in Tibet's capital Lhasa, but they say the same could never happen here in China's border region of Xinjiang.

Despite their confidence, tensions have bubbled to the surface in Xinjiang, much to the dismay of China's leaders who are anxious to maintain stability in the oil-rich region which borders Afghanistan and Pakistan and is home to about 8 million Uighurs, a Muslim Turkic-speaking people. "All the ethnicities in China are one big family," said one of the women, 19, as she studied herself in an orange headscarf in the mirror, debating whether to buy it.

It's a line that echoes the statements of China's Communist leaders in Beijing, but the sentiment felt hollow when the wave of anti-government protests erupted in its ethnic Tibetan areas last month.

Then came a demonstration in Khotan, an Uighur-majority town on the edge of Xinjiang's forbidding desert, where hundreds marched through the weekly bazaar in late March in a protest the city government blamed on ethnic separatists.

The demonstration, which was by all accounts a peaceful and isolated incident, nonetheless touched on the worst fears of China's leaders: the prospect Tibet's unrest could have a contagion effect on Xinjiang, its other sensitive border region, ahead of the Beijing Olympics in August.

But analysts say Xinjiang is not likely to be the next Tibet despite distrust between Han Chinese and Uighurs and disgruntlement among Uighurs over restrictions on their religion and culture.

"The broader perspective on this is that these kind of local demonstrations happen all over China -- if the security figures are to be believed, by the tens of thousands every year," said one Western analyst, who declined to be named, citing the sensitivity of the issue.

"It's become almost a standard way of dealing with local issues, a pressure release, but of course it's much harder for Uighurs to do this because they're branded separatists."

REPRESSION

The road to Khotan, flanked on either sides by unbroken stretches of desolate desert, is free of the kind of security personnel that has flooded into Tibetan areas since the protests began there in March.

At its weekly market, merchants flog everything from sides of mutton to delicate threads of saffron, much as they have for generations.

Residents say there is plenty of discontent, but not many outlets to express it.

"I could guarantee that kind of thing couldn't happen here," said Ahyiguzai, a 17-year-old Uighur resident, referring to the Lhasa riot.

"People have those feeling of dissatisfaction sometimes, but they wouldn't dare do anything. Those kinds of things are resolutely not allowed," she said.

Analysts say fears of separatist sentiment and the prospect of radical Islam making inroads have meant that Beijing's grip on the region is especially tight.