Chinese leader Xi Jinping visited Xinjiang, the home of the Muslim Uyghur minority, on July 12 – 15, to purportedly promote national unity and reinforce the regime’s ambition to influence the world.
According to State-run Xinhua and CCTV, Xi went to a Uyghur a neighborhood in the capital city Urumqi. He also visited a unit of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, a quasi-military organization that the regime has used to control and develop the region since the 1950s, in Shihezi city, about 85 miles west of Urumqi.
This was Xi’s first Xinjiang visit in over eight years. His last trip ended with a bomb and knife attack on April 30, 2014, in the capital’s train station, killing three and injuring 79. Beijing described the incident and similar ones as “violent terrorist attacks” by Muslims and hence speeded up its “Sinicization of Islam” campaign, that is, policies designed to eradicate Muslim practices and force the religious believers to believe in the Communist Party….