Short diary.
In the North-western corner of China, there's a sort of nominally autonomous government, a state within a state, called Xinjiang (or the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region). The people who live there are Uighurs by a plurality, according to the wiki, about nine million of them out of 18.5 million or so. The capital city is Urumqi; the rest of the region is mostly arid or semiarid, and a bit sparsely populated, if I understand correctly.
Last month, there was allegedly a fight between Uighur and Han factory workers in which two Uighurs were killed. (The Han people are the majority ethnic group of China, and the second-largest group in Xinjiang.)
Apparently riots have broken out over the weekend, after a demonstration demanding justice for the dead workers. According to the BBC,
Beijing blames ethnic Muslim Uighurs for the violence, but exiled Uighurs say police fired on students.
Radio Free Asia reported something slightly different, that "[Beijing] blames overseas Uyghurs for inciting rioting" - it wasn't the locals, it was those meddling Westernized exiles, you might say. Where have we heard that before?
Since then, over a hundred fifty people have died, and any number of police vehicles have been overturned and shops set on fire. According to the BBC, calm has been restored by force, and cell phone and internet services are under firm state control, but some images still got out.
I hadn't seen anything about this on Daily Kos, so I took the liberty here. It looks like the Chinese government's approach to mass dissent hasn't become that much gentler over the years, and you might say that Iran too is learning that there's no real incentive for an oligarchy not to abuse its citizens.