The roots of the hatred between ethnic Han Chinese, China’s dominant group, and the mainly Muslim Uighurs of the western borderlands go deep. In 1949, the fledgling Communist government subsumed the independent Uighur state of the East Turkistan Republic, and ever since, the Uighurs have agitated for some degree of autonomy from Beijing.
[www.uyghurcongress.org/en/?p=22195]