The NY Times reports that:

“The Chinese government locked down this regional capital of 2.3 million people and other cities across its western desert region on Monday and early Tuesday, imposing curfews, cutting off cellphone and Internet services and sending armed police officers into neighborhoods after clashes erupted here on Sunday evening between Muslim Uighurs and Han Chinese. The fighting left at least 156 people dead and more than 1,000 injured, according to the state news agency.”

Also:

“The fighting on Sunday was the deadliest episode of ethnic violence in China in decades. The bloodshed here, along with the Tibetan uprising last year, shows the extent of racial hostility that still pervades much of western China, fueled partly by economic disparity and by government attempts to restrict religious and political activity by minority groups.”

Unfortunately, America has done its own part to suppress Uighur’s civil rights, refusing them habeas corpus for over 7 and a half years. Barack Obama has continued these policies, despite promises to do otherwise. There have been reports that they wave the Al Qaeda flag and have been known to engage in terroism. Still, since most people acknowledge that the Chinese government is a repressive regime that violates human rights, why would we be surprised that a suppressed minority group would violently resist the government’s attempts to violate their human rights? We can say that they used horrible tactics, but we all remeber what happened last time the Chinese tried to protest against their government.

If these were Christians, as opposed to Muslims, I highly doubt the U.S. would be so silent on the issue. Apparently, the United States is against human rights violations by China, but when it comes to Muslims, we’re pretty much on the same page.