China has a short border with Afghanistan, and now Beijing wants the captured Chinese prisoners returned to face trial in China.

Most are members of the Uighur ethnic minority, and the government says they are members of a violent separatist movement in western China.

But human rights groups fear that the authorities intend to take advantage of the international campaign against terrorism to suppress legitimate dissent.

Activists campaigning for the Uighur people of Xinjiang province say increasingly ruthless tactics are being used to crush local culture in what they call China's "other Tibet".

The Uighurs call their oil-rich homeland, which borders Afghanistan and the central Asian states, East Turkistan.

But as far as China is concerned, these eight million Muslims live in Xinjiang or 'the new province' - a vast tract of mountains and deserts in the far-west of the country.

Minority

Uighurs are ethnically different from the Han Chinese and speak a Turkic language. They were once the majority in Xinjiang, but now they make up less than half the population.

The parallels with Buddhist Tibet are striking. China keeps an iron grip on both.

Xinjiang is one of China's remotest provinces

"China regards Xinjiang in the same way that it regards Tibet as having always been part of China, and it will quote historical facts going back thousands of years," said Professor Mike Dillon from Durham University in Britain.

"The reality is that both Xinjiang and Tibet were only brought into the Chinese empire in the form that they are now, in the late 18th Century, but nevertheless, they are regarded as a part of China.

"The Chinese regard any talk of separatism as a kind of national betrayal, and they're not prepared to countenance it."

China usually remains silent about separatist violence in Xinjiang. Now, it is openly condemning it as global terrorism.

Alleged terror connection

The government has just published a list of bombings, shootings and riots in the province. According to this account, Uighur separatists have killed 40 people and injured 330 over the past 10 years.

China accuses the Muslim Uighurs of connections with Bin Laden

A Chinese Foreign Ministry announcement recently warned of the danger of an Islamic terror network.

"These people have links with the Bin Laden clique and have been infected with the jihad mentality. We should regard cracking down on these terrorists as part of the international struggle against terrorism," it said in a statement.

Erkin Alptekin, the exiled son of the late leader of the Eastern Turkistan republic which was founded in 1944 and crushed five years later by the communists, says the statement is an excuse.

Mr Alptekin says he believes in finding a peaceful solution, but worries that government policies are creating a new generation of extremists.

"They say we will die anyway in the coming decades. Do you want us to die like a hero, stand up, or do you want us to die like a coward, sleeping in the bed, so what should we tell these people there?" he said.

Suppression

Uighurs fear their language and culture are disappearing, while their leaders are either co-opted or suppressed.

Rebiyah Kadeer: Arrested and imprisoned

Rebiyah Kadeer was a successful businesswoman, hailed by the government as a model capitalist and model citizen.

Then in August 1999 she was arrested on trivial charges and given an eight-year prison sentence.

Her family are exiled in the United States, including her daughter, Akida Rouzi. Ms Rouzi said the detention of her mother was intended to act as a warning to Uighurs not to expect any similar help from the West.

The Uighurs have no charismatic leader, no Dalai Lama to present their case

However the Uighurs have no charismatic leader, no Dalai Lama to present their case to the world.

Now they fear the new political realities - the coalition against terror - will allow China an even freer hand in its troublesome Islamic backyard.

"We think Deng's death will bring a power struggle within the Chinese elite," said Sargari Tarym, spokesman for the Uighur independence movement, in Moscow in late February. "If that happens, the independence movement in Turkestant will intensify." In fact, it is already pretty intense.
Given the tightness of Chinese border controls and internal censorship, news out of Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (the Muslim-populated far northwest of China, also known as Turkestan) is always late and unreliable. But if the leaders of the independence movement are right, then on March 20, the Chinese publicly executed two young Uighur men implicated in the January riots - which may well set off the next round of violence.
It was the public execution of some 30 Uighur nationalists that sparked the riots in Yining in January. Chinese settlers were killed and their bodies burned; many Uighurs were killed by Chinese troops. China says 10 were killed and 100 injured; the leaders of the United National Revolutionary Front of East Turkestan claim that 25 Uighurs and 55 Chinese soldiers died.
IT'S FIVE YEARS since some Uighur separatist groups adopted a violent strategy , but it's only in the past two months that the violence has become too obvious for the Chinese to hide. The riots in Yining were followed later last month by three bombs on buses in Urumqi, the regional capital, that killed seven and injured 60, and then early this month by a bus bomb in Beijing itself.
Once the Turkic-speaking peoples of Central Asia terrorized two continents. At various times their horse-mounted hordes conquered all of China, much of Europe, half of India. By the 14th century they had all converted to Islam, and cities like Tashkent and Kashgar became centers of great wealth and learning.
The last two centuries, however, have not been kind to them.
Between the mid-1700s and the mid-1800s, Russian and Chinese imperialists gradually conquered and annexed the entire region, bringing all the peoples of Central Asia-Kazakh, Uzbek, Tajik, Turkmen, Kyrgyz and Uighur - under their rule. But in 1991, with the disintegration of the Soviet Union, everybody got their freedom again. Everybody except the Uighurs, who are ruled by China.
That year did not bring independence to the Uighurs, but it did bring great change. Since then Xinjiang has shared a porous 1,000-mile (1,500-km) border with the newly independent countries of kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan, where both Islam and nationalism are honored, not repressed. Inevitably, ideas and arms have crossed that border. So has hope.
The Uighurs, like the Tibetans, are facing demographic marginalization.
China's strategy for nailing down its western territories is to flood them with settlers from the majority (Han) ethnic group until the local people, together with their languages, religions, and traditions, are just overwhelmed. These will become Chinese lands, with a few picturesque natives selling curios.
In 1950, just after the second Chinese conquest, there were only 200,000 Han Chinese in all Xinjiang. There are now 6 million, and hundreds more arrive every day, drawn by housing and job incentives that in practice are only available to ethnic Chinese.
Urumqi is now a Chinese-majority city, and in Xinjiang as a whole the Han immigrants may now equal the Uighurs in numbers.
AT THE LAST CENSUS the Uighurs were still close to half of Xinjiang's 16 million people (and there are also about a million Kazakhs and Kyrgyz in the region), but every train arriving in Urumqi erodes their position a little further.
The immigrants are not villains. They are just another sort of victims, sent to a distant, arid, hostile region by the policies of a government in which they have no say. And if Turkestan manages to snatch its independence in the next few years, while the power-brokers in Beijing are busy with the succession struggle, they will become victims twice over.
It may get very rough in Xinjiang. The Uighurs are outgunned and outnumbered by the Chinese, but they do have an identity rooted in shared language, religion, history, and homeland - which is more than you can say for the average bewildered Chinese immigrant.
At the least, there could be great violence and misery. At best, the Uighurs could actually win back their independence.
That is what happened in the old Soviet Union, but there is a big difference. Only 50 percent of Soviet citizens were actually Russians; over 90 percent of China's citizens are Han Chinese. To democratize, Russia HAD to decolonize. China does not.
If the Uighurs don't win independence in the next decade, they will probably end up like the native peoples of the Americas: marginalized and despised in the lands they once owned.
But at least for the Uighurs, the game is not yet over.

       In the Chinese resources, it has been cited that the Uighur people had come from the Asian Hun people. According to a legend of origination pertaining to Uighur people, their ancestors had reproduced from the daughter of one of the Hun rulers and a wolf.Uighur people were observed under the name of Kao-kü (Kao-che) in the period of Tabgaç people (386-534) and they had established a bey principality in the second half of the 5th century. Afterwards, they had constituted one group of Töles people that had expanded towards nearly the entire Central Asia. In the period of 1st Gok-Turk Khanate, the Uighur people maintained their situations and they dwelled within the environs of Selenga River in those periods.

       In the first quarter of the 7th century, the Uighur people joined the union of Sir-Tarduş people that was composed of 6 tribes. Then, the tribes of P'u-ku, Tongra, Bayırku and Fu-lo-pu gathered around the Uighur tribe and they had been named as "Uighur" people. Their beys would bear the title of Erkin. Meanwhile, it has been known that they had 50 thousands of warriors in this period.

       In the years of decline of the 1st Gok-Turk Khanate, the Uighur Principality came into existence and this bey principality was governed by Erkin T'ekien. The Uighur people became much more powerful in the period of P'u-se who defeated the Gok-Turk army under the command of Kie'li's son (in the years of 630s). Then, the principality was arranged totally in a regular manner by means of the solemn attitudes of particularly P'u-se's mother, Vu-ho-hun and her fastidiousness in respect of the application of the legal provisions (töre). Then, the title of Il-teber (the title of Hie-li-fa in the Chinese language) replaced the title of "Erkin". The capital city of the Il-Teberlik (Il-Teber's country) was located within the environs of the Tola River.

       Il-Teber (Ruler) T'u-mi-tu defeated the commander of Tarduş people and he expanded his lands. Then, he organised an attack to the south that extended towards Huang-ho. As a result of these movements, he was recognised by the Chinese emperor (646). He declared himself as "Kagan" (Great Ruler) and he organised and arranged his country in accordance with the style of the Gok-Turk State. China tried to impose pressure on him and T'u-mi-tu was killed as a result o the provocation of China in the year of 647. Then, P'o-çu who was the son of T'u-mi-tu (648) defeated Holu that was declared as the "kagan" (ruler) of On-Ok people by China. Afterwards, he advanced towards the environs of Tashkent (656). In the period of his sister that replaced him, the Uighur Principality started to lose power on the verge of decline. Finally, this principality was subdued to the government of the Gok-Turk State by Kapagan Kagan.