Central Asia

China: anti-mining protests rock Inner Mongolia

Chinese authorities have tightened security across Inner Mongolia province after days of unrest, which began when a Mongol herdsman was killed by a coal truck as a group of traditional herders sought to block a convoy from crossing their lands.

Central Asia

New Tibetan exile PM visits Youth Congress hunger strikers

Lobsang Sangay, newly elected prime minister of the Tibetan government-in-exile, met with three activists on indefinite hunger strike in New Delhi to protest a Chinese crackdown at the Kirti monastery in Sichuan province.

Central Asia

China imprisons Uighur web-editor in new crackdown

An ethnic Uighur website editor was sentenced to seven years in prison in China following a secret trial, weeks after four others received death sentences in connection with armed attacks.

Central Asia

Siberian indigenous people protest pipeline plans

Siberia’s indigenous Evenk people have launched a campaign against Russian energy giant Gazprom’s plans for a pipeline through their territory, as BP and other majors plan investment.

Central Asia

Tajikistan: 40 soldiers killed in Islamist ambush

Forty Tajik soldiers were killed in an ambush by suspected militants of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. Militants are said to be infiltrating back into Tajikistan from Afghanistan.

Central Asia
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A top US sportswear company announced that it has dropped a Chinese supplier over concerns that its products were made by forced labor in detention camps in Xinjiang. Reports have mounted that the hundreds of thousands of ethnic Uighurs believed to be held in a fast-expanding system of detention camps are being put to forced labor for Chinese commercial interests. An Associated Press investigation tracked recent shipments from one such detention-camp factory, run by privately-owned Hetian Taida Apparel, to Badger Sportswear of North Carolina. After long denying that the camps exist, Chinese authorities now say they are "vocational training centers" aimed at reducing "extremism." (Photo via Bitter Winter)

Central Asia

China: arrests in Xinjiang terror attack

Four people were detained for an attack on Chinese military police in the far western region of Xinjiang. Six police were killed and 15 injured in the first major terrorist attack in China since 2008.