From Brooklyn to Beijing

A little background Xinjiang, China's largest and most northwestern province, is home to Central Asian minority's groups such as Kazakh, Tajik, ‎Kyrgyz, and, most common, Uighur (China's largest Muslim ethnic minority). Xinjiang was once a crucial part of the Silk Road trade route for hundreds of years, linking passages from China all the way to Tibet, India and beyond, to Europe. These days, Xinjiang has been in the news for other reasons, namely "terrorism." In the last few years, some deadly protests have occurred in this region, said to be led by the Uighur separatists.   Late last year, the Chinese government decided to do something more extreme to combat these attacks. They appointed a new chairman to take over control of Xinjiang. Chen Quanguo, previously the chairman of Tibet, is known for his conservative and oppressive tactics to suppress any sort of anti-Party thinking. Chen Quanguo had cracked down on the local Uighurs using similar tactics to hi...