When Turghan was finally freed from prison last month, after 12 years of torture, his wife didn’t recognize him. Instead of the husband she remembered, a hunch-backed, handicapped man stood before the family. His sister-in-law Rahima remembers Turghan as a handsome, popular young trader in Gulja’s main market.

“His crime was that he was Muslim after the Gulja uprising of 1997, when Chinese authorities put pressure on local police to find ring leaders,” she said, at a protest against China’s policies in Xinjiang. “Muslims are being arrested and tortured for their role in Urumqi riots, but the trials will be quick, with no evidence, and more lives will be wasted like Turghan’s.”

In February 1997 riots erupted on the streets of Gulja, in the Northwestern province of Xinjiang, in protest at the mass arrests of Muslims. They were as spontaneous as riots in Urumqi on July 5 this year.

Troops stormed the city of Gulja after two days of protests, using tear gas and ammunition to disperse the crowds, arresting so many young men that they had to be detained at the local sports stadium, according to Amnesty International. As the temperature dropped, the detainees were hosed with water and several lost fingers and toes to frostbite before they could be questioned about their roles in the uprising.

Experts who draw comparisons between the Tiananmen Square massacre, the Gulja uprising and the recent Urumqi riots say that it is easier for China to obscure information coming out of Xinjiang because Gulja and Urumqi are closer to Kabul and Kashmir than they are to Beijing. But that geographical detail is precisely what makes the Chinese government nervous about the region.

Today, the Chinese state media is full of warnings that Xinjiang remains a turbulent, untamed area because of its 5,600 kilometers of border area with Russia to the north, India to the south, Mongolia to the east and Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India to the west.

In the 1990s, the Chinese government launched their “Open Up the West” policy and relocated entire communities of impoverished Han Chinese in a wave of mass migration that took Xinjiang’s Han population from four percent in 1949 to 40.6 percent in 2000 (according to census data).

According to regional expert and former Indian ambassador T.P. Sreenivasan, “What China is doing in Xinjiang is identical to what they did in Tibet, repression of the minority, giving Han Chinese economic incentives to move there, creating tensions. The point is to destroy the Uighur culture and to control the region.”

This is not news to Rahima; she has experienced China’s policies in Xinjiang first hand. Standing in front of the unresponsive façade of the Chinese embassy, Rahima pulls the veil that normally covers only her hair across her face to hide her identity. Her throat is hoarse from yelling “China Lie: People die.” Rahima explains that although she is terrified, she will be photographed here, and her family in Xinjiang persecuted as a result, “I have to speak out against the atrocity; my fellow Uighurs in Urumqi are in jail for speaking out in Urumqi but here I am free.”

Rahima remembers how Turghan was moved from one high security prison to another for twelve years. He was tortured, starved and beaten until he lost the use of a leg.

“For 12 years his family tried to get medicine and food to him and for 12 years the authorities ridiculed them and now, as if nothing had happened, they dropped him off at his home, a handicapped man to take care of,” Rahima pauses to join the chorus of Uighurs shouting, “China! China! China! Out! Out! Out!”

At the same time as Turghan was taken into custody, Rahima’s neighbor was told that her son had confessed to his part in the Gulja uprising. “She was told she would be given a bill for his execution,” said Rahima. “Why not take an independent commission and talk to the families in Gulja? Every household was affected, but everyone is afraid to talk.”

Dilshod Jalil, 46, remembers the outrage he felt when he first saw a bill for the execution of a loved one: “About two pounds 80 pence for a bullet and five pounds for paying a man to lift a gun and kill the man you knew all your life as a good man, and then they give you this bill. Can you imagine a mother’s feelings? We must speak out because no one spoke out in Gulja.”

In 1997, the government crushed the uprising in Gulja with very little international interference. Hong Kong was being handed over to the Chinese, and the media spotlight was fixed firmly further east.

The military mobilized two 200,000 troops when Uighurs took to the streets in protest at the repression of their religious rights. They were sick of signs forbidding working persons, women, children below 16 or government employees from entering the mosque, and “warnings that we can be arrested, beaten and tortured for holding congregational prayer meetings and discussions of how to apply Islam to community matters in our homes.” Uighurs say the state media demonizes them, reporting them as “troublemakers and terrorists,” making it impossible for Uighurs to get jobs or move around in China.

Uighurs say they are disheartened by the weak response of the international community given the scale of China’s brutal measures in Xinjiang. According to T.P. Sreenivasan the situation in Xinjiang should be ringing alarm bells in nerve centers in the first world: “At the time of Tiananmen Square, the world was shocked and outraged by the human rights abuse and there was political will to speak out against China, but now, even America is careful with China. India should take note as China has been aggressive recently about asserting itself in Arunachal Pradesh. All democracies must note the brutal tactics in Xinjiang, as a sign of China’s aggression.”