The Muslim Public Affairs Council is calling on the State Department and the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom to condemn the persecution of religious minorities in China, and to conduct a thorough and transparent investigation of the deaths of at least 156 ethnic Uighurs and Han Chinese in recent days.
The tragic deaths took place on Sunday, when Uighers (a Muslim minority population in the eastern Chinese province of Xinjiang) held a peaceful demonstration to demand a government inquiry into an earlier violent conflict between Uighurs (the region's largest ethnic group) and the Han (the country's dominant group).
On Tuesday, media reports showed a chilling scene -- Han Chinese clutching meat cleavers, pipes and clubs as they marched down the streets of the Xinjiang capital looking for Uighurs.
