The Uighurs have never captured the West's attention in the way that Tibet has. While the saintly Dalai Lama has won the Nobel peace prize and become a friend to Hollywood stars, few outside the Islamic world have heard of Isa Yusuf Alptekin, exiled head of the Islamic Republic of East Turkestan, who died in 1995, aged 94, or of Rebiya Kadeer, a Uighur businesswoman who is the movement's new figurehead. The Chinese have also managed to persuade foreigners that the protests in Xinjiang are linked to jihadist terrorism: there are connections to the Taliban in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and almost two dozen Uighurs have spent time in Guantánamo Bay.

Although Tibet has garnered more headlines, the Uighurs probably represent a greater threat to the regime in Beijing. An uprising in western Xinjiang around Kashgar in 1990 was swiftly put down; pro-independence protests in 1997 led to bloodshed, and last year there were several terrorist attacks, including one in Kashgar in which 17 policemen died. The Uighurs' resentments also have the scope to inflame Muslim sentiment not just in China (which has more Muslims than Saudi Arabia) but throughout the Islamic world.

The rioters were obviously not terrorists, so China has tried to make a scapegoat out of Ms Kadeer this time. But the idea that this revolt was planned seems fanciful. The pent-up anger vented on the streets of Urumqi was chaotic, ignited by reports of the deaths of at least two Uighur toy-factory workers after they had been falsely accused of rape. The violence in Xinjiang was crude, racist stuff on both sides, with the Han Chinese suffering the brunt of it.

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