Chinese Paper Says Muslim Region Crackdown Prevented Another Syria
- Xinjiang on ‘verge of massive turmoil,’ Global Times says
- UN official says as many as 1 million could be held in camps
Demonstrators burn a Chinese flag during a protest to denounce China's treatment of ethnic Uighur Muslims during a deadly riot on July 2009 in Urumqi, in Istanbul, on July 5.
Photographer: Ozan Kose/AFP via Getty Images
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A Communist Party-run newspaper issued a harsh rebuke to criticism of China’s security crackdown on its Muslim-dominated frontier, arguing that authorities had saved the region from becoming another Syria.
The Global Times said in an editorial Monday that China’s actions helped “salvage” the far western region of Xinjiang, which was on “the verge of massive turmoil.” “It has avoided the fate of becoming ‘China’s Syria’ or China’s Libya,”’ the paper said in both its Chinese and English editions.