In China, thousands of troops continue their siege of the regional capital of Xinjiang province following bloody clashes between local Han Chinese and Uyghur residents. Four days after the violence that left at least 150 dead and over a thousand injured, reports indicate an unsteady calm has returned to the city of Urumqi. The clashes have been described as the bloodiest ethnic violence China has seen in years. On Wednesday, the exiled Uyghur political activist Rebiya Kadeer spoke out against the Chinese government from Washington. China has blamed exiled Uyghurs like Kadeer for the unrest.

Rebiya Kadeer: “The root cause of the problem is the heavy-handed policies imposed by the Chinese party secretary Wang Lequan and the Chairman Nur Bekri. And the heavy-handed Chinese repression in the region for decades, you know, has created a very tense situation there, with many Uyghur families, their husbands, their sons, and all arrested by the Chinese authorities. Of course they are not happy under Chinese rule.”