“The top legislator from China’s riot-hit Xinjiang said authorities will speed up local legislation against separatism in the western region that has a long-running independence movement by minority Uighurs, state media reported Monday. China faced its worst unrest in decades this month when tensions between the dominant Han Chinese and the Turkic-speaking, Muslim Uighurs descended into violence in the regional capital of Urumqi. Nearly 200 people died in the unrest. The chairman of the Standing Committee of the Xinjiang Regional People’s Congress blamed the July 5 riots on ‘three forces’ — extremism, separatism, and terrorism — both at home and abroad, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.” (07/20/09)