Thousands of ethnic Uighurs rallied in the Kazakhstan city of Almaty on Sunday to protest against a crackdown against Uighurs in the neighbouring Chinese region of Xinjiang. Around 5,000 Uighurs, including women wearing white scarves as a sign of mourning, gathered in a Soviet-era congress hall in Kazakhstan's biggest city to express their anger at China's crackdown in its northwestern Muslim region, according to a report of The Associated Press. In Xinjiang's worst ethnic unrest in decades, Uighurs staged protests in the regional capital Urumqi on July 5 after a clash at a factory in south China in June left two Uighurs dead. The violence left 197 people dead and more than 1,600 wounded. About 1,000 people, mostly Uighurs, have been detained in an ensuing government crackdown. Uighurs are a largely Muslim Turkic people who share linguistic and cultural bonds with Central Asia.
