Thanks Nick, having spent a lot of time in the region, not as a normal tourist but as a free traveller, riding a bike wherever I wanted, I am 100% certain the narrative is wrong — I don’t deny for a moment there are problems there, in fact, just today I met a young girl who is currently in HK and did her entire kindergaten to high school graduation in Xinjiang, her father is a professor of law whom I met last night. He’s Han Chinese and was born and grew up in Urumqi. He tells his family, do not discuss this matter with anyone outside the family: the reasons are obvious, the words will be twisted and turned to meet the narrative, the girl tells everyone she’s from Guangzhou, which is where her parents now live — difficult, but she knows being in HK she is going to be targetted and this is a better solution. When we speak with people like her and her father, we realise the problems are deeper than we, the ou\tsiders who visit, can ever know