For decades, Tibet's quest for self-determination has roused people around the world. Inspired by appeals to human rights, cultural preservation, and spiritual awakening, thousands of individuals and organizations lend moral, material, and financial support to the Tibetan cause. As a result, greater autonomy for Tibet's five million inhabitants remains a popular international campaign despite the Chinese government's 50-year effort to suppress it.

But although Tibet's light shines brightly abroad, few outsiders know that China's borders hold other restive minorities: Mongols, Zhuang, Yi, and Hui, to name only a few. Notable are the Uyghurs, a group of more than seven million people located northwest of Tibet. Like the Tibetans, the Uyghurs fought Chinese domination for centuries, enjoying brief periods of independence twice during the twentieth century. Like the Tibetans, the Uyghurs today face threats from Han Chinese in-migration, centrally planned development policies, and newly strengthened antiterror measures. If, as the Dalai Lama has warned, Tibetan ethnicity, culture, and environment face “extinction,” the Uyghurs' surely do, too. And, like the Tibetans, the Uyghurs resist Chinese domination with domestic and international protest that, in Beijing's eyes, makes them dangerous separatists. Yet the Uyghurs have failed to inspire the broad-based foreign networks that generously bankroll the Tibetans. No bumper stickers plead for East Turkestan's liberation. No Hollywood stars or corporate moguls write fat checks for the Uyghurs. No Uyghur leader has visited with a U.S. president or won the Nobel Peace Prize.