Another Tibet: Xinjiang's indigenous Muslims fight for cultural survival.

ON A WALL near a busy crossroads in Urumqi City looms a large red poster. `The Han nationality and ethnic minorities share a common fate and their hearts are linked to one another,' it proclaims. The poster is part of a campaign to convince the city's Chinese migrants and indigenous Muslim Uighurs that harmony reigns in Xinjiang province in remote inland north-western China. Nothing could be further from the truth.

There has been widespread rioting in Yining City recently - the most serious disturbance in the city since 1949. Up to 1,000 Uighurs smashed cars, burned shops and beat Han Chinese, calling for independence from the People's Republic. At least ten people died in the rioting.

The root cause of the escalating unrest lies in the increasing numbers of Han Chinese migrating into the region. The changing composition of the population has led to cultural clashes between the Han Chinese, who currently make up 38 per cent of the region's population, and the Uighur majority. One academic remarked sadly: `We are as birds trapped in a cage.'

Meanwhile, the raw materials abundant in Xinjiang are being stripped out at an alarming rate. Oil, coal and iron ore are being spirited away  to inner China. Uighur students of economics at Xinjiang University claim that just one day's cargo would be sufficient to supply Xinjiang locals for three years.

The numbers of Han migrants look set to increase. After disturbances in Kuqar during the Islamic festival of Korban last year, the government issued an urgent circular known as Document 7. It states that the construction of the new Urumqi-Kashgar railway, linking North and South Xinjiang, must be completed within the next three years. The railway could mean the beginning of the end for the relatively untouched South. Its completion will bring new migrations of Chinese into the region.

The Uighurs feel their impotence keenly. `We used to say that one Han brought ten more with him. Now we say that one Han brings another hundred.'

But the Yining riots may be a sign that local Uighurs are ready to take their fate back into their own hands. One man from Urumqi says: `Uighurs are like a pile of dry firewood. All it needs is for someone to set the match to it.'