By WILLIAM FOREMAN

HOTAN, CHINA – There was no sign of dissent in the bazaar, where men wove through the crowd on motorcycles with freshly butchered sheep draped behind them. But a Muslim merchant pinched his lips together with his fingers to show he could not talk freely.

“The Chinese are too bad, really bad,” said Hama, who added that the Chinese had broken up a protest of about 200 people last month. He put his wrists together as if handcuffed. “I can’t say more or I’ll get arrested.”

As China grapples with protests in Tibet, it also faces unrest on its Central Asian frontier.

Resentment against the Chinese has long simmered in this traditionally Muslim western region, which borders Afghanistan, Pakistan and Russia. The problems in Xinjiang came on top of nearly a month of anti-government riots and protests in Tibet and other provinces with sizable Tibetan populations.

Such clashes are growing as the Olympic Games approach, with the world’s spotlight on China and its human rights record. However, the situation with the Muslim minority Uighurs (pronounced “Wee-gers”) is even more complicated because China worries about separatist sentiment and brands more militant Uighurs terrorists.

Human rights groups say China exaggerates such threats so it can clamp down on the Uighurs and arrest dissidents.

The Chinese blame last month’s protest in the jade-trading Silk Road town of Hotan on Hizb ut-Tahrir al-Islami, a radical group that wants to create a worldwide Islamic state. But human rights groups and U.S.-government funded Radio Free Asia said demonstrators were protesting against a ban on head scarves in the workplace and demanding political prisoners be freed.

Hizb ut-Tahrir al-Islami, which claims to disavow violence, has been banned in Russia and Central Asia, where it reportedly has a large following among the predominantly Muslim former Soviet republics. The Chinese have accused the group of handing out “reactionary” leaflets and calling for protests in Hotan and Xinjiang’s capital of Urumqi.

Last month, officials also accused the East Turkestan Islamic Movement — a militant group that demands separation from China and is on the U.S. terror list — of trying to crash a domestic flight from Xinjiang, though the details of the case remain sketchy.

About 9.4 million Uighurs live in Xinjiang, making up almost half its population. They speak a Turkic language, follow their own customs and live on land that is bigger than Alaska and covers a sixth of China’s territory.

China has often used harsh repression to control them, and has imprisoned or killed Uighur nationalists. The government has also flooded the land it renamed Xinjiang — or “New Frontier” — with soldiers and members of China’s ethnic Han majority who control much of the economy, fueled by rich oil and natural gas reserves.

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