Uyghur Protesters Kick it Old School

Despite a host of recent cases in which Twitter and other high-tech social networking services have been used to organize protests (like Moldova and Iran), it turns out that in places where such services are less widely available, old fashion methods still work. (Advent Creative, NYT, Bloomberg)

The protests last week in Urumqi (the capital of China’s western Xinjiang province… home to the Uyhghur separatist movement) were apparently organized, at least in part, by signs posted in taxi windows. (The Australian)


“Several days before Uighur demonstrators gathered in the streets of the northwest city of Urumqi on July 5 in a protest that sparked China's bloodiest bout of civil unrest for 20 years, secret signs started appearing in taxi windows.

Local security chiefs missed the signals. Many were away on annual holidays. But the clues were important because they alerted Uighurs in the capital of Xinjiang province to demonstrate against the Han Chinese.

The signals told the Uighurs to avenge the racially motivated killings of two Uighur migrant workers last month in a toy factory in southern Guangdong province after rumours that they had raped several women.”