As visitors to China's Xinjiang enjoyed new theme park-style tourist centres showcasing the region's Muslim Uyghur culture on a recent national holiday, signs of heavy security and state surveillance were never far away.
Tourists smiled and posed in traditional dress on camels for photographs amid billboards extolling the ruling Communist Party.
Although Beijing says reporters are able to travel freely in Xinjiang, during a recent two-week reporting trip to the region by Reuters two journalists were tailed by a rotating cohort of plain-clothed minders who were rarely out of sight, day and night. Upon arrival in Urumqi, Xinjiang's capital, uniformed police entered the plane and escorted the reporters onto the tarmac in front of other passengers. They photographed the reporters' credentials and recorded information including the hotel they planned to stay in.
In the city of Kashgar, as Uyghur musicians serenaded tourists from the balcony of a picturesque tea shop, around a dozen police carrying shields and batons emerged from surrounding alleyways in an afternoon shift change. "Build ethnic unity, build a Chinese life, build a better Xinjiang," read a banner in a residential building in Urumqi.
The U.S. government has imposed sanctions on Chinese officials after accusing China of committing what amounts to genocide in Xinjiang in recent years, citing the internment programme, forced sterilisations and mass labour transfers.
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