DHARAMSALA - Exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama voiced his support on Wednesday for an ethnic minority in China's troubled Xinjiang province, risking worsening further his fraught relations with Beijing. In an address marking 51 years since he fled Tibet after a failed uprising against Chinese rule, the Dalai Lama referred to Xinjiang as "East Turkestan," the name given to it by pro-independence exiles. The region is populated by an ethnic minority Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking largely Muslim people. "Let us also remember the people of East Turkestan who have experienced great difficulties and increased oppression," he told about 3,000 Tibetans in Dharamsala, the northern Indian hill town where he has lived for five decades. "I would like to express my solidarity and stand firmly with them." Chinese authorities in Xinjiang have waged a heavy-handed campaign against what China calls violent separatist activity by Uighurs. Ethnic violence there last year between Uighurs and majority Han Chinese led to at least 200 deaths.
