It's important to realize that Xinjiang is a colony of China. China took over Xinjiang in the past few hundred years; historically, kingdoms there were independent. Sometimes they had tributary relationships, other times they were allies of the Chinese kingdoms. Colonialism takes many forms and Europeans don't have a monopoly on it. The Uyghurs have rebelled many times and even formed short-lived states, the last before the Mao era. What was a territorial annexation has taken on ideological (the Chinese state demanded ideological adherence in art and politics just like in the rest of China ), economic (Xinjiang is rich in mineral resources), and settler-colonial (Han Chinese have been moving into Xinjiang in large numbers) aspects.
In "the past few hundred years" the US took over the American continent and cleaned up exceptionally well.
In a world of global competition singling out Xinjiang as a colony while ignoring how China's biggest military threat is literally built on top of colonial conquests isn't a fair comparison. Where is the line that makes Xinjiang a "colony" while New York isn't? Is the US going to magically move its navy back to its side of the Pacific and stop waving it menacingly around China's oil shipping routes if China carves out Xinjiang and Tibet?
I'm explicitly trying to draw a parallel between other colonial states and China. This isn't absolving other colonial states in any way.
The colony-empire relationship is a just a node along the gradient of territory and domination. The relevant thing here is the continued persecution of the Uyghur minority and the annexation of territory, and continued resistance. It's similar to Kashmir under India, Palestine under Israel, and East Timor under Indonesia.
No country's history is entirely pretty. This is about addressing what's happening right now. China is actively working to crush Uyghur culture under their boots right now. This very story is about how they're actively building more "reeducation" camps. American isn't doing anything remotely as bad right now.
